Cleaning tips that work for me

Well, the great summer cleaning experiment has come to a close. I do feel like I made a ton of progress. The office is much better now and is actually usable and organized. The laundry room has been clean and efficient

ever since that first cleaning, and the house has been fairly clutter free. Here are some tips that worked for me.

1) Split up chores. I know, I know, this is not rocket science, but it was hard. My husband works insane hours and I always felt guilty asking him to do things, or would get frustrated when he would wait hours (or days) to do it.

So, I gave him one thing to do. I have grown to DETEST our kitchen. Between breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, and dinner I am always cooking or cleaning in there, and it is driving me absolutely up the wall. Now my H is in charge of the kitchen and it is wonderful. I don't even mind cooking or cleaning now because he will do it 99% of the time, and waking up to a clean kitchen  really is a wonderful, wonderful thing

2) Split up the laundry. I don't mind doing the laundry, but the clothes never seem to make it into the drawers/closets. I started being really strict with myself about doing laundry every other day, and that helped immensely. It takes me a whole 5 minutes to put clothes away with that system, and I can easily do that while  Bug is playing in her room.
    I also bought more laundry baskets (for $2 a piece at Wal-Mart). Now there is a laundry basket in our room, in the bathroom (clothes go straight into it during bathtime), in the dining room (bibs galore), and in Bug's playroom. I also now have 3 plastic laundry baskets for clean laundry (at $4 a piece). One for Bug's clothes, one for our clothes, and one for towels/sheets. Another time saver as I can just drop the correct basket in each room and work on it when I am in that room.

3) Make lists, even with repetitive chores. Again, sounds stupid, but helps. Some days it makes me feel overwhelmed (how on earth did I do all of this today? and I'm going to do it again tomorrow?!) and some days it makes me feel awesome (Wow, look at all I did today!)

4) Have shopping lists on your fridge. I actually have 4. A Target list, Costco list, Martin's (grocery) list, and Other. This way when I'm running errands I don't forget something while I'm out, and write things down as I need them.