Productivity at Home

My house is not my dream home, but one day it will be. I have a vision for my home – don’t tell me that material things are not important in creating a home. |This post does not, nor do my feelings center around filling my home with *stuff*. My vision for my home is more about tidiness, a certain color palette, updated features to make our life more efficient, and an improved layout in specific rooms to foster peace and a certain level of calm in my life. | I have this vision, and I try to take the time daily to close my eyes and visualize my desired space. I need this vision. It keeps me from getting stuck in the daily monotony, and it helps me to actively work toward my dream home bit by bit. That said, I DO appreciate the things we have. I am grateful for this home that we were able to purchase, and all of the potential it presents for me to put my own creative stamp on it.

It is easy to live in a messy, chaos filled home. I am a mother freaking hustler. I do all of the things – run a couple businesses from home, have a freelance music career including teaching privately, teaching dance, teaching color guard. Let’s face it, mommin’ ain’t easy. I have a toddler and my husband is a grease monkey. There is a kid that freaking lives here! Have you ever tried to keep a house tidy while a toddler lives and breathes?!?! It is nearly impossible! You put your junk away, and they get it right back out, and then some.

If you think that I have my shit together, think again. But sister, you can have a tidy home life! Yes, children can be a-holes and undo all of the cleaning that you just did around the house. At the risk of sounding patronizing, this is only a season of your life. Roll with it. All it takes to keep your home tidy are a few simple, easy routines that you follow on repeat every. single. day. You don’t have to be Martha Stewart or the poster housewife for Pine Sol to make this work. And your home won’t be perfect, but I have been following my own advice for about two to three months now, and I feel so much more at peace, and my anxiety has improved.

You decide the daily routines that you create, and you control how intricate or simplified they are. The key to creating routines that you will actually stick to is to keep them super simple, and quick! Create an AM Routine for yourself and a PM Routine. Write them down until you get the hang of it and your body instinctively completes them while on autopilot. Create routines for the kitchen so that you can efficiently cook, clean, and store things. The AM, PM, and any other super simple routine you create are intended for regular maintenance of your household. For example, dishes, laundry, tidying the house before the next day, having lunches packed, having backpacks ready, etc. In addition, build into your life a regularly scheduled time frame for deep cleaning of the home. DO NOT plan to clean the whole house during this time frame! Simply make it a once a week time frame of two to three hours where you tackle one larger project – say washing all windows during one of these sessions, or cleaning baseboards during another session, or dusting an entire room during another.

You’re probably wondering why in the hell I think I have the authority to speak on this topic? Maybe because I have been practicing what I preach for the past two to three months and I have transformed myself from an anxious ball of nerves into someone who doesn’t give a shit if I happen to have unexpected company drop by. I feel at ease in my home. There is a minimum amount of clutter and I have room to breathe. I wouldn’t have said that last fall, and I believe my feelings can be attributed to the new routines that I have begun to incorporate into my life.

So spill the beans, Kat! What are these coveted routines you follow? I have my own AM Routine, PM Routine, a deep cleaning routine on Sundays, outfit prepping on Sundays, and a routine to plan for the week on Sundays as well. My AM Routine includes waking up, taking my thyroid replacement medication, doing a little big of yoga, sorting our dirty laundry, starting a load of laundry, putting away clean laundry from the day before, brushing my teeth, putting on make up, getting dressed for my day, eating breakfast, and consulting my planner to make sure I know what’s on my agenda for the day. My PM Routine includes getting my son’s bag packed for the next day, washing dishes, picking up the house and putting things back in their designated space, completing a quick skincare routine, and making sure my agenda for the next day is set. These are the things I do every single day. Okay, sometimes I slack. I didn’t wash the dishes or pick up the house last night before bed. Whoops!

Sundays are deep cleaning days and prepping and planning days in our household. We choose certain “deep cleaning projects” to tackle each week. I wash our towels and linens every Sunday morning, and we do these extra tasks like cleaning the toilets or showers, cleaning out our fridge and our pantry, or dusting and organizing certain areas of the home. We designate a few hours each Sunday to do these sorts of things, and Matt and I work as a team to tackle everything on the list. In addition I fill in my planners with my obligations for the week, my weekly goals, and how I will break those down between each day. I measure out and put into individual containers breakfast for me for the week, prepare a few salads that I can quickly grab for lunch, and make a few sandwiches for Matt for lunch throughout the week. Lastly, I pick out my son Emmett’s outfits for the entire week, and I do the same for myself.

And this is how I fool others into thinking I have it all together. I promise I am not deceptive. I am totally honest when I tell others I am a hot freaking mess. I regularly forget things that I should have done, or remember well past the “due date.” I sometimes scream at my child because I can’t even anymore – I am not proud of this one, and I do instantly regret it, but my patience sometimes runs thin. But having these routines for myself, and trying my best to stick to them every single day, or every single week, and not planning things over top of them, has kept me sane the past few months. They have improved my anxiety. They have made me more content about the fact that my home is not exactly what I want right NOW, and that it is okay. So maybe you should give some of this domestic wisdom a try? It just might help to improve your life in some way too!
Stay Stylish,
Kat
The Fashion Passionista