Cleaning Challenge Update Sixth Week--Home Office & Utility Room

Update on the 31 Days to Clean Challenge: Days 26-31

Day 26

The utility room was my favorite room to clean!  

The utility room needed the most improvement.  

I now like walking in there.
 

Before I worked in laundry room-right side

Before picture of laundry room-left side

The black shelving system was overbearing.  The cloth hampers were constantly slipping off.  Couldn't tell how much dirty clothes we had.   We used this system for too long for dirty clothes.  Now, we know what needs to be done because the baskets are transparent.

Round, white baskets and green hampers hold dirty clothes

Dirty clothes hampers kept slipping

Cloth hampers often overflowed

Basket labeled for dirty pastels

Baskets allow us to see if we have a big pile to wash

We can stack these baskets when not in use

Baskets labeled with sticky notes and scotch tape

Yes, walls need painting, but I am happy that hubby placed a door leading to utility room from the inside of the house.  Also, he moved my washer from the kitchen to the utility room.  Hubby worked hard to bring washer and dryer together.  That's why I don't sweat that the room is not painted yet.  We'll get to it, soon.

Tried this out for kid's clean clothes

White furniture piece hubby rescued functions better for kids' baskets-right side

Often had to use classroom next door to sort

Simple index card to label daughter's basket

After picture, big bag is important(see below)-left side

White shelf removed from laundry room

Before-cluttered shelf in laundry room

After-decluttered shelf with detergent relocated

Bags in laundry room cluttered

Bags squeezed into bigger bag to reduce clutter

I think laundry doesn't bother me as much now that the kids are older.  When the kids were younger, I had to do everything.  Now, the kids pitch in because I expect that of them.  I have set up the method of baskets for clean clothes.  Then, there are other baskets for the dirty clothes.

I do think that having too many clothes is difficult to handle.  I try to get the kids to wash one load a day during the week.  The weekends are off.  

Here is the breakdown of our laundry routine:

Gabriel (oldest)

--gathers dirty clothes

--fills the washer with dirty clothes

Iris (second)

--fills in the detergent

--starts the wash settings

Gabriel 

--moves clean clothes into dryer

Rafael

--sorts clothes from dryer

All four kids, including Kaelyn (6 year-old)

--fold and hang their own clothes

Mom

--fold and hang clothes for hubby and self

Over time, the system has evolved.  Gabriel has started to fold the towels.  I still fold the linen.

Had to clean computers and electronics.  Only Gabriel cleaned his computer.  I swiped at the dust on my laptop.  I keep my laptop closed at night to reduce dust.  Iris has a piece of cloth to clean her Net book.  Need to clean other two desktop computers.

Day 27

Had already worked in the utility room.  I have the baskets set up.  Hubby "dumpster dived" at a neighbor's bulk trash.  He found a white piece of furniture.  He dismantled it and down-sized it to fit in the utility room.  

I have no windows (wish I did) in the utility room so I am using this time to weed out emails that I don't even have time to read.  

As far as packing things off for goodwill, I can't do it just yet.  I have a full storage shed of stuff I decluttered from inside the house.  I need to tackle that next.  I need to figure out what I can sell to make a little bit of money to buy home school material and/or to have on hand for vacation funds.

Day 28

In the utility room, we have no sink so I won't worry about cleaning a non-existent sink.  Instead, I continued to get rid of emails that have clogged my email accounts.  

Yes, there are areas in our home that I feel guilty about.  I wish I had the energy and good health to help the kids socialize.  I also feel bad about not cooking.  If I had more energy to cook, then we could save more money.  Hopefully, I will keep losing weight and get healthier.

Day 29

There is no official closet in the utility room, but hubby has his uniforms there.  I need to ask him which uniforms are new and which are old.

Basically, I can't afford to hire anyone to help me clean, due to finances.  I will try to clean whatever I can.  I will enlist family to help whenever I can.  I am very grateful for all that I have.  It doesn't bother me that I can't hire someone.  My kids help me out a lot.  I am grateful for them.

Day 30

Ten things I'm grateful for are:


 1.  Family--siblings and in-laws and their children

 2.  Friends--near and far, old and new; Facebook, too

 3.  Kids--all four with their talents and contributions to the family

 4.  Hubby--16 years of patience

 5.  House--all it's conveniences

 6.  Cars--to get to work and vacations

 7.  Education/Wisdom--God has provided me

 8.  Life/Breath--appreciate life/death cycle

 9.  Modern appliances--cut cooking and cleaning time and efforts

10. Utilities--electricity, water, modes of communication

Expired detergents and extra bottles were thrown away.

Day 31

This is for tomorrow, Saturday.  I plan to rest and spend time with my family.

Well, thanks for reading this update. 

I appreciate the support through this cleaning challenge.

I hope this entry has inspired you to organize your home office and utility room.

How about you, my readers?  Have you deep cleaned your utility/laundry room?  Have you swept and mopped the floor in that room?  Have you worked in your home office, dusting electronics and computers?  Are you wanting to deep clean, but you don't know where to get started?  

The link above leads to an ebook which can be helpful in prioritizing and breaking down the cleaning.  I encourage you to click on the link if you need more help.

May God bless you all with His wisdom and peace.

This entry has been part of the Family Fun Fridays series.

Homeschool Organization 4: Blocks to Construct

Megabloks in use

Over the years, we have bought and sold a few collections.  The collections that I have organized and kept are those that are visited by everyone, including me.  I enjoy building things with my kids.  Sometimes, I go so far as to hog up all of one color of Legos.  Does that make me a bad mother?

Megabloks stacked to fit in a box.

I wanted to keep all of the Megabloks in one container.  We had to stack them together.  It was impossible to keep them in that Office Depot box any longer.  I had to make a decision.  I wanted the kids to have freedom to use the toys.

We acquired more Megabloks.

Our neighbors gave my youngest some more Megabloks.  I was very grateful.  I knew she would be so happy.  She started playing with them right away.  It didn't matter if she played on my bed.

We moved the Megabloks into this bigger, plastic container.

The Megabloks fit much better in this plastic container.  I shopped in my home again.  I had been using that plastic box to house my out of season curtains and sheets.  Since I moved the linens into another location, this box had been freed up.

Closeup reveals a few Megabloks in the container.

Not all of the Megabloks are in the container.  Some are currently in my son's room out in the open.  I think he constructed a mobile home and used up a lot of Megabloks.  This trusty plastic container is waiting patiently to house the pieces once he's done using them.  I like that my youngest ones dug right in and started playing with the Megabloks when I showed them the containerful (yes, that's a word) of Megabloks.

Legos are in blue container and some shoe boxes, too.

Legos are a family favorite, especially mine.  I can actually lose track of time if I start playing with Legos.  In the entertainment center, I have a large blue box that holds red, white, and blue pieces for building houses.  We also have a few of those see-through plastic shoe boxes that contain brown and green pieces.  In another shoebox are other pieces, probably purple and pink pieces.  (Can't check right now; it's the middle of the night and don't want to wake my teenage son.)

Here are some more Legos, by color.

As you can see, I also have some Legos joined together by type and color.  Yellow and orange go together and the black ones are for making cars.  We occasionally have some of our creations on display.  You can see the red, blue and white house.  There is also a pumpkin face on top of it.

We even have wooden blocks in a separate container.

In the entertainment center (pictured above), I have the Lincoln logs way at the top.  I also have some medium size blocks that are plastic.  I'm not sure if they are made by Megabloks.  They are in a see-through box, just like the size of the one for the wooden blocks.  My kids play with all of these different collections.

Well, I have shown here some ideas on how to organize different types of blocks within a homeschool.  Yes, the collections are in different sizes, colors, and shapes of containers.  Since I am on a limited budget, I have had to shop in my own home for the best containers. 

I haven't forgotten the other items that I want to show.  Stay tuned to see how I organize such things as DVDs, audio cassettes, and the Wii games.  When toys are organized, children will want to play with their toys, constructing and using their imagination.

Thanks for reading this blog entry.

How about you, my readers?  How do you organize your blocks?  Do you own Lincoln logs?  Do you own K'NEX toys?  I encourage you to evaluate if you have the right containers to hold your block and/or construction collections.  The collections might need to be moved into new, bigger, and/or sturdier containers.

I pray that God bless you all, my dear readers, with His wisdom and peace.

This has been an entry for Thorough Thursdays.