The Problem With Playing Too Much...

The summer started with a week of day camp, followed by two weeks of swim lessons and a trip to the lake house thrown in between.  Then we spent last week at the lake house.  Monday we ran errands.  Tuesday we did the grocery shopping.  Wednesday we went to the local beach for playgroup.  Today I invited my friend's four kids over for the morning.

While all this coming and going has been great for the kids, for family time and we had a lot of fun, the end result is that I now find myself having to dig my way out of a very messy house.  Whenever my routine is thrown off and I spend more time out of the house than in it, things at home end up in chaos.

This week I have been doing damage control.  I started with the basement.  I know, not exactly the first place most people would start.  But when we had the garage sale, we pulled a bunch of stuff out of the rec room, left behind a big mess, and I haven't returned to it since.  It was really bugging me.  I first went to the store and bought eight crates.  I then repurposed a book shelf and turned it into a storage unit.  The kids and I purged, threw away a large trash bag's worth of garbage, and organized all the toys into the crates.  I also removed all the wayward toys from the living room and brought them back downstairs in an attempt to keep my living room toy free.

Basement organized and already being played with

Next I moved onto the girls' room.  It is a chronic disaster.  They are in the smallest room in the house and it is almost impossible for them to keep it clean.  I started with purging it and putting everything away.  Next I am going to start weeding things out to put in the rec room so there is less stuff in their room to keep clean.  My final step is to weed through their clothes so they only have what they actually wear taking up shelf space.

My final project this week was to clean up the living and dining rooms.  I just needed to do a quick pickup as I never allow those rooms to get too messy since they're front and center whenever someone walks through the door.

The rest of the summer promises to be just as crazy, so I know it will be a struggle for me to stay on top of things.  I am sure that some people do fine with chaos and will always have a clean house no matter what.  I am not one of those people.