I believe every family has habits. These habits can be good or bad. As for my family, we have bad habits of chaos. A few of these are as follows:
Leaving Items Out Of Place
Every member of my family leave things downstairs that are meant to be returned upstairs. Like the toys that need to be returned to the play room upstairs. The dirty laundry that’s supposed to be placed in the hampers upstairs. The clean laundry that’s meant to be in the dressers upstairs.
Honestly I believe this is because we are not used to having two floors in our home. Thus far our family have lived in a basement suite, a studio apartment, a bungalow, a one bedroom apartment, a two bedroom apartment and now a two story townhouse.
The first two weeks of us living here was an absolute nightmare for me as I became the personal trainer to my scrawny unfit legs. Can you imagine the constant yelling I had to do at them to not give out or give up? They’re thanking me now for how great they look haha.
But the only person that was truly happy about these stairs upon moving here was our three year old Esperanza. And we were happy that the stair case occupied her like a jungle gym.
At our laziest moments we would simply leave piles of items around the living room and kitchen area, unwilling to climb those horrible stairs.
So in light of creating a “strict” routine while working with our family’s refusal to take things all the way back up stairs after using it down stairs, I developed a system. I put a small hamper down stairs for dirty laundry. This is especially ideal for moments we have poop explosions from 8 month old Izabella. And for those times my husband and I take our socks off after getting home and leave them lying around, giving off a very fragrant aroma… (girl’s feet don’t stink).
Then we got very reasonably priced and stylish cloth boxes from the Dollar Store to store stray toys, changes of clothes for the baby and stray books. It’s so convenient, they even have a little black board at the front of them for labelling. (I occasionally get my three year old to take a few toys and books upstairs now and then so these boxes don’t get to the state of overflowing).
We also put a little basket near the exit filled with bundles of clean socks so we no longer have to go upstairs for a clean pair when we’re just about to get out the door and realize no one has socks on yet.
Mandatory Tasks V.S. Tasks That Can Wait
I have the bad habit of trying to get too many chores done all at once and then getting none of them done. If you haven’t seen my post about what an average day of getting chores done looks like for me, check out this link here: https://maturingmama.com/2019/01/05/routine-whats-that/
In an effort to be more focused with getting chores done, I’ve developed a list of tasks that are a priority for the day and tasks that can wait till I have spare time at the end of my day. And if they don’t get done, it’s not the end of the world… (if I repeat that enough I think I’ll start to believe it).
Amazon has these awesome magnetic boards that stick to the fridge. They come with markers that stick to the fridge as well. One board is an empty calendar and the other board has boxes with lines for lists. This is such a great product for us because both Jesiah and I are then able to see what needs to get done and what has been done. (My hope is that when he sees the chores I didn’t get done perhaps he’d feel inclined to help me out *wink wink*). It’s also so conveniently located for writing down grocery lists.
Mean while the calendar is great for teaching my three year old days of the week. And of course wonderful for scheduling… which I will get to… eventually.
Here’s a link to this product at a reduced price: https://amzn.to/2RdaI9P
And when Jesiah sees lots of check marks beside chores he can then reward me for my hard work 😉 Especially handy for when he comes home and the place still looks trashed but I did actually get a lot done… you moms know how it is. You clean during nap time and the moment the kids wake up, it’s like it never happened. #endlesscycle
It doesn’t seem like much but these few items placed around our home have given us a small sense of routine as well as taken away a lot of unnecessary stress. This release of stress will hopefully make it easier to plan our days better.
Very well worded!