Cleaning is not my thing. I’m not one of those homemakers who naturally falls into habits of cleaning. I’m a messy at heart and by nature.

As my family has grown, our house has gotten larger, and we have kids toys everywhere, one thing has become abundantly clear: my success in keeping a clean and orderly home depends almost entirely on my organization skills.

As a homemaker, setting the atmosphere in my home is one of the my most important tasks. Now, I’m not talking about impressing your friends and family with a perfectly clean home (which I think is most often achieved at the expense of your family). I’m not advocating you spend your life cleaning, at the expense of your family, sanity, and walk with the Lord, just so your floor vents aren’t dusty and there’s never a dish in the sink.

But ladies – we have to come to the realization that what we do within our homes really does matter and can have lasting impact on future generations – and I’m talking about your heart and attitude even more than your physical home.

So ladies, if you are a cleaner by nature and drive your family nuts by trying to keep a perfectly clean home (even though your family lives there) then you might need to focus more on your heart than your organization skills. I recommend you go pick up a copy of Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full. It will give you such a clear, Gospel perspective on your home.

But, if you are like me, and your house feels out of control, you can’t keep up on the dishes, laundry, meal planning, and you feel like your home is in a constant state of chaos…read on for the organization lessons I’ve been learning lately (and what I still have to learn).

1) Know the purpose in your homemaking

Your very first step in better organizing your home, is to know what direction you want your household to move in and what you want the atmosphere to be. At the end of the day, what is the most important thing?

Is it more important to have a clean sink at the end of the day or a husband who feels loved? Is is better to spend your morning cleaning cob webs out of all the corners of the house or do your Bible reading for the day?

Clearly defining what your goals are in your house will allow you to better craft a priorities list for what the most important things are each day. See Creating a Personal Priorities List for Your Home and Life if you want some help on this. Once you have these goals and priorities written down it’s so much easier to move throughout your day knowing when it’s time to clean and organize and when it’s okay to lay it aside for the sake of your family (even when that means you go to bed with a sink full of dishes).

2) Get Rid of the Clutter

As my house has grown, I think this has become the most important key to keeping my house clean – clearing out the clutter. In one year, when our twins were five months old, we moved out of our apartment into a 800 sq ft small house (where most of our stuff stayed in storage) and then six months later moved into our first home.

Moving that many times so close together makes you realize the things you can live without. As it took a while to settle into our new home and unpack, I started coming across boxes of stuff that hadn’t been opened in years – and you know what? It wasn’t missed during that time!

This really opened my eyes as to what it really important within our home and essential. As we’ve slowly moved into our new house this past year, we have taken many trips to Goodwill with stuff I realized we could live without. And that extra breathing room in our house makes a huge difference in trying to keep it clean and updated!

3) Develop Daily Habits

I consider this an important part of organizing my life: knowing what tasks need to be done each day (or at least most days). From making breakfast to loading the dishwasher to staying on top of the laundry pile, there are things that we need to keep on top of or our house will be drowning in mess.

I’ll admit, with twin 2 year olds and twins due in July, I rarely get everything on my to do list done for each day. But at least I know what I’m shooting for. It helps me to focus and when I feel aimless after breakfast time and not sure what to jump into first, I have my daily list to help keep me focused.

4) Be Flexible – Every Season Changes

It seems like I  finally get into good habits and routines within my home when something changes and I have to start all over. Having babies is really different than having toddlers. Living in a house is different than living in an apartment. And soon, have two babies and two toddlers will throw me into a whole new season and I’ll have to adjust.

That’s life. But it’s important to know and recognize that our seasons will change and so will our homemaking. The important thing is how we embrace those changing seasons and how we prioritize our life. With two year old twins, my house is a lot less “clean” than in the days before we had kids. I know that one day, I’ll again have more time for house cleaning, but for now, my priority is my growing kids and my husband and I’m at peace with that.

 

5 Keys to Planning a Successful Day 

Free PDF Guide & Training Video! 

If you want to take this concept further and jump into how you can plan for a successful day (and what that even means), then I want to invite you to sign up for my FREE video and PDF guide 5 Keys to Planning a Successful Day. 

Sign up and you can start going through it right away! Join me to chat about how, with a few simple tips, we can start living with more intention. It might seem overwhelming to work on being more intentional and purposeful in your schedules and to-do list. But in reality, it takes just a few minutes to begin transforming your routines with 5 simple steps…

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