Tuesday, August 6, 2013

TIP TUESDAY: Getting into the Habit of...

Today, I want us to share ways of getting into the habit of...cleaning the house, making dinner, homeschooling, doing yard work, and whatever else you have ideas for.
I used to try to find ways of keeping my house more picked up.  The problem was I had eight children who would come through and place even one thing back in an area, and my cleaning and picking up was lost.  I tried the "a place for everything and everything in its place" concept.  But it seemed I was the only one who knew the places for everything to go!
I tried FlyLady.net and actually enjoyed that most of all.  But I found myself trying to keep up with all the emails reminding what to do at certain points during the day, and I began to feel like I was failing.  I even resorted to checking things off in my journal just so I wouldn't feel like I was inadequate somehow.
I even tried Michelle Duggar's (19 Kids and Counting's SuperMommy!) idea of having the children take ownership of a certain area in the home that needs attending to.  Each child has taken a job from cleaning the family room to doing laundry to keeping the dining room/school table cleared.  And this works for us in many ways, but not to the extent it does for Mrs. Duggar.
The trouble with each of these plans is that they work for some families, but nothing works for all families.  We had to figure out what worked best for our own family and go from there.  I decided that I would personally commit to accomplishing three things on the FlyLady list:

  1. Make our bed every morning
  2. Get dressed to shoes (Crocs make this so very doable for me!)
  3. Cleaning the kitchen, including running the dishwasher (I got that part from A Slob Comes Clean!)
Is my house spotless? I still have 5 children at home so spotless doesn't happen for us very often.  We do get the house picked up and looking nice, but it is lived in, loved, and enjoyed by our family of right.  If I only get these three things done in a day, at least I have accomplished a major step in the process of making our home look nice.

What tips do you have for getting into the habit of...?

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