Organized Home: Week 1

In the month of April, Moneysavingmom.com posted a series called 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home, a step-by-step daily assignment list of short chores and activities to get your home organized and free of clutter in one month.  There's no way I could have done this in the middle of the school year, but June sounded like the perfect time to me!

I've been doing each chore before my son even gets up in the morning, which means that I have all this cleaning done by 8 AM!  It's been GREAT!

Day 1:

• Make a list of 5-10 weekly goals - I had 8 and crossed off two that day!
• Clean out your purse (found Cheerios, my work badge, and $11 floating around in the bottom!)

• Pick up all the major living spaces in the house with 15 minutes on the clock
• Find 7 things to get rid of - This is on the list every day, but I'm cutting myself some slack on this one, since we just purged our house for our garage sale

Day 2:

• Refer to weekly goals and make about 5 specific ones for today - and crossed two more off my weekly list!
• Clean your kitchen with 15 minutes on the clock
• Clean out your refrigerator - I did this using these instructions, per the website. It was MUCH more work than I had first anticipated - glad I had someone watching my son for me!

(Wish I had taken a before picture...it was pretty disgusting.)

And here it is, clean AND organized!

Day 3:

• Refer to weekly goals and make about 5 specific ones for today
• Clean your bedroom with 15 minutes on the clock - couldn't believe what just 15 minutes did!
• Clean out your freezer - I did this using these instructions, per the website. This was MUCH easier than the fridge!

This is the bag of trash I was able to clean out of the freezer.

What my freezer looked like once it was clean

Clean and organized by type of food :)

Day 4:

• Refer to weekly goals and make about 5 specific ones for today - and crossed another off my weekly list!
• Clean your bathroom with 15 minutes on the clock - I chose my downstairs bathroom because the upstairs one is in pretty good shape.  I washed the rugs, scrubbed the floor, did the toilet, sink, AND the bathtub all in 15 minutes!  I did spend another five organizing this cabinet above the toilet:

Ugh. Not very neat.

 And, after doing the 15 minute clean of my bedroom yesterday, I cleared this tangle of earrings off my end table!

This is what it looked like after I cleared a few things off the top shelf and untangled all my earrings and hung them up!

• Clean underneath beds and furniture - This meant the couch, love seat, and chair downstairs and under both beds and the chairs in the sitting room upstairs.

This is what I found under the couch and loveseat in the living room. Nice.

 Day 5:

• Refer to weekly goals and make about 5 specific ones for today - all my weekly chores are done except for one scheduling goal (but I'm still waiting to hear back, so I did my part!) and my 2 play-dates this week.  We only had one, but it wasn't for lack of trying!
• Set your timer for 15 minutes and do something you really enjoy - I chose to go get my eyebrows done. This is the one completely unnecessary indulgence I allow myself every few months (always with gift cards, of course!).  I know I could pluck, but I have fine-motor issues - the mere thought of doing that is like nails on a chalkboard.  Besides, they're starting to look really bad this assignment was the perfect excuse!
• Remove the cushions of your living furniture.  Clean out and vacuum beneath them. - I did this with all three pieces downstairs.  It was actually not nearly as bad as I thought it would be (NOTE: turns out when I mentioned this to my husband, he said that was because he just cleaned them not long ago):

Only some pens, a quarter (score!), and some crumbs!

I'm excited about this!  One of my summer goals is to practice being a stay-at-home-mom and see how I like it.  This was meant to help me clean and keep things clean as I go, instead of constantly getting bogged down and never feeling like I have the time or energy.  Working great so far!