I think I’ve mentioned that organization is not my strong suit…oh yeah, I did say that the house being more organized was my New Year’s Resolution. Well, since proclaiming that as my wonderful and painful (I hate cleaning) goal, I have done absolutely zilch to make it happen. That means that we’re half way through January, and our home office is astoundingly cluttered. I had my father over the other day and was mortified when he wanted to come in and check something out on the computer.  Yes. It really is that bad.

I was watching some show the other day, and if I could remember what it was I would tell you, but the guest was saying how we all actually do have daily routines. Psshht, I thought, not me…if I had even a little routine in my body, I would have a clean house and a nice office to work in.  The guest went on to say that YES, even to all of the doubters out there, we DO all have routines, it’s just that some people have productive routines and others don’t. Well, that shut me up. I looked around at what I was doing. Exhausted after running around in circles all day after my daughter, with no real structure. And then the realization hit me over the head…we do this EVERY day. And I guess if you want to call it a routine, you can.

I’d like to say that that got me out of my funk, but the truth is, after being in this space and routine for so long I don’t really know how to change it. This is what we do PERIOD. So the past few days I’ve been spending time observing what we do as a family, and where we could make some simple changes. And while I don’t think that the task of fitting household chores into our schedule is going to be easy, I feel a little like Dorothy realizing that she had the power to return home all along.

You see I’ve tried out various organization plans, and set up routines, and they were successful, but only for a while. After a few weeks or a couple of months I would slack off again and finally give up on it. The problem was that I was trying to fit myself into someone else’s routine, and not re-shaping the routine to fit my needs. At least I hope it’s the problem, or at least a part of the problem, ’cause I’m sick of the clutter and mess.

After some consideration, I see two possibilities for improving the daily happenings around here to make that tidy home thing happen. One is to get up earlier and complete some of those tasks before my daughter wakes up. I HATE waking up to an alarm…in fact, the outside world doesn’t much exist to me before 7 am…I know that makes me pretty wimpy, but it is the truth.  The other possibility is to add in some of the tasks to the portions of my day where I’m taking care of my daughter, which would either mean keeping her occupied with something else (Clifford the Big Red Dog comes to mind) or having her “help” (and the phrase “sweetie, please don’t put the socks in the dog water!” comes to mind. One possibility that I’m not considering is cleaning after she goes to bed, ’cause that is strictly reserved for me time…unless I didn’t finish some work during the day.

I was trying to get a little organizational inspiration out in bloggy land today, and here were my favorites. This post from Simple Mom, gives a fantastic tip on how to start your to-do list every day. I found a blog called Daily Routines, and although it hasn’t been updated in quite a while, the stories of famous people’s routines is inspiring. And this de-cluttering post on my aim is true is exactly what I need for the bomb that has gone off in my office. I haven’t decided exactly how to tackle my problem, but I feel like taking it bit by bit (now that I know a little more what those bits are) will be a great place to start.

I’d like to hear from everyone, but especially WAHM’s with little ones at home. How do you fit cleaning into your routine?