My Crazy But Organised Life (part 1)
When people I meet ask how many children I have and I tell them I have 5, the next thing that comes is a gasp! The next thing people say is “How on earth do you do it? I can barely manage with 2!” or however many they have. My first response is always “One child at a time!” I realise this doesn’t really work if you have twins or more!
And my second response is “You have to be organised!”
Now you may be reading this and thinking that it’s ok for me as I’m a super organised person that it comes easy to, but that you don’t happen to have that gift. The fact is I’m not naturally super organised by nature. I would say I am with some things but the rest I’ve had to work at and develop over the years and definitely more so as we’ve had each child.
So I’m by no means an expert (and these are probably not new) but here are a few things that I’ve put in place to help me keep on top of things:
1. ONLINE FOOD SHOPPING
This sounds really basic but I’m amazed at how many parents battle on taking their little ones to the supermarket. It’s stressful, exhausting and you end up buying way more than you need. Instead you can sit in the comfort of your own home, plan out what you need, get it delivered at a time that suits you and then all you have to do is put it away! (Ok, ok, I know that’s actually the worst part, but the day will come when you have kids old enough to do that for you!) You do have to think ahead but if you decide on a day that you want it to be delivered and try and stick to that day, you can plan the ordering in to your week. It’s such a load off your mind when that’s taken care of!
2. DECIDE ON YOUR LAUNDRY DAY/DAYS
For me I just cannot only do laundry once a week. With 7 people in our house it would literally be coming out to bite me! I personally hate to feel like I’m not on top of laundry so this is one of my areas that I find relatively easy to keep organised. I try to do laundry on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday night/Saturday morning depending on what our weekend is looking like. Obviously this isn’t set in stone and sometimes I have to do extra or change days but I find if I have a framework to work with, it really helps.
3. WORK ON A 24 HOUR LAUNDRY TURNAROUND
To me it’s no good washing the clothes if they’re going to sit around in a basket for another 3 days...I might as well not have bothered washing them! So I try (and sometimes I fail) to adopt a 24 hour washing, drying and putting away timescale.
A couple of things help with this: I don’t iron anything unless absolutely necessary. I stopped ironing about 10 years ago when I had 4 under 11 and two of them were under 4. The ironing was making me lose the will to live; especially with a 2 year old who liked to change outfits multiple times a day and put the discarded ones in the laundry bin!
So I decided just to fold really well as soon as the clothes were dry and if they weren’t 100% crease free; well it’s not the end of the world! It’s actually worked out pretty well!
Another thing that helps is having individual baskets to put the clean clothes into. This means as I fold I put into each person’s clothes into their own basket and now that mine are old enough, each child takes their basket upstairs and puts it away. It’s quicker, allows everyone to take responsibility and it means all the pressure to keep things running isn’t on me!
I also ask them to put them away within the next 24 hours and if they don’t, their clothes will disappear into a bin bag for a week. You may think they won’t care but it seems to work and I’ve only ever had to do that once!
4. MEAL PLANNING
I’ve got to admit that I don ‘t do this religiously although I should, but I’ve definitely done it in particularly busy seasons and it’s amazing! The relief of not actually thinking up on the day what to make for that evening’s dinner is the best. There’s so many printable meal planners online these days to help you and so many great ideas if you need some more inspiration! It’s definitely the way forward!
So there’s just a few ways I try to keep organised and keep the home running smoothly.
Watch out for part 2 coming soon!
Louise x