Mom’s The Word

By Lori Martin, Owner of The Art of Order

With kids to look after and a household to run, not to mention professional obligations, today’s moms are busier than ever. As families continue to accumulate stuff, the amount of time moms have to deal with it keeps dwindling. The result is a cluttered, disorganized home. As a professional organizer who regularly works with mommies, I’ve noticed that many frustrations related to getting and staying organized revolve around three areas of the home.

Kitchen Confidential

Implementing drawer systems and designing custom pantries can improve any kitchen, but when you add kids to the mix, the family cooking and eating center requires additional planning. Working mom Jo Garces identified a height problem in her kitchen. “Make things reachable,” she suggested. “Instead of having your cups and bowls above where the kids can reach, keep your plastic stuff in the cabinets below. And when their friends come over, take out the disposable cups and paper plates. They can get messy!” Misty James, another working mom, identified the kitchen sink as a constant headache. “We seem to go through so many dishes on a daily basis,” James said. “I have a sink full of dishes everyday, and I usually don’t put them into the dishwasher until the evening, so most of the day I have dishes sitting in the sink.” While carving out time to put the dishes away remains a problem, James has discovered an organized approach to keeping food on those dishes at dinner time.“Freezing food is something I have done for years,” she said. “This allows a busy mom to pull something out for dinner and not sacrifice nutrition when they need to make a quick meal.”

Her tips to get started include:

1) Buy four or five loaves of bread at a time and freeze them. This keeps you from running back to the grocery store just for bread.

2) Look for cheap foil containers like the kind you can find at a dollar store. These allow you to pull meals out of the freezer and put them directly into the oven.

3) Try to always make two meals at a time, one for that evening and one to freeze. This will give you access to quick, healthy meals for your family.

Toy Stories

While playtime can be nothing but fun for kids, it also can be a continual source of frustration for moms worried about keeping the house picked up. “I actually consider myself a pretty organized person, but my kids pull toys out and lay them all over the house throughout the day,” James explained. “It drives me crazy. I feel like I spend most of the day going behind them and putting toys up.” Without an organization system in place, your home can easily become overrun with action figures and dolls, so each mom should determine what works best for her. “Bins with tops are great for toys, especially the ones that are see-through,” Garces said. “Put them on a shelving system that allows you to completely pull them out.” James, on the other hand, based her organizational system on the size of the toys..to help reduce the amount of toys my kids have access to, I put most of their toys in plastic bins and store them up high so they have to ask permission to play with them,” she said. “I only let them play with one bin of their ‘tiny toys,’ like Barbies, Legos and blocks, at a time. This keeps tiny Polly Pocket shoes from being all over the house. Clean-up is much easier because we can pick up their dolls and stuffed animals much quicker than having to pick up tiny toys.”

Closet Confessions

Closets may keep clutter under cover, but they don’t necessarily keep it under control. Instead, closets often become a de facto catch-all for items without a designated home. Stacey Woodard identifies this as her toughest organizational problem as a mom. “Papers from school, homework, mailed invites, et cetera,” she said. “My biggest frustration is keeping the relevant stuff, knowing where to find it when you need it and then ditching it when you are done with it.” Garces also struggles to find a place for everything but has at least developed a strategy for organizing her kids’ closets. “As kids get older, they get messier,” Garces explained. “A dirty-clothes bin, especially for teenagers, is a must. Drawers for clothes, labeled if possible, also help keep them organized.” Younger children need help with clothing clutter, too, as James has discovered. “For me, getting ready in the morning is very stressful,” she said. Because of that, she has created a system to stay organized:

1)    Buy a seven-shelf hanging clothes organizer to keep in the kids’ closets.

2)    On Sundays, put an outfit in each bin so the kids have an outfit for every day of the week. Try to include socks and, for girls, matching bows.

3)    Each day, allow the kids to pick out their own matching outfit from the hanging organizer, so you don’t have to do this for them.

“When I don’t actually take the time each week to lay out the clothes, I definitely have a much more stressful week,” James said.

As a professional organizer, I have found by discussing lack of efficiencies with mommies, I quickly uncover areas of frustration and work together to craft the solution that best fits their lives. At the end of the day, moms, just like any other client, want help from an organizer so they can spend more time doing what they love (being with their families) and less time worrying.

“At 5:30 p.m., I want to pull my hair out,” James admitted, “but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world because my babies bring me more joy and happiness than I could have ever dreamed of.”

The Art of Order; http://www.theartoforderaustin.com