3 Reasons Your Home is a Mess and How to Get Organized

Knowing how to get organized with kids isn’t a secret. You can achieve and maintain a stylish, organized home even with kids.

In this post, I’ll discuss 3 reasons you are hitting roadblocks to maintaining a tidy, organized home when you have kids. I’ll also give you several strategies to get past those roadblocks. These are strategies I have used to control the chaos in my home. You can make these fixes work for you, too!

This Guestpost from Jo @ Neat n Tiny Blog  This super sweet lady is helping me kick off our Ultimate Homemaker Bundle week!  More about both below.

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3 Reasons Your Home is a Mess and How to Get Organized

1.There’s so much more stuff

Before my son was born in 2014, my husband and I took for granted that our home would always look the way we wanted and reflect our taste and personalities. Then came the baby shower followed precipitously by his birth. Suddenly, we were inundated with onesies, stuffed toys, and breastfeeding paraphernalia.

Before we knew it, our living room was covered in multicolored playthings and our previously placid Mid-Century Modern/Scandinavian aesthetic was unrecognizable.

The Fix:

Control what comes in. Buy Less. Let your friends and family know what you’re trying to achieve; ask for money for your child’s education instead of presents on birthdays and Christmas. Or, send out a wishlist of toys your child has been asking for or clothing they need. We’ve found this has really reduced the influx of unwanted items into our home.

Develop a central repository and storage system for toys. Decide on a central place (or two) to store your kids’ toys. This can be the kids’ room, playroom, basement or a combination of these. Our central repository is the basement, and to a lesser extent, my son’s bedroom.

Once you’ve decided on where, select how you would like to store toys in these areas.

We’ve found that clear bins on open shelving in our basement work best to keep toys organized, easily seen and accessible. Allow your kids to play with one bin at a time.

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Each time they want to play with something from another bin, return the current bin. For more on this, see my post: The Ultimate Guide To Decluttering Kids’ Toys.

2. There’s Less Time

When I was pregnant with my son, I fantasized that maternity leave would to be like a staycation of sorts. I imagined morning strolls with my son punctuated by leisurely stops at Starbucks and local shops.

In reality, my son was a very fussy baby and we didn’t make it out much. He always wanted to be held when awake and didn’t sleep long unless I was lying next to him.

Until he was about six months old, I’d be lucky to manage a load of laundry while my husband was at work.

Now that my son is three and far more independent (and smart and fun and amazing!), life has definitely gotten better. But, there are new demands on our time: playdates, birthday parties, and spending weekends at the science centre or at the park to keep him entertained.

The Fix:

Multitask when you can. In those early weeks, I found that baby-wearing allowed me to get organized around the house. Also, I would post my son’s outgrown toys and clothing on local Facebook buy and sell groups while nursing (I got an incredible amount of Netflix watching under my belt this way, too).

Now, my version of multitasking is having my son play alongside me while I do the laundry or unload the dishwasher.

Let it go. It’s cliché, but children are only young once. You do have less time to get things done, but don’t relinquish quality time with your kids for the sake of a tidy house. I’ll admit, this one has been really hard for me, and I’m still struggling with it. I can be a bit of a neat freak and often have to remind myself to leave those dirty dishes in the sink and just play with my son.

3. You Have Less Energy

Kids are exhausting! I feel like people with kids don’t stress this enough to their childless peers. Nothing really prepares you for it.

In addition to the sleep deprivation from waking every two to four hours at night in those early postpartum weeks, there are the new physically and psychologically demanding parts of your job as a mom: keeping your baby fed, happy, and alive.

And, if you’re an introvert like I am, you’ll find the new social dictates of motherhood, like family coming to visit more often and playdates with other moms, can be very draining. It’s no wonder that even when you do have the time to clean your house, you end up taking a nap or binge watching instead!

The Fix:

Take care of yourself. Eating well and exercising will help boost your energy. The more energy you have, the more efficiently you’ll be able to reorganize your closet or declutter the junk drawer.

Do what you need to to recharge your batteries: take a nap, get a massage, or take a long bath. Better yet, do all of those things when your mother-in-law’s in town and you’ll kill two birds with one stone!

Have A Place For Everything and Keep Everything In Its Place. It takes a lot less time and energy to get organized if you’ve designated where things should go and are diligent about putting them back where they belong the moment you’re done with them. Don’t let it pile up. That’s when it becomes overwhelming.

Hope this was helpful! Admittedly, all of these things are a lot easier said than done, and I’m still figuring it out, too.

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What strategies have you used to keep your home tidy after kids? Let us know in the comments below!

[Bio:    Jo C., mom to a rambunctious three-year-old, MD, and blogger (www.neatntiny.com). I blog about home decor, organization, style and simplifying life with kids. ]