To ask your top 3 organisational tips?

[booklover164]

My god my house is tip! New baby arriving soon and we need to get on top of it. Both DH and I are naturally messy people and throwing a toddler in the mix doesn't help.

What are your top 3 tips for keeping your house organised?

Throw it out.
Put things away.
Teach your toddler to pack up one toy before the next one comes out.

1. Everything has a home and everything in its home.
2. Don't delay. (wash up after the meal, put the clothes away, don't let them pile up)
3. Don't have extra stuff.

Declutter, give away all the shit you don't need and buy great storage.

I love IKEA's Kallax boxes and shelves - have a look on their website and find some solutions and force yourselves to get into the habit of doing a quick ten minute sweep before you go up to bed each night - it makes such a difference coming downstairs to a tidy house every morning.

De clutter and organise
Stop procrastinating
Get on with tidying and cleaning it!

These are great so far. Thank you! A kick up the arse is definitely needed. I just don't know how we have so much crap!

Make sure everything has a place, or get rid of it.
Clean kitchen after every meal and living room and hallway every evening.
Meal plan

1. Declutter. You need much less stuff than you think.

1. Make sure everything has a sensible, accessible place. There’s a book called “the toothbrush principle” that I found helpful on this. For the toddler’s stuff put pictures of the toys on the drawers they’re supposed to go in, they’ll gradually learn to keep their stuff tidy.

1. Train your toddler (and partner if necessary) to do a fun 5 minute tidy - at the end of each day or whenever needed you put on fun music and tidy

As much as possible.

Put things away at the end of each day - including toys.
Everything has a home even if it’s a box of miscellaneous stuff.

Is it the nesting instinct kicking in? I cleared a whole room of doom when I had the nesting instinct

Agree with the previous posters who have said to declutter (have less stuff) and have a place for everything.

During the toddler/baby years I used to aim to have a top of the hour tidy, and pick up stuff during the day so it didn't build up into one massive job in the evening. Keep picking stuff up and putting it away.

Deal with your post the day it comes through the letterbox. (Have an office tray for stuff that can't be dealt with straight away). Bin flyers immediately.

Put stuff AWAY not DOWN.

Sell/charity/bin stuff as soon as it's finished with..

If your house is really a tip (and I say this as a reformed tip dweller), you need to sort through everything, declutter and donate/throw stuff you don't need anymore. Then with the remaining stuff sort out the storage for it, it's cheesy but everything really does need a place, otherwise you'll find you're just moving mess around.

Once you've declutterd and organised, then it should be easier to keep on top of it, but you need to get into the habits of keeping on top of it, like picking stuff up as you go, e.g. take the dirty mugs with you to the kitchen. Having a ten minute tidy in the morning/evening, set a timer and put some upbeat music on. Have a declutter fairly regularly; I do it on a rotation for different rooms every month.

Look at Marie Kondo (she's got a series on netflix) for the decluttering, and then the organised mum Method for keeping on top of it.

Don't leave a room empty-handed - eg. dirty dishes back in the kitchen, laundry in the basket, put things back straight away.

Little and often - don't leave all the housework until the weekend because you won't want to do it. Half an hour a day is better than four hours in a row on a Saturday morning.

De-clutter. If you haven't used it in a year, then either sell it, donate it, or chuck it in the bin.

We do the same as @KatyN

Don't go upstairs or downstairs empty handed more than you need to. ( There seems always to be stuff needing to back upstairs or vice versa in our house )

Buy one of these. At the end of the day, take it upstairs and empty. It saves you running up/down and saves the bottom of the stairs looking like a top

Buy Maria Kondo book

Read the book

Do what she says

Tidy away after you've used something rather than at the end of the day but also have a quick tidy around before bed.

Keep surfaces tidy.

Have a home for everything and aim to put it in it's home when not in use.

4th tip - don't have a pile/drawer/box of doom that builds up and up until it's overflowing. Deal with everything that goes in the pile immediately whether it's bills, letters to file/reply, art work by your kids, flyers, etc.

Good luck! I'm an ex tip dweller myself and I am so much happier for getting on top of it. I feel much more relaxed and my husband and I get to do bigger jobs around the house and garden or go out for the day at weekends rather than spending all our time catching up on laundry, hoovering, wiping sides, cleaning loos etc.

1. Keep decluttering in your mind every day. It's not a special event activity. Keep a charity shop bag on the go all the time. Put items in the rubbish or recycling as you see them.

1. Buy less. Think carefully before you buy any item. Do you really need it and where will it live?

1. Keep on top of the washing. This also means that you can have less clothes for family members as they are not stuck in a dirty washing heap.

1. 30 day decluttering challenge by clutterbug on YouTube. Ignore anything irrelevant or the actual video content if you want but the categories are great. The less you have the easier life is. Sell as much as you can ebay, carboot, fb market place to avoid landfill and give you money for:

1. Look at your pinch points and sort them, do you need a hook for the dog lead, a letter rack, a key bowl, shoe rack etc everything needs a place to call home

1. 5 minute sorting blitz as many times as you need, do it as a family

1. Declutter!
2. If there are things that you always lose or never get put back in their place, then their 'place' clearly isn't working. Change it to somewhere else in the house.
3. For clothes, bag up ones you don't wear and put them in the bottom of wardrobe. Give away any that you haven't pulled back out of the bag after 6 months or so.

1. Toddler - put the toy away before you get another out

1. Adults - if you are finished with what you are doing/using and it will take you less than 1 minute to put it away do so immediately.

1. Adults - one parent does bedtime and the other spends that time tidying/clearing up dinner/loading the dishwasher etc.

4 (sorry, final one) - one wash load a day, don't let it build up.

Buy a notebook. Not an A4. Smaller. Make lists in it.
Or a notes app on your phone.

And Storage.

Pay for a professional clean a week before baby come then it’s all perfect , then do the three twenty minute jobs a day, such as;

1x 20min hoover downstairs
1x 20min put a wash on and fill dishwasher
1x 20min put toys away

If each day you do something different, set your alarm and don’t go over the 20mins , it doesn’t feel like a huge job but everything is kept on top of.

I am going to start the organised mum method this week. I am spending the weekend trying to get the worst of the tidying done, so that my 30 minutes starting monday is doable.
Last night I wrote a list of the things I wanted to acheive today and have done them all. Tomorrow, I will do the same!

Always :

• Make bed as soon as get up / before leaving bedroom in morning

tidy before bed ... everyone makes their own bed regardless of their age

• Do dishes as family immediately after meal ... everyone pitches in, no exceptions

• Teach children to put clothes away when clean and put clothes in the correct laundry hamper when dirty (we have three hampers - colors / whites / dry cleaning) .... this saves so much time .... teenagers don’t get clothes washed if not in hamper

• have a job roster that each person is responsible for and stick to it ... not doing jobs is not an option (jobs are age appropriate and have changed over time as children have grown from “helping hang out washing” progressing to “putting washing on using machine” etc)

• everyone cleans the loo (in other words, if you “dirtied” the bowl, you clean the bowl with the brush and cleaner kept next to toilet ... I am not your maid)