Imagine you´re coming home after a long, stressful day. You open your front door and stumble over piles of shoes and backpacks that are thrown in the entryway. You take your jacket off and squeeze it in between all the other jackets hanging on the clothes rod and put your bag on the floor. You walk into the living room to see toys all over the place. You sigh, and walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water, only to be met by a big pile of dishes and a full dishwasher.

You don´t have much time before you must drive your son to football practice, so you leave the messy kitchen as it is and think – I´ll take care of it later tonight. But when tonight comes, you´re even more tired, and you postpone it yet another day. The pile of dishes grows, and the mess is overwhelming.

The next morning your son is wining about his favorite sweater not being clean and ready for him to wear, and your daughter is frustrated and starts to cry because her teddy bear is missing. You have trouble finding your car keys and you´re feeling tired, stressed, and irritated. «WHY is it so hard to keep things organized?!!»

If you ever have felt overwhelmed at home, you´re not alone. It´s not always easy, to take care of a family, work and handle a household. If you, on top of all that, also have a home overfilled with toys and belongings, it can easily feel way too much.

A decluttered and organized home will reduce your stress and create a much more harmonious living environment.  

Declutter and Simplify

Before any type of organization, you need to declutter. You cannot organize your way to more space in your home, and there´s always something that can go. Start with trash and obvious things you no longer use, need or love.

When it comes to the children´s room or belongings, let them participate in the decluttering process. It´s never too early to learn to declutter. Even very young kids can participate in this procedure and by doing so they learn the important lifelong lesson on how to let go of things they no longer need or love.

The Container Concept, from the American author Dana K White, suggests that you should accept the limitations of the space you have, and declutter to the point that your things fit comfortably in that space. The container sets the boundary for how many things you can hold on to. Your house is a container, but also your rooms, your wardrobe, your drawers and so on.

“The container decides how much to keep. YOU decide what to keep.”

Dana K White, Decluttering At The Speed Of Life, 2018

First, help your kids to decide what a reasonable container for their toys can be. Choose a toy category, for example Barbies. They can keep as many Barbies as they want (they should pick their favorites first), BUT when the container is full, it is full. If they want to keep more than that, they must choose a Barbie to take out of the container.

You can use this method for every area of your home. Like White says: “Each space within your home—including drawers and cabinets and pantries—is a limit.”

Start in the kitchen and then continue to bathrooms, closets, playrooms, bedrooms, the basement, and storage areas. Things that are very sentimental will have to wait until last.

When you´ve decluttered enough and have reach a comfortable level in an area, you can start to organize your belongings. When you are ready for it, go on to the next area and repeat the procedure. And really, let it take time. If you need to do a full house declutter, don´t try and do it all at once. Take on one small area at the time. Don´t try to do your whole house in a weekend! Decluttering can be overwhelming and you don´t want to burn yourself out. Remember – it´s a marathon, not a race!

Establish Family Routines

To be able to maintain order in a busy household it´s very important to establish routines. A good way to start, is to never go to bed with a dirty kitchen. And if you have the possibility to do a load of laundry a day, that would be truly helpful to avoid an overwhelming amount of laundry.  

If you declutter regularly, you will find it much easier to clean and to keep up with the household chores. Make it a habit to, at least once a month, go through your house and find things to donate or trash/recycle. Put the things in your car right away and take them to the donation center or recycling center as soon as possible.

Give older kids chores like setting the table, filling, and emptying the dishwasher, and if the are old enough, maybe they can even help cooking on a regular basis.

Younger kids can help sorting laundry – finding matching socks in the clean pile for example – and refill stocks of toilet paper and so on. If you let your kids help, they will learn important skills for later in life and that it´s a team work to manage a household.

Organization in Children´s Room

Regularly go through and declutter your children´s toys, clothes, books, and games. They outgrow toys and clothes so fast, toys break, and board games will probably lose parts.

Organize like with like and put the books in a bookcase in their room or use a nice box to store their books in. Same with games.  

If you often play boardgames together as a family, you can alternatively store them in a cabinet in your living room for easier access.

For toys I suggest you use toys bins, or under the bed storage for Lego or other small toys.  Shelving units with age-appropriate labeled boxes will help your children to know where toys go.

If they have a lot of toys, and they are having trouble letting some of them go, you can do toy rotation to keep their toys fresh and exciting. Keep some of their toys in storage (in the basement or attic) and rotate them out on a regular basis, or when your children ask for a specific toy. If they do, it´s important that they exchange it with one of the toys they already have in their room.

Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping

Another highly effective way to reduce stress, save time and to make your everyday family life function more smoothly, is to plan your meals. It may not sound overly exciting, but when it´s done, you´re not going to regret it!

I´m not a big fan of cooking, and if I don´t make a meal plan, the struggle is real when it comes to ideas of what to make for dinner.

Start with making a list of the meals you normally eat and categorize them depending on how long it takes to make them. Also add take-away food if you eat that once and a while. Let everyone in the family contribute with their favorite meals, and before you know it, you have a list that will get you through at least a month. With these meals you can easily make a monthly plan, and this list you can reuse again and again. Of course, you can change some meals out, and maybe be a little adventurous and try a new recipe now and then.

Grocery shopping is another chore that some actually enjoy, but many of us just see as a necessary. My life changed (!) when I, a couple of years ago, realized that some of the grocery stores make home deliveries. Wow. As a stay-at-home mom with four children, it was such a great service to get the groceries delivered directly to my front door. That saved me so much time and effort, and truly made my life easier.

To make it even more effective, there are many apps where you can add groceries to a list on your phone and have this list as a common grocery list with your significant other and/or other family members.

When you have made your meal plan, put the groceries you´ll need for the upcoming week or month in the grocery list right away, and you´ll not forget what to buy or order.

Conclusion:

To reduce your stress and to create a more harmonic home environment, declutter, and then organize your space.

Routines are crucial to be able to maintain order in a busy household.

Go through and declutter your children´s toys, clothes, books, and games regularly. Children grow amazingly fast and their needs change quickly.

Save time and make your everyday life function more smoothly with meal planning and home delivery of groceries.

Try these strategies out and see what works for your family. Maintaining an organized home is an ongoing process, but small, consistent efforts can lead to a more peaceful and functional family environment.

Do you have any organizing challenges, or tips of your own? It would be so helpful if you wanted to share them with us in the comments section.

Love,

Malin

Reference

1. Dana K White “Decluttering At The Speed Of Life”, 2018