I also love to organize, and love finding new ways to become better organized.

With 6 kids in a house full of stuff our homeschool things can get lost in the shuffle. If we don’t stay organized we can spend a lot of our time looking for misplaced textbooks, pencils, assignments, etc. We have had days where it seemed like we spent more time looking for materials than actually learning. Keeping organized is especially important when, like us, you might not have a specific homeschool room. We keep the majority of our materials in our formal dining room. We also do the bulk of our learning in that area. The kids do their school work in different areas of the house other than the dining room. They just find a place that is quiet and comfortable, it could be their bedrooms, living room, kitchen or even the back porch. If they leave their things in all the places they work, things can get lost in a hurry.

I thought I would share with you some of the ways we keep things in order and how I hold on to a little of my sanity. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to find something you are looking for!

First of all we try to have a “place for everything so everything can have it’s place”. We try to remind the children to put their thing in their place as soon as they are finished with it. Especially if we “catch them”! We also have scheduled ( 5-10 minute) quick clean up times through the day.

For each child’s textbooks we have “cubbies”. Which is basically our fancy word for shelf. Each child has their own shelf for things that are specifically theirs. I even have one for myself.

We have hundreds of books. To keep them easily accessible, I try to shelf them in order of topic. For instance, all the reference books go on a shelf, science takes up a couple, first readers take up one. It makes it much easier for the kids to find what they are looking for that way. To train them to re-shelf the books, I gave each child a fun, decorated paint stirrer with their name written on. When they took a book out to read they would put the stick in the mark where it went. When they were done they could replace the book easily.

To keep up with history materials: I have a shelf on the bookshelf that is just for the books we use for history. For the books that we are currently reading, I have a little stack of books on the end of the dining table. That way the kids don’t have to search all over the shelf for the assigned reading.

We also keep our bibles handy in the same spot. That way they are at arms reach all throughout the day.

We check out at least 50 books a week from our local library. With the amount of books we have, library books can get mixed in quite easily. And with the amount of books we borrow, the fines could add up if we are not diligent about keeping them separate. When we go to the library, each child has a backpack for the books they choose. This backpack hangs on the back of their chair. Once we get home, we have a special box that they put the library’s books in when they are done reading them. That way, the books are either in their backpack if they haven’t been read or if they want to read them again to renew or in the box to return.

I keep fun preschool things in the nearby living room. That way my preschooler can play and learn close by without distracting the big kids learning…too much.

I would love to hear some of your tips/tricks!

Now that the new year is beginning I am ready to take over get things back in order. But I needed a new and better way to keep up with things and I have found it! I have found a simple way to keep up with our finances and keep our budget.

I present to you the IPhone/ITouch app called iReconcile.

One problem that I had is that we have multiple bank accounts. Some are even in other states than the one we live in. Some of the deposits are direct while in other accounts they are not. We are self-employed and so that also tends to complicate things. Brian used one account and I preferred the other that I could rack up airline miles on, but for some things I used another. It was a hot mess. I haven’t even mentioned the business accounts that we carry.  iReconcile has a solution for that. It supports multiple accounts and even transfers between accounts. Whew!

I love the features of iReconcile.

• Multiple accounts (banking, credit, etc.)
• Split transactions
• Transfers between accounts
• Budgets
• Reports
• Memorized transactions with scheduling
• Search
• Export (CSV, QIF)
• Pin number security
• Custom currency by account

One other problem that we had is that Brian would always forget to give me his receipts so it made it nearly impossible to keep the checkbook balanced. I can’t tell you how many times this would throw our balances off. With iReconcile, you can share accounts with other users, and manage your records right at iReconcile.com. Any changes to your data are automatically synchronized with all your devices. So my forgetful hubby can just enter his transaction right into his phone and mine will instantly have the same information. Just like that. No more nagging. Well, almost none..

Another other issue was our actual budget. I used to use a method up different envelopes for each category of the budget except for the things that we had set to auto pay like mortgage, insurances, utility bills. Each month I would start with a new set of envelopes and I would keep all of my receipts in them.  On the outside of the envelope have a spending limit set and written down and then keep a tally of what was spent during the month next to that. When the limit was reached spending stopped.  But that made it hard to budget from one month to the next. What if I was trying to save for something special? It was hard to keep up. With iRconcile, you can designate how much you want to spend in certain categories and even rollover unused funds from one month to the next if you wish, but if you overspend one month it will deduct from the next. LOVE IT!

Because the app allows multiple devices to sync with the account our kids that also have IPhones can keep watch over their savings account balances and watch them grow.

At present the cost of the app is only $2.99 .

I know this will help us to keep our finances in order and manage and stick to our budget. We always have our phones handy and the information is at our finger tips. Since both Brian and I can work together on this, it makes it so much easier to manage. We can hold each other accountable. I am really looking forward to getting this New Year’s resolution of “doing a better job of keeping up with our finances” off my list next year.

I hope the coming new year brings you prosperity and success in all you do.

Chances are that if you are raising a large family you might be feeling like there is no way you can “get it all done”, especially if your children are still very young. In the days when we had four kids five and under the age of five we had not yet learned the importance of time management. Life was somewhat chaotic and felt very hectic and rushed. I somehow managed to keep my home somewhat in order, thanks mostly to my need for some kind of control. I didn’t feel like I had much control over many things in my life, but I could have control over how clean and tidy my home was. But I was always causing us to be late, for doctors and dentist appointments that I would later have to pay a fee for missing, parties that if we actually made it on time for that we would be without a gift, and thanks to my poor organization we were always late for church, missing homeschool field trips and activities, sports and music lessons….its exhausting just to think about.  There were so many times that I would accept invitations to events that I would later forget about and miss entirely or just be too worn out to attend because I was so tired and frustrated from trying to keep it all together. I realized that I was just chronically disorganized. I finally decided that I was going to have to pull myself together or I was going to lose my sanity. I was tired of losing money for missing appointments and having to apologize for being late or without a gift, or worst of all disappointing my kids and my husband and making excuses for myself. I was tired of being that mom. It was time to sink or swim.

I tried a lot of different organizational tools for trying to keep my family in smooth running order. Some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Here are a few of the things that help me to keep our family on track. Hang on to your seats, this just may change your life.

Tip # 1.  Use the calendar program on your phone to set appointments. Set it for weekly events like sports practices and music lessons. Set alarms to remind yourself about the event. I usually set two or three of them, actually. The first alarm is set if there is something that needs to be done to prepare in advance like getting a gift or wrapping or preparing a dish to take. I usually try to get that done at least one day in advance. I set a second alarm that will give me enough advance warning time before the event to get the entire family ready to get out the door. The third alarm tells me that we need to be heading out of the door. It is always a good idea to use a mapping program ahead of time if you are not sure of where or how long it will take to get to your destination.  The program I use also has a section for notes where I put an address of the destination and a phone number, that way I can program my car’s GPS without having to search for the address and have a number to call if I get lost.  *Just a note- I am a Mac user and use the ICal program that syncs perfectly with my IPhone. Apple even has this thing called mobile me. I can make changes to my calendar on my phone or my computer and they update each other instantly and automatically without having to hook up any cables to sync or anything. Its like magic. It IS magic.

Also, always refer to your calendar before you make any commitments, even if you don’t think you have anything going on that day. You may find you have forgotten something or just see that you have a lot of things on the schedule that week and need to have family time.

Tip # 2. It is a good idea to choose the times of day you will homeschool that works for your family. Some families work better in the morning and some like to have their days free and to work in the evening. We work better and tend to stay on track when we start in the mornings. I got to a point to where even though we were getting all of our school work done, I felt like we weren’t getting all the other things we needed to get done around the house. We needed to create a more detailed schedule but I didn’t really know where to start. The one tool that has helped me to create a realistic schedule is a book called Managers of their homes: A practical guide to daily scheduling for Christian home-school families. Right away after implementing my new MOTH schedule we felt like we were getting more done. We each have goals for the day. The kids love that they can look and see what they should be doing and what time they can expect to not have something expected of them. Even if we don’t stay perfectly on time with our schedule, we still follow the schedule.

Time management is such an important lesson for us as parents to learn and for us to teach our children. Managing our time wisely makes it easy to set and reach goals giving us a sense of accomplishment and pride in our ability to keep our word. We are able to make it on time to where we need to be when we need to be there with what we need to be prepared. And we have more time to play and relax.

I can’t tell you how much time I spend doing laundry. I have been drowning in a mountain of laundry for the last couple of years. I have tried every method I have heard about to help me stay on top of things but nothing really helped. I wash and dry at least 3 loads a day. After that they used to kind of just hang out on my bed.

As a matter-of-fact, this is what our bedroom looked like most of the time. Actually, this is nothing, this looks pretty good.  Usually there is a huge mountain of laundry piled up all along the wall. There are also usually smaller piles of  laundry all over my bed sorted in accordance with which family member they belong to. Yet, they never get put away. Bedtime comes and we usually have to set the clothes on the floor just so we can go to bed.

So why wouldn’t I just keep the laundry in the laundry room? Ahhhh, yes. Well you see, this is the laundry room.

Whatever moron that designed the laundry room in our home must have not been thinking about the amount of clothes that would need to be washed in a house with 6 bedrooms. Hello, person who designed my laundry room.  6 bedrooms = at least 7 people! 7 people = 1 ton of dirty clothes! I despise the person who designed this laundry room. Because of said moron, idiot, stupid dummy, this is what the rest of the house often looks like:

Yes. I blame him and not my little piggies children.

Yikes. I just put pictures of my child stricken home on the internet. How embarrassing…

Okay, you get the idea. Clothes everywhere. There are clean clothes mixed in with the dirty. I can’ t tell you how frustrating it is to rewash already clean cloths. Unless you already have five million kids of your own, then you know exactly what I am talking about.

So what do we do? Make a family closet! I don’t know what genius though of it, but I owe her big time. So what is this family closet? It is where you use some sort of room, it could be your laundry room, a room close to your laundry room, or like in our case a master closet to house every member of the family’s clothes in one place. I seriously can’t believe I haven’t thought of this before. It is so great. I totally wish I could take credit. But I can’t. I am thinking Michelle Duggar? Anyone? All of the clothes are in one place, you can easily keep them sorted. It is a snap to put them all away as soon as you finish a load so clothes aren’t hanging out in baskets for days. It is easier to keep up with pieces to outfits. You can keep a handle on putting away last seasons clothes and see if each person is in need of new items.

So here is what I started with. We have 2 master closets. Mine is the larger one so I decided to use it. Here is what it looked like before I began.

Not too pretty right? It’s really a wreck. The bulk of it is the linens. This house doesn’t have a linen closet so I was using those shelves on the left to keep them put up. Any time the kids needed a blanket they would just come in and pull a whole pile of them out into the floor…and leave them. Of course.

Anyway, after a few minutes of planning and a few hours of work, this is what I ended up with.

It really is beautiful isn’t it?

So here is how I organized it. Each child has their own bins for (starting on the floor and the next bin right above that working your way up) (and left to right oldest to youngest)  in bin 1) misc. stuff- swim suits, sports uniforms.., in bin 2) pajamas , bin #3) panties/underwear, bin 4) socks, and finally bin # 5) for the girls only- tights/leggings/legwarmers. My toddler is still in cloth diapers for nap and bed time so I added another bin for that above the tights.  This makes it super simple to put all their stuff away, you can just stand their and toss it in the correct bin. Or better yet, enlist a kid to do it! I used my handy little label machine and made labels to stick on the front of each bin. I also made a bin for socks without a mate. Every once in a while I will have one of the little kids find mates. Its a great preschool sorting activity. Its homeschool. It counts. You see that larger bin above? That’s the winter hats, gloves, scarves, etc. box. In the spring and summer it will be the raincoat, umbrellas, sun hats, etc. box. To the left of that bin is another with all the girls dance leotards, dance tights,  shoes and gymnastics get-up. No more searching the house 10 minutes before class.

See how nice and neat and organized it is?

As for the hanging clothes I just put them in order from oldest to youngest in sections. I used some of those little dividers like you see in the clothing stores to separate them. All the big girls clothes fit on the wall to the right of the bins. The little kids stuff all fits nicely where my pants once hung. I really didn’t need that many pairs of pants anyway. Mostly because, a lot of them don’t actually fit really, that well, anymore. 5 kids, ya’know.

But I was not going to sacrifice any of my shoes. Or their space. Kids, get your own shoe space.

Or my bags (on the very top shelf in the photo below) No way are they going anywhere. I have an unhealthy attachment to my shoes and bags. Really.

You can also see that I squeezed a little folding table (with a basket underneath to put extra hangers) in so I could bring all of the clothes in here and just get them hung, folded, sorted and put away. No more going from the laundry room to the bedroom , hanging clothes on the door casing or thrown in bins waiting to be put away- for days. This new method is a huge time saver. Seriously. Try it.

I did have to pare down the kids clothing quite a bit to make them all fit but that was really a good thing. I finally got to get rid of those outfits that I just really didn’t like and the ones with stains or holes, even some I just got sick of looking at after 4 girls wearing them.  I found that my 11 year old daughter really doesn’t have anything to wear. She wasn’t just saying that.

I am thinking the family closet will help me to keep track of what clothing the kids have and what they need. That will save me money because I wont buy multiples of something they have because they just can’t find it. I like saving money. And since space is sort of at a premium, I will probably think a little harder about what I am buying because it, like..takes up space. Whats the saying?.. one thing in, one thing out?

Since it is fall and finally starting to get cold, I also pulled out all of the summer clothing and sorted them according to size and put them in bins for storage.  In the picture above you can see the door to the right of the shoes? It opens up to this storage area.

This is where I keep all the bins of sorted and labeled kids clothing, shoes that have been outgrown and my stock of maternity clothing. I love this room. It is very handy. Because it is so easy to get to, when I come across something that needs to go into storage when I am sorting clothes, it is easier to just toss it in the correct storage bin instead of setting it on the dresser and letting it sit for 2 weeks. ( oh, you have done that too? )

So where did I put all those linens? I put them in the closet of the room for which they belong. I also found that I could get rid of a few sets. I only change sheets once a week so I don’t think it will be too much a hassle to keep them in the closets. Another plus, now the kids have a ton of room in their closets to keep their toys put away. This was especially helpful for my two girls that share a room. Their rooms are looking much neater already. Though, we are kind of reorganizing a bit and you know what that looks like * sigh. I am not a fan of toy boxes so using closets for toys works out great. The kids also have room in their dresser drawers to keep their special things. Here they can put the things they don’t want to share or just need to keep out of the reach of the littler kids.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I also have my ironing station in there. Don’t ask me why there is a night light in there. I am not sure why I thought this was a good place for one. I must have had a reason…other than wasting electricity…

You can check out another family closet over at  Raising Olives.