I can't tell you how often I have watched while a job is being done and a mess is being made at the same time that is so deep and so tall and so wide and not small! It always makes me cringe.
I've heard dozens of "helpful hints for harassed housewives" over the years that advocate ways and means of cutting down on time, energy, and mess in the daily stream of life, and these suggestions are wonderful...They have helped me become an ultra efficient person. But being that person means I have to actually look for easier routes in life, and then practice the steps it takes to make life easier, and that's where people go astray. A person who is interested in making life corrections and slips back into a bad habit again and again, isn't climbing out of the dumb.
This past Christmas, my wonderful son thanked me for all I had done for him and for his family during their time with me. My usual response was a smile and a reminder that nothing I do is hard. He carefully told me that it was a lot and that I had made it look effortless, and that splendid compliment got me through Christmas with a smile.
My life is fairly effortless, and that's because I work at it. Little things really do add up. I think you have to ask yourself where you are most inefficient, and tackle those places first. With some people it's a basic mess of things. There are simply too many "things" in one's life that have no place and consequently are unmanageable.
I have a small kitchen and very little counter space, so when I turn out a dinner for fourteen, there are going to be pots and pans at the very end of the cooking just before it all goes on the table. So after dinner, when the mess is there, do we really want to empty the dining room onto all that mess and make a bigger mess, or should we clean up the first mess to make space for the next mess? Washing the pots and pans and putting them away along with any garbage that has collected is the smart thing to do before any of the plates come into the kitchen. I wash all my dishes by hand because I find it quicker than a dishwasher. Once the kitchen has been cleaned of all the cooking mess, the dishes are a ten minute gig and it's done.
Clothes, I hear, are another mess agenda that baffles most people. I've been up and dressed before anyone else in my family all my married life - 42 years this year- and so I've always dressed in the bathroom. My closet is nowhere near my bedroom and I use a tiny dresser on the top shelf of the bathroom for underwear. I have five huge dressers at my house, but you won't catch me using one. Folding clothes and shoving them into a drawer means two things: wrinkled and lost clothes. Hang them up. It's easier to keep track of what is there, and you never have to iron.
Children will always wear the first thing they see in a set of drawers, plus, dressers take up a lot of space, and most of what they are holding is useless and unworn. Use the closet and every time you buy a shirt, skirt, pair of pants, take something out that doesn't fit, is torn or worn, and put it in your "poor" basket.
I have a "poor basket" by my front door. I use those Schnuck's reusable grocery bags. They cost $1.25. When it's full, I drop it by my closest charity which is on my way to work. It's neat, easy and simple, and doesn't require hours of cleaning, or storage.
And never leave hangers in the closet; it's a huge mess maker. Always take your clothes out of the closet on the hanger, and leave the hangers someplace to collect, so that you can take them to the wash room and have them there ready and waiting when you need them. There is nothing like groping stuffed closets for hangers to create a miserable laundry time. Laundry should take minutes a day. With a family, every child should have a hamper and there should be a towel rack in every child's room on the back of the door. That towel rack can be made from a toilet paper roll and a doweling rod. This will cut down on laundry.
One load of one child's laundry when you first get up can be dried when you first get home and folded just after dinner when the child can put it away if he or she is old enough. If you only have one hamper, you need two so that people can put their whites in one and color clothes in the other. Individual hampers mean less sorting and less time doing.
Always keep your wash area neat and clean.
There are dozens of kitchen helps like never put a spoon down and always put everything away the minute you use it. That way, you'll never have a mess, and you'll always know where things are. Establish places in the refrigerator and on the shelves for all foods so that you can know at a glance what you need at the store. Milk goes here; bread here; sandwich material here; left overs here; condiments here; vegetables here; what ever your needs are, and every week while you are making out your grocery list, wipe out your fridge, that way, you'll never have to clean it; it's always clean. Years ago, I started using index cards for notes, lists, and things I didn't want to lose. These cards sit in my phone box - yes I have a rotary in a box - with a cup of pencils near by.
I wear a watch, and although I have absolutely no sense of time at all, a watch helps me keep an eye on times when certain things must be started in order to get them done on time. Knowing how much time certain jobs take helps in the streamlining of life.
I cook for fifty every day, and it takes about 1.5 hours to have a relaxed, easy time of it. Like any of life's routine jobs, making a dinner for 50 is really a formula. I have to serve so much protein, bread, veggie and fruit and milk to so many children. You do your formulas ahead of time and have the stuff bought for the maximum number of children. Then it's a matter of getting the meat cooked on time and adding the other foods in an order that makes them all come out together. Serve.
Organizing life is simple and easy if you think it through, balance your time, wear a watch and not get distracted doing things that are not on the agenda.
Then, when you've got your life by the tail, teach your kids.
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