Ok - I want to get my act together! Best time saving tips and routines please!

[ginorwine]

Hi spring fever has hit!
Want to make best of my time as well as have a clean tidy house, good food, clothes / washing in top of!
Have two teens both very sporty .in summer ds out several nights - we lift share.
I work 18 .5 hours in theory mon tue wed but mostly do way over , say ten hours in own time , as I choose to as work in caring profession and I want best outcome for service users and my caseload is too big to do it in the allocated tome. This leaves me with two days at end of week at home .our house is four floors tall thin and takes a lot of upkeep being Victorian .
I find myself tidying all day thur and cleaning fri and doing the meal plan laundry and shopping.
I think that I can do this faster or better so that I can free up some time Friday to learn to sew, read go out with a pal etc or decorate.
So wise ones can you suggest how to make the very most of my time but have house that looks nice , good food, etc - ir best time saving tips as well as organisational tips combined would be music to my ears! Thanks :)

Bumping for tips :

Do your DC help? They definitely should if they don't already. To spend a whole day tidying sounds quite excessive-can you instigate a house rule that anyone who moves/uses something must put it back where it belongs after they're finished with it?

The Fly / fly lady threads are good. Also there is a swearer version called Unfuck your habitat (UFY). Both have good tips/schedules... Depends on your personality and sweariness!

I mean declutteri nh and tidying and maybe it's not all day as I do get distracted ! This day also includes household admi n , bed stripping,charity shop run etc..:)

Bio I aspire to fly lady but fail - will checksweari g version!:)

Sorry blonde not bio - need specs. !

I'm pants at this myself but my current favourite procrastination tool, found via here, is www.aslobcomesclean.com

I do think little and often is the key but then again, cleaning a clean bathroom feels like such a waste of time. When I was on mat leave and more on top of things I used to like the home blessing hour on flylady. Rigorously doing the 6 things I'd picked every week really helped. But since then we've moved to a bigger house (poor old me!) and I'm well off the wagon now.

My top tip is to keep those antibac wipes in the places you use them. I have one set for kitchen & downstairs loo (which are right next door), one for living room and another for upstairs bathroom. I can literally wipe over the bathroom in the time it used to take me to just set myself up to start.

Thankyou Erin I will get wipes!

Anyone else into sharing tips ? :)

I think you need to delegate jobs to the teens

My main time saver is batch cooking. So Yesterdsy I cooked a chicken casserole in the slow cooker, a pot of savoury mince ( for Shepards pie) a pot of bolognese - both on the hob.

This will free up a good few evenings ( I will cook pasta or steam potatoes but that's quick ) so that half hour saved will allow me to do housework on say a Tuesday night.

The thing that helps me with tidiness and organisation is to chuck things out. Junk mail, free newspapers, leaflets,straight to recycling , deal with mail immediately and then envelopes etc off to recycling.

Washing everyday so it doesn't mount up, tumble dry so don't iron, put away immediately.

Yes, batch cooking for the freezer, what about on line shopping, saves time going to the supermarket.

Fflint door step : do u find things shrink in tumble or all ok- sounds tempting re no ironing! :)

Having read about it on here I tried the no ironing thing - it didn't work for me. Even DH, who has lower standards than me, thought the clothes looked awful. I know it works for other people, it's just not for me.

As others have said, batch cook and you are already meal planning. I always have something in the freezer that can be cooked from frozen for those nights when I can't be arsed. In respect of meal planning, if you don't want to go as far as - on Monday we are having x, on Tuesday we are having y, etc - sometimes I just plan by picking 5 meals and buy what I need for them but I have no idea what night I will actually cook them. (The other 2 nights tend to be takeaway or freezer).

If you have the option put a room out of use for a bit. If you/the family are not in a room you are not messing it up. I know it doesn't work in every house, but I will occasionally put the dining room out of bounds purely because it means for a week or two I don't have to worry about cleaning it.