Organization.

As a kid, I’d have said I was organized. My bedroom was always clean, just as my mother. I was good at keeping things picked up.

My children are good at putting things down. While some of them have neat-ish tendencies, give the lot of them ten minutes and a whole lot of mess can occur. No matter how hard I try, I do not have enough hours in the day to keep the house as neat as I’d like. School takes priority, and at the end of the day, while school is always done, the house doesn’t always speak well of our other accomplishments.

I’m on a cleaning binge. I’ve done the once, twice, three, and four times over, trying to find things we don’t need. Eight people in 1200 square feet fill it quite full, but there has to be a better way. Scrounging for blogs of people who have done this and thrived instead of succumbing to the clutter, I’ve found some great ideas. Today, after cleaning out my laundry room, we reorganized the kids room. For a while there, Sterling and Ruby were getting worried because neither of them had a bed left in the bedroom, but now…

Liberty’s in the top bunk. Charlotte’s in the crib. Eden’s in the bottom bunk. An extra mattress for Sterling and Ruby slides under the bunk bed during the day, out at night, and the room just grew by leaps and bounds. I lost two beds to store things under, so please don’t look in the closet just yet, but we’ve gone from a crib, two toddler beds, a set of bunk beds, and five dressers in a 12’x12’ space – and yes, it can be done, but it becomes strictly sleeping space at that point – to now, one set of bunk beds and the crib (and still five dressers) and a whole lot of floor space. It’s a beautiful thing.

Oh, and the changing table is in the laundry room. Formerly by the front door, I’m sure it greeted more than one unannounced visitor with eau de Charlotte. No more. I’m making progress!