How to organize your house

Organizing your house, how?

Are you one of those people that is trying to juggle your demanding job with running your home and family? Does this sound familiar? You have to leave at 7 am but your daughter has wet her bed again and your son cannot find his gym clothes. You come home exhausted after work but you still have to cook dinner, put a load in the washing-machine and your son needs help with his homework.

You have to get better organized but how? You want to create peace in your space (home) and make room for the things you want and which gives you pleasure.
The keyword is setting goals for yourself. Do not expect too much at once, it will only give more stress. What you need is insight into your goals and priorities. How do you do that? You need to start by thinking it through, so sit down. Do this in the weekend or when the kids are in bed, take a pen and a piece of paper, pour yourself a drink and begin. Write down what gives you the most stress, is it getting the kids out of bed in the morning, making breakfast and lunches-to-go while getting out of the door in time. Or you come home from work and you do not know what to eat, you aren't a born cook, just like me, who cannot improvise. You forgot to take something out of the freezer, the one ingredient you need you do not have.

First of all, don't be too hard on yourself. You don't have to be a Martha Stewart, although she could give you some good tips, maybe it is not a bad idea to buy one of her books. It can give you inspiration. Is one of the problems you always seem to be running out of clean clothes, especially (children's) underwear, socks. Your hamper is overfull, you don't have time to do laundry every day. The best thing to do is to make sure you don't run out during the week. Buy new underwear, socks for every member of your family. If you only do laundry once a week, you need at least eight pairs of each for every familymember. Other things you may want to buy; towels, sheets. If your daughter still has 'accidents' during the night, it can happen. Buy a protectioncover for the mattress and enough sheets so you don't have wash them right away. At the beginning of the week prepare two bags or as many as you need with everything your son needs for gymclass, including extra shoes. I call this investing in peace of mind rather than money. Also, buying an extra hamper could be a solution; sorting out the whites and the colours in advance can save you a lot of time. Maybe if one hamper is full, you are more likely to throw it in the machine sooner than you would have if you yet had to sort it out.

Cooking dinner, it can be a lot of fun but not if you're pressed for time. There are some things you always have to have on stock, for example rice, instant mashed potato, spaghetti, ready-to-use spaghettisauce . You can think of other things as well. Tinned vegetables or deepfreeze, buy big quantities of meat (on sale), devide them in portions of different weight and keep in the freezer. Through the Internet you can easily find recipes, most of the time you can read how much time they take to prepare. Plan ahead, know and write down what you want to eat on Monday, write down what you need and buy that. The same for Tuesday to Friday. It works and this way you will save money too. Plus, it will probably make you enjoy spending more time in the kitchen. Martha Stewart will be so proud of you.