Staying organized when you feel overwhelmed is the key to getting back to a level of peace in your home.
Do your kids have a better social life than you do? Do you feel like laundry is out of control and you have no way to catch it back up? Is every area of your life crammed so full you don’t even have time to think about what to do next?
There was a time I would have shouted “amen!” if someone was asking me those questions.
This crazy busy life is both exhilarating and exhausting.
There was a period in my life where I felt like there was no way I could get everything done and make it through the day. Even though I feel like I do more NOW than I have ever done before.
How does that even happen?
By putting systems and habits into place.
Now trust me when I say…. I don’t have it all figured out.
There are definitely days when I have more on my to-do list than hours in the day and I just want to scream. Although I have to admit a lot of the time that is self inflicted.
However, there are some systems and habits I have learned to help beat those feelings. I figured out a long time ago that when I am unorganized…. it always results in feeling overwhelmed.
And when I am overwhelmed, I end up doing nothing and my attitude towards life changes. It is a known fact that stress (which result from feelings of overwhelm) can do a number on your mental health.
So, I have created some safeguards to staying organized and to protect my mind set and my heart.
The first step is to realize you need a change. The second step is to put a plan into action.
Remember creating a habit or system doesn’t happen over night and it takes work. Stay consistent and work hard at your habit training, just like a job, and eventually it sticks and you don’t have to work at it any more.
Your systems run smoothly and the feelings of overwhelm start to disappear. What you are replaced with is peace and joy.
Here are my best tips to staying organized and not overwhelmed.
1. Get up before the rest of the house
This is a big one!
If I get up with my girls, or even just 10-15 min before them, my whole day is lost. I can’t seem to recover. I feel behind the whole day.
Whenever we go off course of our systems or routines it can be hard to get back into it.
I have learned to get up a minimum of 2 hours before the rest of the house! If you’re not a morning person, this will be rough at first but trust me it is worth it!
It sets up the rest of your day.
What this looks like for me.
I set my alarm for 5am. I click that coffee pot on and drink a nice tall glass of water while waiting for it to brew.
Once I have my coffee in hand, I spend a half hour reading the Word and in prayer. This sets the tone of my day and grounds me.
During the weekdays, I will head straight to the office and get about 1-2 hours of blog work done. I try and plan out what I want to accomplish every day on the blog, the Sunday before the week starts, so I have a plan each morning. Sometimes it takes me the full 2 hours and sometimes I can get it all done in an hour.
Next, I go get dressed, make my bed, and get fully ready for whatever may come my way for the day. Even if this just means I am slipping on a pair of yoga pants!
If I still have some time leftover, I will start breakfast before going in and waking up the girls at 7am for the day.
This time to myself every morning has become an essential in the way I handle the rest of the day and my stress management. I always feel like I am playing catch up during the day and never feel ahead, when I don’t have this time. Which of course leads to feeling overwhelmed.
Figure out which tasks you would like to accomplish before the rest of the house wakes up and than determine what time you should wake. If you are not a morning person, start with small time increments and slowly build up to the time you need to wake up at.
Even when I am tired, I look forward to this morning time every day!
2. Incorporate a “quick clean” into your home.
I started this about 7 years ago and it has been a life saver at keeping my anxious/overwhelming feelings at bay.
I am naturally a tidy person but when my 3 children where younger this was a hard task to stay up on. My girls have been with me every day, all day, since I started having babies. This meant that the diapers, toys, blankets, and loads of dishes were always around.
When I felt tight and tense, I knew it was because of the mess. That’s when I knew I needed to fix this problem so that the mess wouldn’t continue to be a trigger for me.
If the house was starting to look out of control, I would yell out “quick clean!!!!” The girls knew this meant run around the whole house as fast as you could and get everything put away!
It’s became a game for us to see how fast we could put everything back in order. Now my house may not have been deep cleaned, but it was picked up and that was enough for me to come back to level ground and proceed with my day without feeling overwhelmed.
Now that the girls are older I don’t use this method very often. Usually I can pin point the culprit of whose stuff is left out, and I just simply ask that child to come get their things and put them away.
But with littles, and lots of toys, a quick clean is a must in every house to get your routine back on track!
3. Do one cleaning chore a day and one load of laundry a day.
With homeschooling the girl’s, I do not have a lot of time to get housework done.
Not to mention being a family of 5, we produce a lot of laundry.
When the housework gets backed up, then the whole vibe of my home doesn’t run smoothly.
For this reason, I do 1 cleaning chore a day and 1 load of laundry a day.
I start the load of laundry in the morning, before waking up the girls. It’s usually ready to be put into the dryer after breakfast and before we start school. I will fold and put it away after lunch while my youngest is doing the lunch dishes.
Now that the girls are older, they are responsible for their own laundry. They know to bring it up in the morning and start it when their basket is full.
I usually switch it for them when I notice it is done. They bring it back down to their room to fold and put it away.
Teaching your children to do laundry is an important life skill. My youngest is 8 years old and successfully does her own laundry every week!
Cleaning Chore.
I do one cleaning chore a day before we start school.
This is how it used to look for me…. Mondays I dust, Tuesdays I clean bathrooms, Wednesdays I vacuum, and Thursdays or Friday (depending on what we have going on that week) I mop. I do each chore before we even start school with the girls except mopping.
I do my mopping in the afternoon.
As the years have gone on, I now am able to take that habit and go a step further with deep cleaning my house every day in 15 minute increments. Check out my post on how I deep clean my house in just 15 minutes a day.
It has made life so much simpler!
4. Plan out your day!!
I never EVER start a day without a plan.
That is just a recipe for disaster!! It takes a little time up front, but has huge rewards once you get in the swing of it.
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I plan my week out in my daily planner, on Sunday evenings, and for the most part I stick to it. I mark important tasks to get done first and then plug in any extras to get done second. As I am checking things off my list throughout the day, I have a deep sense of accomplishment.
This helps me to prioritize my day and to stay productive. However, you do have to be realistic.
If I cram my day so full of things I NEED to get done, but its not a realistic plan, then I will start to feel overwhelmed. So always make sure your plan is realistic. Think of one area of focus for the day and than make sure the other tasks are small ones that can fit nicely in around the big task you want to get done.
Over the last few years I now also plan out every meal for the week as well. With my day planned and my meals plan, I am set up to have a super productive day!
Of course I can’t see ahead to what the week will throw at me. So I always make sure to leave enough cushion in my plan to throw in things that I need/want to do as they arise in the week.
Just remember when you are planning out your days, you don’t have to keep them rigid but have an idea of what you want to get done. A simple system and little organization, goes a long ways in what you can get done and staying organized.
What if I am not a planner?
I know I will get this statement.
”I am just not a planner like you, this will never work for me”
Yes, my organizational skills are stronger then most people but that doesn’t mean you can’t get somewhat organized. Just do it in small steps.
Even if you are not an organized person, having a plan can help in your day to day life. This does not mean you have to be so rigid in your daily routine that you don’t have time for anything other than what’s written down. It just means you have a general idea of what you want to accomplish that day.
If you don’t like the idea of planning out a whole week, simply do it day by day.
At the end of each day, take a piece of paper and loosely write down what you need to do the next day. That way the next morning you can hit the ground running. By the end of the day you will be amazed at what you got accomplished.
5. Put your house to bed at night!
If you don’t listen to any of the tips I have gave today, I urge you to listen to this important tip.
It will change your day, I promise.
What I mean by this is, don’t go to bed without everything in your house back in its place. For us, this is done after showers and before we watch a show or wind down for the night. When the girls were young, I may yell out a quick clean. Now that they are older, we all just get our things and put them away.
Each of my girls is responsible for dishes from a meal that day. So my middle daughter always takes care of the dinner dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. She is the most like me in terms of her cleanliness, so I strategically put her on dinner dishes. She does an amazing job of putting my kitchen to bed!
Everyone else helps gather items and put them in their proper place. It doesn’t take a big amount of time and effort for it all to be back in order before we all lay our heads down for the night.
This is the #1 tip to implement.
I promise if you only pick one thing from this list to help you not feel overwhelmed and stay organized, this would be it!
When you wake up in the morning to an already messy house and dirty dishes, your day will start out feeling overwhelmed and not in control before you even start! But if you wake up to a tidy space, you feel ready to tackle the day and can get started right away on your daily plan.
Having an organized workspace changes everything. You don’t have to clean up yesterdays mess to begin todays tasks and you will feel a sense of control over your day.
So, there you have it! My 5 ways to staying organized in my day to day home life and try my best to keep the overwhelming feelings in check!
Circumstances happen and things come up. Try to stay flexible in your plan, but I am confident if you implement these 5 new habits, your days will run smoother and you will feel much more accomplished in what you get done!
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