to ask for your organisational tips?

[mummyrunnerbean]

This is pathetic, but help: DP, DS 12 weeks and I currently living with my DM as a ridiculously unnecessarily lengthy house purchase goes through. I realise having a fairly new baby and living out of boxes are not ideal conditions but I am sick of never being able to find anything, having no time and lurching from one organisational crisis to the next. We're both naturally messy but I hate mess (including self-inflicted ) whereas DP doesn't care. We have no real diary system and any attempts to institute routines and systems are short-lived. We're constantly double booking, running out of food etc. I hate this- was dealable with just the two of us but with DS it's really not. DP works shifts as well which doesn't help. I'm off this year but will be a full time commuting student again as of next September - have to get things sorted better by then!

How on earth do people get organised? Once organisation has happened I can see how you would keep it going, but how does one create order out of chaos?? Ideas/ tips pleeeeease?

I think you need ashort term plan and a long term one for when you start studying.

Short term:
Try 15 minutes of tidying a day. ive never done it but lots of mners swear by it.

changing bag is to be refilled on the way in, so it is ready at a moments notice.

It sounds stressful. Is paying for storage an option? How long are you likely to be where you are before moving?

write a meal plan together, then write a shopping list from that. Ive never had the energy to be spontaneous with food since having ds.

If you run out of something, or are going to run out soon, put it on the shopping list.

long term:
i imagine that you got rid of clutter before moving so there should be less to tidy.

you really do need some sort of diary. i have finally got dh to use a google calendar, so he can access or edit it from his phone.

get a slow cooker for days when you are out all day. Someone on mn used an american site and made a months worth of dinners in a weekend.

bags are packed the night before, clothes are laid out for the next morning, breakfast table is set.

Read this book: how to do everything and be happy by peter jones.

Get a diary. Even if you have to make one from an old exercise book. In it list tasks and to do. The method I use is bulletjournal.com/

Meal plan. Shop once a week for what you need for the next week's meals.

Get stuff organised and in bags before you go to bed for the next day.

I think you have to agree who is responsible for what "normally". So in this house I cook on weekday evenings for 6.30pm apart from when I have to work late and dh comes home earlier. dh cooks on weekends.

I order a Tesco order every week and occasionally dh does this for me (when alcohol running low!). Other food we buy from v local corner shop or send ds1 down.

dh does all the DIY and some of the finance stuff and earns more of the money (full-time, I'm part-time).

I organise the childcare and kids social stuff. I do pretty much all of the laundry but we split other cleaning. We don't do much ironing and its often quite messy, but that's ok. We all pitch in to clear up for visitors.

We have a shared Google Calendar which is also on our Android phones so we can see if one of us wants to go out in the evening or work late etc. Once its in that diary there is no argument.

I have normally gone out one evening a week to an adult education class and dh gets home a little early to cover. He also goes out various Thursdays. These are seen as given and are not double booked. We also get a (paid) babysitter and go out on a date at least once a month and we did do this when the boys were babies too, for us it was a bit of a relationship saver in the two under two stage.

Kitchen calendar - and if it isn't on there it doesn't happen. DH once (precisely once) lost around £100 on a dinner and hotel booking because he failed to put it on the calendar. If he had, he'd have noticed my not-moveable prior engagement.

The other stuff... you need to make him care. He's an adult.

Hit him wear it hurts and make him care. ie the next night he us expecting to go out for a drink or do something he wants to do, make sure you have "night out with the girls" on the family calendar you are shortly going to implement (we use a shared Google calendar) and swan out minutes after he gets home, saying "enjoy babysitting" over your shoulder (take your mum with you so he can't weasle out of it.

You'd be amazed at how much more organised my DP got once I implemented the shared calendar with the following 2 rules:

1. if it ain't in the calendar, it ain't happening

2 He who commits the saved event first wins in the event of any clash (you should see us at the beginning of December, each trying to book up all our Xmas nights out)

We use a kitchen calendar (though I might try Google calendar also as it's not very portable).
Meal plan once a week.
Have a shopping list next to calendar in kitchen so anything can be added as soon as I think of it.

Here's a dead easy one and it works wonders: never go upstairs/downstairs or in another room, without taking something with you to put away. Make it a rule for everyone in the house.
This means that stuff gets put away all the time and your house will be tidier.