One Load of Laundry a Day

Laundry is a necessary evil in life -unless you're happy walking around in clothes that bend instead of hang. As appealing that option is some days, my darling hubby can't stand smudges, smears, spots or anything on his clothes. (Boy did he get a nasty wake-up call being married to messy me!)

So, I was inspired by a post on Money Making Mom a while ago where she talked about her desire to follow an organization guru's advice and wash 1 load of laundry a day. I decided to try it and I'm thrilled with the results!

1. I don't feel overwhelmed thinking about laundry anymore. I used to dread the thought because it was so much work washing, drying, folding and putting away 6 loads of laundry in one day. Most of the time I would get the laundry washed and dried but not put away so the clothes sat in baskets for weeks until I couldn't tell which baskets held clean clothes and which held dirty clothes so I'd take them ALL back downstairs for a wash. Now, I don't always get the clothes put away the same day as when I wash them but it's only 1 basket so I take care of it the next day without dread.
2. The kids and hubby are happier. They can find clean clothes every day. I am happier because we haven't had a mom-I-don't-have-any-clean-underwear conversation in weeks.
3. Dirty clothes don't pile up on floors. Every morning or two I pour all of the dirty clothes hampers into one basket and carry the dirty clothes downstairs so I have something to wash each day. We avoid the carpet of clothes my boys like to create and I stay a happier camper.

All in all, this works for us. I am so glad Crystal at Money Saving Mom blogged about the idea!

Getting Organized: Day 2

Yesterday I made it a big priority to laminate my chore charts. After Jazzy woke up and the boys were out the door to school, I dug around in the closet and located my laminating machine. Jasmine helped me laminate the sheets then I found my coil binding machine and added the edge to keep the pages together. Looks pretty snazzy, no?

I woke up with John again this morning to get an early start on my day. I enjoyed morning prayer with John then personal scripture study. I decided I might as well start at the beginning of the Bible again since I'm not as familiar with the Old Testament as I'd like to be.

It's 5:45 in the morning and I have 2 things knocked off my list. (The most important in my humble opinion.) After posting about 1 more topic, I'm off to Critique Circle to give my opinions to another writer.

On the Blog Again: Getting Organized

It's time for me to get organized. A big fan of Money Saving Mom, I admire how she sets goals every week. She challenges herself to exercise, bless others, clean and more. I admire how she breaks her goals down into manageable chunks and holds herself accountable.

In an effort to do similarly, I decided I would get up with hubby at way too early this morning and think out everything I want to accomplish this week. I then wrote it all out on this white board in 2 shakes of a rabbit's tail.

Oh wait, it wasn't actually that easy. I wish I were that good! I first started with a piece of paper and wrote out ideas for things I wanted to get done like harvest the last of the grapes, juice/bottle the grapes, finish the yellow room, etc. As I was doing that, it dawned on me that I have things I want to do every day and I better include those in the weekly schedule. So, I made another list and wrote down things that are basic upkeep.

• Pray -Cause we gotta pray just to make it today
  
• Scripture Study -To feast upon the words of Christ
  
• Exercise -To keep my body healthy enough to do the things I want to accomplish
  
• Dishes -I'm a happier person when my dishes are clean
  
• 1 Load of Laundry -So I don't spend 10 hours on Saturday trying to get all the clothes clean
  
• 1 Critique - at Critique Circle to earn credits for others to critique my stories
  
• Blog Post -so I regularly post here
  
• Call 1 Friend -to maintain my friendships

While I'm sure there are many other good things to do each day, these are most important to me. So, I had a list of miscellaneous tasks, a list of things to do daily and I already have a chore chart so I slapped them together in Word in tables for each day. I have extra lines on each day so I can add items as I think of them.

Yea! I'm done! I printed them out and I grabbed my trusty laminator. Or, I would have had it been where it was supposed to be. When I cleaned out the yellow room to tear it apart, I moved everything upstairs in the closet in the room that is now Jasmine's. I'm not about to go up and wake her with my rummaging so the lamination is on hold until the kiddos wake up.

I didn't want to throw myself off my goal of getting organized though so I searched for this spare whiteboard, scrubbed it with a magic eraser (those things are awesome!) and wrote in the days of the week. Well, I started but put the days too far apart so I erased the days and started over which was OK because it's a white board. (Yes, I am encouraging you to use a whiteboard.)

I've made this story way too long already. Time to get to the point. I have every day written, my daily tasks first, the room I will deep clean each day under that, any items from the calendar under that then bigger, various tasks along the bottom. As I think of things, I can add or erase tasks as needed. After taking the picture above I added Sharing Time to the Sunday column since I am planning the lesson and Laminate Chore Charts to the bottom misc. tasks.

This is my plan for getting organized. What will you or do you do to organize your life?