When do you do this?

Organization takes time and you have to carve out some time to do it. In the beginning, it takes more time, but as you get better at it, it takes smaller chunks of time. The easiest way to keep up with it is to schedule in an organizing time - I have a bunch of scheduled times to organize:

* Mondays. Monday is my laundry day and my project day - projects mean everything from cleaning out closets to putting together 72 hour kits. I look at my life and decide what needs attention most. By doing projects on Monday, I feel more free and ready for the rest of the week.

* Monday nights. After the laundry is folded and the kids are in bed, I do Quicken (a program we use to keep track of our finances). Monday night is also my big email night when I send out whatever needs to go out that week.

* Sunday night. Sunday night is planning night for my husband and me. I'll talk about this in its own post, because this is SO important!

* After dinner clean up. I can't keep my house clean all day. If I tried, I'd spend my whole day following my kids around making them clean up and I don't feel good about that. But I do want the house clean - everything works and feels better when it's clean. So every night after dinner, we all stick around (whoever is here) and get dishes done and the house cleaned up. I always know that there is a time it will get cleaned up, and that leaves me worry free about the mess the rest of the day.

* Red jobs. Red jobs just happen to be printed on red paper at our house and that's how they got their name. As part of their morning jobs, my kids pick one red job a day and do it. They are jobs that need to be done every once in a while, problem areas of the house or shelves or cupboards that collect and need to be cleaned off. Some examples are take 5 things downstairs that need to go downstairs, or throw away 2 things in your room.

* Organize for dates (if you can). We have many memorable dates going through things together. We feel especially glad when we're done because we had a good time together AND have something to show for it!