My New Homemaking System

As some of you might know, I am not the most organized person in the world. I also dislike cleaning. I dislike the smell of cleaners. I dislike all that time it takes to clean. I dislike that there is so much to do when it is time to clean.

Well a while ago my mom gave me a book titled "Sidetracked Home Executives." It is a book wrote by two sisters who sound just like me. VERY sidetracked. (and as Luis is finding out more and more, VERY forgetful...My poor Husband) It is funny and helpful. They came up with a system of cleaning that makes things a bit easier. Though it takes Some time to set up.

Here is what you need:

Index cards: white and colored

Index card dividers:alphabet, number, and Month and blank ones.

Pencil

and a card box

I used sharpies and crayons because I made my own dividers (thank you mom with lots of die cuts)

I actually don't have alphabet dividers. Those ones are for contacts. I should do alphabet ones, because, while most people have everything on their phones, I don't always know where my phone is, AND last time I switched phones, I still never switched all my contacts...

I would get the book. It helps a lot. It has a sample list of all the different jobs you could need. You will want to write down all of your jobs and separate them into how often you do them (daily weakly, monthly, etc) and then determine if it is a mini job(under 10 min) I have my jobs charted on my ipad. Then you write them down on the colored cards.

Daily -Yellow

Weekly-Blue

Monthly White

And then There are the "personal jobs." For me I have ones like, "Update blog" and "exercise." Where Luis has his personal ones like "practice typing" and "Mountain biking." These ones, no matter when they are to be done, are your personal color.

Then they all get filed neatly according to when they are supposed to be done and what day you want to do them (for the weekly and monthly ones)

File them neatly in the little box in front of the number that is the date. Mine is on 20 because I started mine on the twentieth. and every day you just switch the number into the back of the rest. At the end of the month, you you switch which month is in the front of that section. It is really nifty because it spreads all the chores out. It also helps me remember what I'm supposed to do that day and gets me to clean certain things more frequently. And it makes it easy to delegate things to kids or husbands. You just give them the card. Though you have to make sure that if you delegate cards to kids, make sure that it is appropriate for their age. My mom used to make special ones JUST for us kids. When my sister was a baby, we had the "Haleigh Helper" for us younger ones that couldn't really do much other than make a baby giggle.

I also have some sections that have special titles. Titles like "Special Projects" and "Family Home Evening." In the book, one of the sisters had a section called "Compliments." The special sections are just that. Special to you. Whatever you want them to be. You can always come over and see how mine is done. Though,

I really recommend getting "Sidetracked Home Executives" It was a great book.