Baby Step Cleaning Tips Progress: Success!

Hi friends! I am happy to report that I have seen success with my own baby steps to a clean home. Remember in my first post about how I discovered the small steps I needed to take? I am glad I made them so small and attainable. I really believe the key to success is making your goals reachable, not setting the bar so high you fail and quit.

Lots of people suggested I follow FlyLady and I think I will still go and keep looking around her site. But for now I am trying to find what works for me and usually if I follow someone else’s plan I get all rebellious and don’t follow it well and then I fail. Why do I do that? I need a friend to do it with me so I can stick to it better! Accountability is key. Until then I will stick to my own baby steps that are working great!

Here is how I did this week on the first 5 baby steps!

1. Make a List –

You can see my list to the left there. Yes, I spent some time making it all pretty with fun fonts and organizing it with text boxes and stuff. Really a plain list would have worked just as well but I can’t help myself, I like things – even chore lists – to be fun to look at!

Someone suggested I laminate it so I can strike things off the list. Well I couldn’t find laminating supplies at my grocery store’s office section and didn’t want to make a special trip to an office supply store (and I do NOT shop at Wal-Mart). So I just used a plastic page protector instead. It works great! Sure it isn’t as tight as being laminated but it achieves the purpose of letting me strike through and erase.

This list has really help me so far. If I am walking around, overwhelmed by all that needs done, I have just done 2-3 things on the list (that I have split into very small chores) and felt so accomplished! Then at the end of the day I can look at what I did, even if the kids undo it immediately, the strike throughs prove I did it at least once.

2. Create a Command Center-

Best idea ever!  I bought a fairly inexpensive folder organizer from Amazon.com for $10. To save money I had to deal with it being not so pretty as other command centers I have seen, and it was also a lot bigger than I needed. It can hold like 10 file folders and is 3 feet long.

I just folded it up and taped it. I only really need 3 folders.

In my “bills to pay” folder I also keep the checkbook, stamps, address labels and a few envelopes. This makes bill paying a lot faster!  Then I stick the “to be mailed” envelope next to the door.

I absolutely love getting my papers off the counter. This is hanging on the wall. With papers in piles on my counter I was losing things and they were getting dirty. Now I can clean the counters faster with less junk to find a home for!

3. Do One Load of Laundry Each Day –

I have been folding and putting away at least one load a day.  Washing, I have done about every other day. And one day this week I got all energized and washed like 3 loads. See what I mean about how I hate sticking to a system? But I have obtained my goal of keeping up on the laundry and that to me is success!

4. Make the beds every morning –

I didn’t do this today. And there is still junk on the bed that I don’t know why I put it on the bed and not away.  But I did pretty good for most of the week and I do love a made bed!

5. Purge! –

I got my entire trunk area of my minivan filled with toys, clothes, and junk and drove to Salvation Army! But they have a sign on the door “No more Donations.”  NOOOOOO!!!!!  So now they are going to sit in my car until I get some bites from freecycle.  I hope people want my stuff. Otherwise they are going in the trash and I would really hate that.

Ending thoughts~ I have succeeded and will continue to improve. I have noticed before that I will get a clean house and then let it start to pile up again, get overwhelmed and start over.  I refuse to let this fall apart this time. That is the difference. And thank you so much for being here to keep me accountable and encouraging me to get better at this. My family is so much happier and my home is actually getting under control (somewhat).

I am working on more babysteps and will post that later as I figure out what I can add to this! Thanks!