organised people...help!

[threeelephants]

Right, I need you lovely people to help me sort my life out!
DH and I both work full time- I do very long hours during term time.
We are both naturally messy, and we don't have a lot of time to clean, as you can imagine.
We have 3 children, primary school age.
I need your tips on being more organised!
We are drowning in all the junk!
Our house is quite small, so gets messy quickly if we don't keep on top of it.
It's a bit of a vicious circle...we're basically shattered. So we put off tidying up. Then everything takes longer. Then we're shattered again cos we're tidying/cleaning etc after a long day's work.
I'm rambling.
So as not to drip feed....DH pulls his weight, and the children will help when asked. And we can't afford any help.
Now please, bombard me with your tips!

Have a basket or box right by the front door for school shoes ONLY! Makes a massive difference to actually getting them out of the door because they know where their shoes are!

The box by the door for shoes only is a brilliant idea!

Does anyone know any good tips on storing things in built in cupboards/wardrobes?

I don't want to spend a fortune on plastic boxes

I use ikea large ziplock bags for little things like peg puzzles and craft stuff. You can sort it and bung it in a drawer or box and it takes less space than a box you'd have to buy.

We had to move out to have a loft conversion and decluttered ruthlessly. It's made the house much easier to keep tidy and takes less time as everything has a place.

For craft stuff, gift wrap etc. I bought two of these units.
www.argos.co.uk/m/static/Product/partNumber/8753483/searchTerm/Storage+unit+plastic.htm

They are great and keep little things like pencils together. The wheels connections are rubbish so DH took them off and put the wheels on a sheet of plywood which he fitted to the bottom of the units. So now they are easy to wheel in and out of the cupboard where they live.

I like the 15 min a day type programmes. I love Flylady who discovered on here. She's also very good on general organising tips and creating routines, and takes you through it very gently and gradually.

Yep de littering is the way to go. You can do it the Kondo way or just by going through what you gave and be ruthless about what you keep.
In my house, if it hasn't been used for a year and/or isn't deeply loved, it goes in the bin.
And then ONE place for everything.

That means the dcs are asked to tidy up all their stuff at the end of the day incl living room.
We do the general day to day stuff.
Bigger cleaning such as beds and vacuum at weekends.
Washing and drying as we go along during the week (as little as possible at weekend)
Works quite well.

I've never managed to do the FlyLady stuff whilst working full time. It was good when on ML but not after that.

Re meals etc the best for me is meal planning. You know you always have what you need for cooking, no need to think about it in the evening with the dcs grumbling because they are hungry.
And then cook for 2 meals, eat one freeze the other for a night when there is less time (eg after school activities). Leftovers are frozen again and used for lunches (mine and DH).

I do flylady at the weekends, (so 2 days of 15 minute decluttering) but with some routines and some actions in between like 5 min room rescues or an occasional 2 minute hotspot clean up, or an extra 15 minute session if I'm working from home. The important thing for me is any kind of sustainable system, not to follow it to the letter. I do follow her zones, more or less, so that I keep going round all areas of the house.

I do a whole week plan on a Sunday including: lunch box plan, dinner plan, activities plan, other notes to self. Always batch cook and use frozen food liberally.

Shameless placemark. I need major cleaning help!