Inspire Me!

Ok, so my husband rocks and I feel like a loser. How can he spend 4 days with the kids and be a better stay at home parent than me who has been doing it for nearly 4 years?!? So I am making the greatest of efforts to get the house organized. I have been scouring the web and found some tips I will share with you that I think might help. For those of you who already have one of those terribly tidy and organized homes, please please feel free to comment and give suggestions.

"I bought a LOT more laundry baskets. They're cheap. I have two colors, white for clean (I even wrote 'clean' on them), and green for dirty. I keep the stack of the white ones in the laundry room. Anything that comes out of the dryer goes in a white one. You often can't fold right away. You're often doing laundry in between other things. With official clean baskets it can stay unfolded, messy, and there's no mistakes, nobody throws dirty in with the clean and screws it all up. Other people can remove clean laundry and place it in a basket and take it to their closet and deal with it themselves"

"I bought a Tupperware style lazy-susan plastic tray and have several plastic mayonnaise jars on top of it. I have used strips of velcro to attach the jars so they are not always falling off, but can be removed if needed. I keep it in my cabinet in the kitchen and use it to hold pencils, pens, paper clips, loose nails, and other small items that are easily lost. Since the jars are clear, you can always see what is inside without emptying the contents onto the kitchen table. It also gives me a place to put all those miscellaneous little items I am not sure what to do with"

"Try to refrain from dumping all the toys into one giant bin. You will quickly find there is a tendency for many children to dump all the toys out again during play time. Purchase smaller containers and sort the toys to theme. Your child will be able to more easily find the toys he or she is looking for, and will also be able to help clean up with out it being such a huge task."

I also found this super cool site for other big housekeeping losers like myself that gives ideas and encouragement on how to take control of your home. Check it out!

"Use a clear over-the-door shoe holder for gathering all those small items around the house. Use one on the basement door and get rid of the kitchen "junk drawer." Use one in each child's room so that they can gather up all the little things that end up on the floor."