A few years ago, I had a wild dream of having my home stay clean and organized 99% of the time. This was and still is a very ridiculous goal considering I have three children between ages 6 and 10 and we live in a SMALL house (800 sq ft for five of us) … so I came up with a different solution and I HOPE this is helpful for you! It’s not for everyone but it has given me so much peace of mind when it comes to controlling clutter daily with three wild girls! 🙂

In the girls room under their desk is a large, rectangle basket. This basket is pretty deep and serves as a catch-all six days a week. This means that every single thing left on the floor, desk and dresser gets literally tossed in this basket without thinking twice. Book, pen, paper, coin, brush, hair tie… it literally does not matter what it is (but no food, LOL!) – it goes in. Then, every Sunday… we dump out the basket and put everything back or throw away the trash that made its way in there.

THAT’S IT. And their floor, dresser, desk and any surface stays CLEAN ALL WEEK! What a freaking miracle, LOL! This may seem VERY stressful and chaotic to some people… the idea of having this cluttered basket, but it’s simple and easy and gets us off the hook when it comes to cleaning/organizing daily which just isn’t realistic for us right now. And the great part? We know if we can’t find something.. 9 times out of 10, it’s in the basket! Just dump it out, find the thing, throw all things back in and deal with it on Sunday.

Even with how much we’ve downsized, how little we have in comparison to most people with five family members… our girls will STILL find a way to make a mess and leave it out and create an illusion of clutter but it’s really just the limited stuff they do have sprawled out all over the place, LOL!

If you think this could be helpful for your family… and it could take the stress out of maintaining things daily, don’t miss out of an opportunity to get yourself off the hook for daily maintenance when you could do it once weekly! But truly, you get to make up the rules. You could have a catch-all that you empty out daily, each morning or each night. Or just maybe every couple of days.

The point is, sometimes at the end of the day it’s too much to stop and work yourself into the ground cleaning things up and this is a wonderful way to give yourself a much needed break. Just be SURE to choose a reasonable amount of time to get to that basket by so you don’t let it get out of control! You got this!!! XOXO