I Just Need to Get Organized

I'm not sure how it happened, but I turned around, looked up and saw that summer was completely gone. I think that realization hit hard when I started schlepping kids to their Fall activities. Whoa! Where'd summer go? Now we have things that we actually have to go to? We can't just let our days run free form according to whatever are our whims or fancies of the moment? Ackk! Panic gripped me (and I'm only half kidding).

Our year is even busier than normal this year, due to a couple of added activities. I'm the queen of paring down the activity list to bare bones. My motto is "the good is the enemy of the best." We can't make our family priorities actual, lived-out priorities if we're running hither and yon all over the country side. We are home schooling. However, a couple of things got added to our calendar this year by God Himself and I'm not going to argue with Him.

Since our schedule is as full as it is, I realized I needed to take a crash course in organization. Enter the book, Large Family Logistics by Kim Brennemen. I received the book for my birthday back in January and had yet to do more than a cursory perusing of its pages until a few weeks ago (although I had been meaning to get to it all summer).

Let me just say, Mrs. Brennemen is qualified to speak on the topic of the organization of a large family. She has nine children and she has many household systems in place which keep her home running smoothly. I'm sure she has her bad days, but she does seem to have a lot better handle on the whole large family thing than I do.

I'm not yet finished reading the book, but I'm working hard to apply what I'm learning as I go along. Mrs. Brennemen advocates doing several "10 minute tidies" throughout the course of the day. She says if it takes longer than ten minutes for you and your kids to get the house looking presentable enough for unexpected company, than you simply have too much stuff. Ouch! Decluttering is key, she says.

I always keep a garbage bag in my closet so that as I find things we no longer use or love, I can throw them in there and take the bag to the thrift store when it gets full. However, the idea of the "10 minute tidy" made me realize I need to pare down even more.

I started the culling process in the boys' room. Their room, right off the kitchen and visible to anyone who visits us, is pretty much always in shambles. Paul does a decent job of picking up when he's asked, but the little boys hold Masters in Messes degrees and I always have to clear a path at night time just to get into their room. So the boys' room became decluttering project number one.

I gathered up enough toys to fill three garbage bags. A lot of it was stuff they simply didn't play with anymore, except to dump the items out of their bins and onto the floor. I even got rid of some of the toys I really liked and kept holding onto because I thought they were so neat (i.e.--flying, screaming super monkeys). The after. Sorry, I forgot to take before pics.

Mrs. Brennamen also says that no toys should be stored in bedrooms. This has been the case for our girls' bedroom for a couple of years now and it's worked well to cut down on the messes. I just didn't do it for the boys' room and I reaped what I had sown. No more. Now the toys are all up in the school room/play room (thanks to Grace), which also got the declutter treatment this past week. The only problem for me will be to "inspect what I expect," as Mrs. Brenneman puts it. If I expect the school room to remain clean (we don't actually do school there, we do it downstairs), I'm going to have to go up there more than once a month to check on things.

The after pics of the school room. Again, sorry, no before pics

The decluttering project, still underway in other rooms of the house, is about as far as I've gotten in applying the ideas from Large Family Logistics.

As for the household systems that Mrs. Brennamen suggests, so far I'm just overwhelmed with the thought of even thinking through all of them, let alone actually doing them. Mrs. Brennamen has a rule in her house: 4 by 4. Four loads of laundry washed, dried, folded and put away by 4 in the afternoon. I detest folding laundry. Always have. My mom detested it too, so the job always fell to me when I was growing up. Maybe that's got something to do with it. However, it'd be really nice if laundry baskets of unfolded laundry were not a permanent part of the decor in my bedroom. In almost eighteen years of marriage, I've never known anything different. It's going to take some serious intentionality on my part to change that.

Not to mention making my bed in the morning (although I'm getting better at that one) or having the kids make their beds. And putting window washing and furniture vacuuming on the regular chore rotation (you mean you don't just do those things in the ninth month of pregnancy when you're nesting?).

"I just need to get organized," has been playing like a broken record in my brain for so many years. I'm naturally a neater person and disorder makes me very nervous. However, the Lord has chipped away at that idol of mine for a long time. (Guess what? It's hard to keep a house clean when little children live in it!) I won't be fulfilled if I have a perfectly clean house. Although I sure would like to experience it sometime just to make sure :)

I know Kim Brennemen wrote the book to be an encouragement and help to the mother of many, but my first born guilt genes are getting the better of me as I see how much more smoothly my household could be running if I had some systems in place.

Mrs. Brennemen does keep the main thing the main thing--that is, Jesus Christ smack dab in the center of all family life. Matt and I are doing our best to do the same with our family, but we are also realizing that a little organization could go a long way toward giving us the freedom to serve Christ better.

It's a fine line. My natural desire is to "Stop Everything!" in order to get the house to a cleaner state. However, life must go on and sometimes cuddling baby Isaac or reading another chapter of a great read aloud is just plain more important than a clean house. And I know that taking time to be in the Word as a family always trumps a clean house.

"but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal." Matt. 6:20

I do plan to keep slogging my way through Large Family Logistics. I am leading a group of women through the 5 Aspects of Woman Bible study this year. I figure that when we go through the "Mistress of the Domain" aspect it will be a fine time for me to get together a household binder that details chore systems and the like. After all, the teacher needs homework too!