Keeping Up.

Yippee! The drapery is here! It's all swaddled, I mean packaged up in a nice little protective wrapping in which I will keep it until its noon install on Monday. As much as I'm dying to tear it open, I don't want any parts going missing hence delaying my beloved install. So, it's been hidden under the bed, out of sight of 4 tiny little hands until George the installer makes his glorious appearance on Monday. Yeeks!

I wanted to share with you a new system I have developed for our household. If systems are not your thing, go ahead and stop reading now before you start rolling your eyes and judging my systematicness. I already know I'm a compulsive organizer and your system-less household is no good here. JK. I'm cool with being a dork...afterall, in grade school, I was known as Sarah "LehNERD"...clever guys! Anyway, from previous posts, you know that another one of my goals post remodel was to get on a laundry cycle. Hubs and I have shared the laundering responsibility since we first moved in together five years ago (just three short months AFTER we got married...yep, lived in different states for three months after our wedding while he finished school and I worked). Jeff has always done the sorting and washing and I have always done the folding and putting away. As wonderful as it is to have my man so eager to share the household responsibilities, the problem is he waits until he's out of clothes before he starts doing laundry. At that point, he does ALLLLLLLLLLLL the laundry...like loads upon loads upon loads and continually brings them up and dumps the clean clothes on our bedroom floor for folding. This was becoming a sore subject in our house as if I wasn't ready to fold clothes at that very moment the following took place A) the mound of clean laundry grew larger and larger and larger B) The clothes became more and more and more wrinkled C) Tiny hands scattered the clothes all over kingdom come D) Clean clothes mixed with dirty clothes and hubs got snippy with the 3 ladies in the house.

So, now that we are out of full-time remodeling mode and the house is just about clean and organized, I've been trying to come up with a way to stay on top of the laundry and other 'up-keep' chores (like sweeping the floor and disinfecting the main floor bathroom where Miss Newly Potty Trained displays her not-quite-perfected skills). So here's the new system:

1) I started by making sure each bedroom has a laundry basket in it (I like the cute small square ones for the girls closets).
2) I purchased additional laundry baskets (seriously...can you ever have enough?) for the laundry room. One for each of the piles we sort our laundry into (whites, darks, pinks (two girls? FULL load of pinks) and delicates. These laundry baskets are permanent fixtures of the laundry room.
3) I have one 'moving' laundry basket that brings dirty clothes down and clean clothes up.

So far, you probably aren't too impressed. Here's the key to ME staying on track. Every other evening for one hour (AND ONE HOUR ONLY...less if tasks permit) after we put the kids to bed (so from 7-8pm in my case), I collect all of the laundry out of the bedroom baskets and bring it to the laundry room, sort into respective baskets. If there is a complete load in one of the baskets, it gets washed, dried, folded and put away. This process repeats every OTHER night, except if it falls on a Sunday.

On the opposite night as laundry, the routine chores take place in the same time frame as laundry (7-8). So, floors get a good sweeping (ours are mainly hardwood, so a perimeter sweeping with a firm bristled broom followed by a dust mopping), disinfecting of the powder room (I like Clorox wipes) and a sweeping/mopping of the mudroom tile. If I have a few leftover minutes in my hour, I'll pull out the Windex and erase a few mouth or hand prints from the doors or clean the refrigerator with stainless steel cleaner. I try my best to keep my counters/dishes clean throughout the day so I don't have to worry about cleaning up that mess in the evening.

Sunday evenings are my (our) evening off from laundry and chores. All I have to do Sundays is strip sheets and towels and put fresh ones on/out. Nothing like starting the week with a fresh towel and a clean set of sheets:-)

SO, I'm giving this a test run. It seems like quite a committment, but it's nothing compared to having to try and get caught up on a house that has completely fallen apart or finding a place to start with a heaping mound of laundry. I like living in a tidy home and I feel like for the first time in a very long time, I'm running the house instead of me running after the house. One final note, the evenings that Jeff isn't working means we can tag team the evenings task...which means its likely it would only take 30 minutes. Or maybe he'll be in charge of the laundry nights and I'll be in charge of the chore nights so we don't have to 'work' every evening. I'll let you know how it goes!

Tomorrow is CARPET INSTALL!!!!!!!!!!!!! Scheduled between 8-9am tomorrow...YEEKS!!!!!!