Balancing: DISOREDERED home and healthy home environment, for learing. :/

Hi Kelly! I just wanted to say that I will be praying for God to give you wisdom and peace in this area. I don’t feel qualified to give you advice because I only have 2 children. I can share a few little things but I am sure Tristan and other moms of many around here can help a lot more!

The single, biggest thing that helps in this area in my home, is teaching everyone to pick up after themselves. Then there is much less to clean up. If everyone picks up after themselves, keeps their room clean, and has an additional daily chore things are much more manageable.

Have you looked at chorganizers or Managers of their Homes? I’ve heard good things about both. I always just made a homemade chore chart and no free time was allowed until all school work and chores were complete.

The only other thing that comes to me is that maybe you should pray about slowing down a bit? I know it’s hard to give up activities but with so many children, I am sure it is necessary just to keep your sanity. We always kept outside activities to a minimum so we could focus on family togetherness, school, keeping our home running smoothly, and enjoying the simple things in life.

Praying for you today!

Melanie

First of all, you sound like a great mom! 7 kids, pregnant and you are homeschooling and making sure your daughters have fun activities outside the home plus time with friends.  All that alone is a tremendous accomplishment.

Secondly, I agree with the previous post that maybe a massive declutter and reorganization is in order? To start things fresh?

As for the inevitable clutter, how about either daily or weekly set aside a specific time for everyone to tidy an area you assign them. Set a timer and see how quickly everyone can pick up and then offer a high value reward. “Let’s get everything picked up and then we’ll do X!”

Personally, I’ve been letting the toys stay cluttered in the family room during the week and then on Friday afternoon do a clean up with my boys. Friday nights are family movie nights and my husband brings home take out, so I have that incentive to urge them on with.

Lastly, do you have regular homeschooling breaks scheduled? Then you can let major cleaning tasks wait until that next week or month you take off from schooling.  I only school 4 days a week with Friday just scheduled for morning nature walk and then cleaning.

I’m sure there are moms of large families who could give you a much more disciplined schedule to follow, but there’s my two cents anyway!😀

It does get overwhelming! The best secret is you have all those lovely children who are about to become your army. Here’s what I would do:

Choose a 2 hour block every day (or cancel all activities and friends for a week or two). Maybe it is as simple as ‘we don’t go anywhere until after lunch’ for a while.

When it is time to work each day all of you go to one single room. Have boxes and trash bags ready. Task #1 – everyone grabs dishes, trash. Dishes go to the kitchen and trash into a bag or two. Task #2 – everyone bags up items that are theirs from that room. Task #3 – Anything that is left gets put away or put in a bag marked for donation. This should be pretty much just what belongs in that room. The donation bag goes into your vehicle right away.

At this point if you have any time left in your 2 hours each person opens their bag of personal items collected from the room. They pull out 1 item and decide if they want it or if they are done with it and can throw away or donate it. They do that and then pull out the 2nd item, deal with it, and grab a 3rd. In this way they never have dumped a mess in front of them to deal with.

When the day’s work time is up everyone closes their personal bag and it goes in a spot for the next day’s work.

Day 2 you decide if you want to all start a second room just like you did on day 1 or if you want to finish dealing with personal items from the first room.

You repeat this cycle every day until it’s been done.  And every evening the kids don’t get dinner until the rooms you’ve all decluttered have been picked up again. This should take 5 minutes – just go to any rooms you’ve all done and have them pick up and put away everything they left throughout the day. Start assigning consequences after a few days for those who keep leaving their stuff everywhere.

Oh, I understand about the Mess Stress.  We have 5 dc from ages 9 mo to 11 yr.  Add home renovations to the mix and there have been some days that we can barely walk through the house.  But even with your oldest children it is not too late to work on good habits.  You will just need to talk to them first and get their “want to” on board with yours. 🙂

I do the one room declutter like Tristan described, but it takes some routine decluttering after that or it rapidly grows to an enormous mess again.  On those big declutter days I make sure I have something quick/easy for supper and I park the littles with a dvd.  (We don’t watch tv so they will stay in on place for a treat like that.)

When I am pregnant, or going through some other difficult physical thing, I just honestly talk with the children about my limitations.  There have been summers or other periods of time when we just don’t go anywhere other than church.  And the grocery store, I guess.  And the children survive.  There were a couple events that I got a ride with friends for my oldest daughter, but we turned down so many invitations and events because it was more important to take care of mom and the new baby.  We even stopped going to the library for while b/c I didn’t want germs around my tiny baby.  I think she was six months old before we went back to the public libraries!  And everyone survived, flourished, no emotional scars.  My point is, sometimes you just HAVE to slow down for a time or get some help with the transportation at least.

Back to the habits with your oldest daughter’s, meet with them and talk. Let the younger ones somethin g the older ones are not interested in and have a heart-to-heart with the older girls.  Maybe with tea and cookies or something special.  Get their input on what jobs they would like to do to help out around the house. Make  list or chart of jobs to be done and when in the day.  We do “morning work” right after breakfast and everyone has 2 or 3 tasks to complete. Then we pick up the house during the late afternoon.  Then clean up the dining room and kitchen after supper.  Just this week I gave our 11, 9, and 7 yo the complete responsibility of after dinner clean up b/c the 4 yo and baby need me then.  I wrote a list of individual tasks on the white board (put food away, clean high chair, clean table, etc.) and dd11 assigned each task to each of the 3 kids.  And I get to spend time with my little ones without having to worry about a messy kitchen to face later! 🙂

Okay, I need to stop yakking.  Just one more thing.  🙂 Dana White’s blog A Slob Comes Clean has helped me SOOO much.  She’s  like my long-lost twin or something!  And I love Mystie Winkler’s blog and podcast Simplified Organization.  Thought I would share those in case they would help or encourage you.  It will get better!  Take care of you and your sweet baby-on-the-way as well as your lovely family!

How about limiting outside activities? Not cutting them totally but confining them to 1 or 2 days or afternoons a week. I know even with only 3 small children I can’t keep a calm and orderly house and do the fun projects my kids need if I am tot home at least 4 days out of 7. You could allow a few more outside activities to anyone with a drivers licence or in walking distance that you and the little kids don’t have to go to also. Little kids thrive staying at home.

Whatever you do be sure to communicate the why’s with all your kids… Even the little ones. Approach it as a family and discuss solutions together.