Idea Queen Tips & News

How long has it been since you’ve really scrubbed your bathroom? I know, it’s one of those jobs we tend to put off. It’s my most hated of all household chores, and I tend to avoid at all cost.

Regardless, it needs to be cleaned. It spreads germs when not clean. We HAVE to do it. So the challenge for the week is to get the bathroom sparkling. Clean the bathtub, sink, and toilet. Grab your best germ fighting cleaning products (or possibly some bleach), and dive in.

Don’t stop there! If you have closets, shelves, medicine cabinets, etc…..organize those too. This is something I did not long ago, so I get to skip this one. But the scrubbing, well that I NEED to do again. Ick.

As I type, I’m looking at a very unorganized dining room table. There’s toys, loads of candles, mail, and other “stuff” that needs to be put in it’s place. It’s become the dumping ground for all we didn’t want to just throw on the floor.

This week’s challenge is about cleaning off the “dumping table”. This could be your kitchen table, dining room table, coffee table, or side table inside a door.

Go ahead and clean it off right this minute. Didn’t take all that long, did it? Now the REAL challenge is keeping it clean. Every time you think about just tossing something down on that particular table, stop yourself. Don’t toss it in another place either - just put it away.

A simple step that takes less than a minute, but has a dramatic effect on the organization of your house. Post your success here next week!

Since I kinda blew my New Year’s resolution to work on one room of the house per week, I decided I needed to try this again. My house is still quite unorganized and in need of serious help.

So instead of trying to force myself to clean like a mad man every day, I’m picking one day of the week to get just one job done. And the job is not an “every day” task like dishes, sweeping, or anything else I do everyday. Sound like a challenge?

This week I’ve decided I need to get caught up on my laundry. Not so much washing, but putting away. We’ve got a huge pile of folded clothes in the laundry room that need to be put away once and for all. If we can get caught up, it will be a whole lot easier to SAY caught up. Not long ago I caught up on washing the clothes and it’s stayed that way for at least a month now. Go us!

Your Monday organizing challenge is to get caught up on your laundry in some form. We’re starting off kinda easy and you may already be caught up. But for those of us needed a little more help, this is a great place to start.

It’s about that time of year - time to starting thinking of great vegetable garden ideas! I can’t wait for it to be warm enough to start, how about you?

Normally our garden is set up as a salsa garden. Basically you’ll find tomatoes, jalapenos, and green peppers. Sometimes we’ll grow red peppers too, and dry them (those plants produce quite a bit - far more than you’ll ever use in one year!). Tomatoes we always have an abundance of as well, and I’m tired of chopping them.

Instead of our normal garden, I think it’s time for something different. Last fall we really got into the pumpkins both for pie and for decorating. So this year we might just plant two different types of pumpkins and see how that goes. Our main garden area is big enough to let them take over, so why not?

I might sneak in a tomato plant somewhere just because it wouldn’t be summer without garden fresh tomatoes. Although I have a feeling a few plants from stray seeds are hiding in the garden right now waiting to surprise me. It’s just a matter of cleaning up all the dead plants from last year to find them.

What are you planning to plant in your garden this year?

Before I dive in, let me first state this is my personal opinion only. I don’t claim to be a specialist in anything, but I AM a parent. Based on how I was raised, and how my children are, I can give you an honest opinion on the subject. Do be sure to seek out opinions of others as well.

Personally I believe that yes, children should get paid for some chores one way or another. I believe we are setting them up for the real world, where their hard work is paid for with a job. I also believe by making them do certain chores, we are also creating independent adults who will take care of their own house.

I think when you reward them for good deeds it keeps things in balance. Most don’t hesitate to punish bad behavior, but we often forget to reward when they behave. Paying them for good behavior (doing their chores) IS a reward.

Some may chose to set up an allowance system, where they get money at the end of the week only if all their list of chores are done. Since mine are younger (5 and 7), I pay them per job. Picking up their room gets a quarter. Putting away clothes is a dime per trip. Cleaning up something without asking is a dime or quarter based on the size of the job. Since they are little, I can get away with paying less per job than I would older kids.

Not only is giving them money for chores a reward, but we’re learning about money too. We get the chore jars out once in awhile and count how much money we have. When I need to replenish my quarter and dime supply, we “cash in” with dollars which are used to buy a toy or something they really want. Right now we are saving money for Webkinz.

What’s your opinion on this subject, and how do you handle chores in your home?

If you were looking for the weekly update last week, you didn’t find it. Yes I slacked off, lost my focus, and didn’t make any plans last week. Actually, I started to slip a little before that too.

I was suppose to be cleaning this front room/living room two weeks ago. Some of it DID get done - I did manage to clean off the shelf above the TV. After that I’m not sure what happened. It might of been I was just consumed with cleaning the house as a whole, and trying to maintain some sort of non-trashiness in here. Maybe I just got lazy. I’m not sure.

Regardless, I’m going to just start again where I left off. One minor setback is not going to keep me from hitting the goal of having a totally organized house.

The goal for this week - clean this main room. The desk, the coloring book/crayon area, and the “to go box” (where we put papers and other items that need to go somewhere as we walk out the door, like papers for school and outgrown clothes we are passing to a friend). The desk area is the absolute worst in this room, and will probably take the most time. It also must be done if I want to get my taxes done (it tends to be the dumping ground for bills and mail), so there’s my motivation. There’s money sitting on my desk! All I have to do is clean it.

Who’s with me this week, and what room are you organizing?

Here we are with another week gone by. Last week I focused on the laundry room in hopes I’d get a little more organization in there. Unfortunately, I’ve fallen short.

What I did not realize in that room was how much laundry there really was to be done (I dread seeing my water bill next month, it’s not going to be pretty). I also didn’t realize what a mess of laundry I had waiting to be put away. It didn’t matter how much I put away, it all kept coming back! Which is the case with laundry I know, but trying to “catch up” made my head spin.

I’m not discouraged nor do I see this as a failure. Laundry is a time consuming task. But what I did get done is pretty amazing. See I have a tall hamper and regular sized laundry basket in there for dirty clothes. Before I started, the hamper was overflowing and the basket you couldn’t see at all. Now the basket is almost half full and the hamper is empty. Yes, I got that far.

While the clean laundry is still piled up, it’s not any worse than it was when we started. In fact, that looks slightly better. Not anywhere close to done though, although it’s good to know we can get something to wear out of the closets instead of laundry room.

So now I need to make a choice. Do I tackle the laundry room another week, or move on to something else? Now that the dirty laundry is completely caught up, it should be a whole lot easier to stay on top of it. Plus of course laundry has become more of a daily task. Although there really is a LOT of work still to be done in there.

Despite the fact it’s not finished, I am voting to move on to a different room. It really has been bothering me a bit, because our laundry room is not a “public” room if you know what I mean. Company rarely sees it, and I can easily shut a door to keep it that way (it’s actually our back porch right off the kitchen, and no one uses the back door in the winter).

So because I’m bothered by the first impression of the house, I’m moving on to the front room/dining room/living room. It’s the largest room in the house, and what you walk into coming in the front door. It’s also where I sit at the computer, where we watch TV, and where we eat. Granted it gets cleaned often because of the amount of time spent in this room by the whole family, it’s seriously cluttered. My desk is piled with papers and other junk from top to bottom, the shelf above the TV has stuff that shouldn’t be out sitting on it, the table/sewing machine by the door has junk on top of it, and other areas of the room need to be de-cluttered.

Will I be coming back to the laundry room? Absolutely! I’ve just decided it’s time to move my focus on the main room for the time being, THEN go back to the laundry room.  This room shouldn’t take me nearly as long, and I might even be able to get back to the laundry room before the end of the week.

If you’ve been following my story about getting the house organized, you might benefit greatly from this ebook. I absolutely fell in love with this ebook the first time I saw it, because I knew once I was ready to really dive in, it would be very valuable to me.

The ebook gives you tips for every room in the house, including the garage, basement, and even closets. But it doesn’t stop at tips for organizing - it goes one step further and teaches you how to STAY organized. For me staying organized is the biggest challenge.

Interested? Be sure to check out Organizing Your Home at Idea Queen!

Here we are already in the first week of organizing the house. If you read the first post on this, you’ll know I started with the bathroom last week.

While it might seem a bit lazy to only pick one room a week, it actually isn’t a bad idea. Instead of being overwhelmed with all I need to do in one room in one day, I was able to just do a little at a time each day. This helped to not become so overwhelmed and prevented me from quitting. It also helped to form a daily habit of organizing and cleaning each day.

So after the first week, I have a completely clean bathroom. It was wonderful to walk into this morning first thing and see it clean. No clothes on the floor, no smudges on the mirror. I had to peek into my closets again to see how great they both looked.

I was lucky to already have two very deep closets (one with shelves, one without) and a shelf just outside the shower. The medicine cabinet is lacking space, but that’s alright. The closet with the shelves make up for it. My shelf I picked up several years ago, and looks similar to this product at Organize.com . Mine doesn’t have the towel rack on it, so I’m a bit jealous there. It’s alright though, I do not complain about my bathroom’s size and layout because it’s bigger than any other house I’ve lived in!

This week I’ll be jumping into the laundry room. It’s a mess, and I’ve got more laundry than I know what to do with. I make sure we all have clean clothes, but that “extra” stuff tends to get pushed aside. Things like extra blankets, rags, and other “stuff” we’ve tossed in there to wash. One large hamper and a good sized laundry basket are completely overflowing (at least I think there’s still a laundry basket in there…..we haven’t seen it in months!). Not to mention the shelves are packed with junk we need to get rid of, and there are hoards of clothes to put away.
My “scheduled time” for cleaning the laundry room is not going to work here, since the majority of the work is in the laundry. I can only do one load at a time, so it’s going to have to be one of those things I work on all day if I ever want to be caught up (and yes, there are clothes being washed as I type!). I’ve decided that every time I go in to swap out clothes, I’ll be putting away as much as I can. If I grab just a few things every time, I’ll be done in no time.

So are you following this challenge with me? If so, which room are you working on this week?

While technically I don’t believe in setting “New Years Resolutions”, I have decided it’s high time my house gets organized. So I’ve made a plan to get my rear in gear and get this house organized once and for all.

I’ve always been good with coming up with the ideas and plans, but I lack motivation for action. It could be I’m just overwhelmed and don’t know where to start - so I don’t. Either that or I lose interest have way through my ideas and plans, or get distracted by the next big idea. Regardless, I want to stick with this goal. Plus who knows, maybe posting this in public will help keep me accountable!

So here’s the plan - the house needs to be deep cleaned and decluttered. All of it. Every single room in the house is a mess, and needs something done. HUGE jobs await me. Very overwhelming. So I’ll take it one step at a time.

On Sunday I started with the bathroom, which is my most hated of all cleaning chores. I can’t stand to clean the bathroom because it’s just repulsive to me. I forced myself anyway. After about an hour, I got the majority of it done. Still on the list for the bathroom is the closets, bathtub, and top of the water heater (the water heater has a cover of sorts…..which the top of becomes our dumping ground for stuff that really should be put away).

I’ll admit I’ve already slacked by not getting to anything on Monday. I used the excuse I went shopping and had a kid to take to dance class, thus cutting down my energy and time. Bad I know, but hey it’s a good excuse right? Ok probably not…..

What’s worked for me in the past is setting a time to do said task. I lost weight by always exercising at a certain time every day. I kept a cleaner house by always picking up between supper and bedtime routine (which turned into a habit, so the house DOES look better than it did 4 years ago, it’s just mostly cluttered now).

So that’s what I plan to do now - set a time and run with it. I pick 6pm, because it seems to be when everyone is home and can chip in. It’s a time we don’t usually have to be anywhere, and nothing else needs to be done (bedtime routines start between 7 and 7:30). I’ll pick one room, and declutter at least one area. Last night I tackled the bathroom again, cleaning off the top of that water heater. Tonight I’ll start in on the closets.

Feel free to follow along with me! You can already find some ideas for products and the like at Idea Queen (because remember I’m good with the plans, but my execution needs some work!).