The Organised Mum Method

[IcanDorisIwillDoris]

Does anyone fancy joining me in following the organised mum method?

Back to work tomorrow after the summer off (work term time only) and need to get on top of a house work routine after struggling this last year or so to stay on top of things.

I suffer with anxiety and can easily get lost in my mood without structure and I like what I saw on the website. Will probably tweek the method as I go but it's a good structured plan to kick things off.

I work odd hours around the kids being at school but have a clear hour each day to dedicate to this. Plus I am sick of losing my weekends to playing catch up when I could be doing nicer things with the kids!!

Four of us in a 4 bed semi which is clean, just full of stuff that comes with having kids. It can get pretty messy!

Have done the odd bit of decluttering over the summer which has made a bit of a difference!

Looking forward to having a house that doesn't embarrass me on the odd occasion a guest arrives unannounced

I'm going to start this tomorrow, my house is ok and I sort of already do a bit every day but I think this will be better. I think the Friday Focus will make the difference. Silly question but does everyone do their focus on a Friday??

Xiaoxiong I managed 8 hours of sleep onFriday night so felt a bit better yesterday and managed to do the basics as DH was out all day at work. DS even sorted lunch for us which was nice. DH has been sorting things today, well sort of...

Littlechocola thanks, I think I need to

Satchell I think part of the beauty of the plan is that you can swap things around if that suits you

@Satchell I quite often mix it all up due to my rota and other plans. Tomorrow I plan to do the front room and the bedroom as I won’t be about on Tuesday. I also have an Everest size pile of washing to fold!

Tentatively marking my place... I'm a complete slattern & have no idea how to keep a house tidy, let alone clean! I have 2 home educated children & a baby too so I really don't know if/when I could set aside any time to do anything that takes longer than about a minute!

We'd quite like to be able to move at some point in the next few years so I want to start getting the house ready really slowly so it's in a sellable condition before we get to that point. We're usually "shove everything in another room & shut the door" type people but can't really do that if we want anyone to buy our house!

I'm going to start tomorrow with a bit of decluttering - I'll choose one small area & get as much done as I can before one of the children needs something! I'd get them involved but we'd spend more time arguing about whether I'm allowed to throw away a piece of paper they drew one line on 2 years ago... One has anxiety issues & likes to hang onto stuff!

I've already planned which days will work best for cleaning different rooms & put it all in my bullet journal but I really need to declutter first. I hate tidying! Maybe I'll just go colour code the days in my BuJo first...

I really want to join in but don’t know where to start. I’m really untidy and have so much stuff! Need to have a massive clear out first. It’s so daunting.

AGnu & Maz I’m definitely a slattern myself. I started with the tidiest room. This might sound odd but having one room that was tidy and really clean gave me the inspiration to start on some of the others.

I still haven’t tackled our bedroom. It was my New Year Resolution but I’m ill so it will have to wait

That sounds doable Jilted.

We recently renovated our kitchen/dining room (I could never have imagined how much mess this would make. Boxes and dust everywhere!). The work finished just before Christmas. Had to have a huge clear out before the work started. I threw out so much junk! With less clutter now, I definitely think I’d be able to blitz the two rooms in 30 mins.

A doable strategy would be to maintain these two rooms and tackle the others one at a time, then keeping on top of it with the 30 mins maintainance routines.

My own room is by far the worst!

I actually have a cleaner who comes twice a week, but the poor woman doesn’t know where to start and I’m not very good at telling her what to do, so she spends most of her time pottering.

Whizzed round the kitchen tonight in 30 mins and it’s the tidiest it’s ever been! I even mopped the floor.

Dining room tomorrow.

This is a great thread, thanks for posting. I have been watching Marie Kondo, reading it, making notes to myself about it, now this which looks brilliant. I AM going to get completely organised, but there is so much useful information to read, I fear I might stay here at my desk forever...!

I actually gave notice to our cleaning service at the end of December because I felt like it was just papering over the cracks and never forced any of us to engage with how much stuff we have. So now for the first time in 20(!!!) years we have no cleaner once a week and fully committing to TOMM. Interestingly I've been doing TOMM for a while to organise cleaning and it's worked brilliantly, but now that we know there is no weekly safety net we are both actually decluttering as we go along because it's so much easier and quicker to clean a clear floor/worktop than having to clean around stuff!!

We've decided to allocate the money from the cleaners to our "fun" budget to give ourselves a bit of a reward for our cleaning as well

Alltaken Just jump in there, pile all your clothes on the bed and get stuck in! If you do it on your bed you will have to finish or you won't be able to sleep I Kondoed my own clothes two years ago (and did all the folding and filing too!!) and it's bliss. I did the books and kitchen too but stalled on papers. Everything else (komono?) just seems to creep up and up, especially kids' stuff, so I really am trying to grapple with it again now as we are moving this summer and I don't want to be packing and unpacking stuff we don't need.

The TOMM one load of washing a day works really well with a Kondoed wardrobe - you do a little bit of folding and filing of clothes each day, but not much and it never turns into the Mount Doom of laundry where you are just frantically trying to fold things any which way to get it all done and put away. I've been doing it while listening to a podcast or watching TV in the evening, tossing anything over to DH that needs ironing and we're generally both done in 15 mins.

Friday Focus this week is the Living Room which means that I’ve been doing this for 8 weeks (still haven’t sorted our bedroom though [blush).

Most of the house looks great though and we’ve got visitors coming on Saturday and for once I’m not not panicking about sorting the house out before they arrive

I am eight weeks ahead of you then Jilted. Tomorrow will be my third living room Friday Focus, and and I have to admit that I am struggling to think of something to do. I did the two big hits on the last two Fridays. I will probably tackle the fireplace I think

The fireplace is a really good suggestion. I may copy that idea

I’m on a roll today, i’ve even booked a Chimney Sweep

How’s everyone else getting on?

Hi all, hope I can join you. I'm doing a modified version - 15 mins a day and 30 minutes on the focus day - as we have a cleaner once a week. DP and I both work full time. I started last Friday (well Saturday as I do the Friday focus on Saturday) It's made a massive difference already! I am naturally a slattern too. Hope I can keep it up.

I gave myself the day off. I did level 1 jobs and went back to bed with the lurgy.

Well that's a good (if rather tedious) job done. All window frames in living room cleaned inc toothbrush into nooks and crannies. I have rather shamefully removed the residue from sticky tape lurking from Halloween decorations on the windows FOUR YEARS ago.
Will have to check the windows tomorrow as it was dark by the time I had finished.

I have finished messy house boot camp. Still working through the laundry though.

I am not sure as a family if 6 that 30 minutes will be enough for me.

@Somewhereovertheroad what ever you don’t finish one week can wait until the following week. Start on what you didn’t finish. Also that’s 5 other people to rope in

Lounge done and half of level 2. I accidentally sat down and I’m enjoying doing nothing for a bit.

Sitting room done! In 20 mins! It definitely gets quicker the more you follow the plan.

I did the sitting room in 2 bursts of 10 mins yesterday across the day. First sweep was decluttering and putting things back where they should go, second was hoovering and dusting and I was done! It really does get faster.

Today is the dreaded bedrooms day but I dusted surfaces and stripped the beds this morning while I was listening to DS2 do his reading. So just 10 mins when I get home hoovering and making 3 beds. Win.

We need a new thread! Shall I start one?? Or would you like to do the honours OP?

I really hate bedroom day . Even after months of doing it it’s my worst day! I only do mine because the dc are teenagers and can do their own but it’s awful. I think my room is worse than theirs!