Tag: house management

2019, command center, getting organized, home management, house management, kitchen, organize, organizing, time management

Organize your time with a family command center

by LumberInMyMiniVan2 Comments on Organize your time with a family command center
Organize your time with a family command center
Courtesy of Good Housekeeping

Most of us have a calendar hanging up somewhere in our home, and some of us may even have a meal planner calendar. When we hear the words “command center,” usually images of something decorative and organized come into our minds. Did you know that a command center doesn’t have to be anything big or elaborate? It just has to work for you.

Back in the day, I used to have this big elaborate command center in our home office. It looked great, but it ended up being too overwhelming.

So I tried to simplify it a bit. This, too, worked for awhile.

We began to realize that this wasn’t working, and it didn’t have anything to do with how elaborate it was. It was due to the fact that the command center is in a room that we barely enter. Your command center should be somewhere you will walk by it multiple times of day and see it.

For now, our command center looks like this:

But, after our kitchen remodel is complete, I’d like it to look like this:

I would use the frames to post quotes or scriptures, and our school schedules. I also love the basket at the bottom for bookbags and lunch boxes.

Stay tuned! Our command center is about to get a major underhaul.

2018, cleaning, cleaning tips, house management, routines, spring cleaning

Our cleaning routines

by LumberInMyMiniVanLeave a Comment on Our cleaning routines
Our cleaning routines

How to have a cleaner house

 

As the busy, working mother of an active rising second grader and a toddler, I often don’t have the time to clean that I need. Sometimes I look around at my house and worry about when I’m going to get everything done. In the past, I have cleaned my home on Saturdays, but then I realized my entire Saturday was being lost to cleaning! Then, we had no time to spend together as a family.

The solution? Create a cleaning routine that enabled me to do a little cleaning each night. I found a neat cleaning schedule on Little Green Notebook.

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While this routine would work pretty well for us, there is no way that we could only do laundry on Saturdays. I had to tweak this a little to make it fit our needs. I came up with this:

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Our only solution was to wash and dry clothes every day, using the timer. I wake up, throw a loud of “ironables” in the washer, and they wash while we are getting ready. We then hang these clothes up to dry before we leave the house. I then throw our “dryables” into the washer and set the timer so that the washer will start shortly before I get home. I then don’t have to worry about the dryer running with no one at home.

Washing and drying clothes every night also makes for smaller laundry loads, therefore, less to fold and iron.

This cleaning schedule also means that we can do a little cleaning each day and have a house that both feels and looks a lot cleaner. The best advice I can give you is to find an idea you like and tweak it to make it work for you.

Cleaning our house a little each night was the only way that would work for us. Plus, we have a lot more time to spend together on the weekends.