Money Saving Mom®

Guest post from Kelli of Eat Pray {Read} Love

I am not an organizer by nature, or at least I wasn’t until recently. I’m quite sure I drove my mom crazy with an ever-chaotic bedroom growing up. And my car usually looks like someone lives in it.

But, since having my 4th child a little over a year ago, I have been on the quest to get my home in order.

It hasn’t been easy (it has caused me to reevaluate my overly-sentimental tendencies) but, it has saved my sanity in more ways than one!

After reading Crystal’s new book, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, I have been even more motivated to get more areas of my life in order so that I don’t feel like I’m constantly hanging on by a thread!

Here are a few areas I’ve organized that have been a tremendous asset to living freely:

1. Homeschooling

Until this school year, I did most of our schooling in the breakfast area of our home. And while that worked okay, I got tired of having to move the books for lunch, immaculately clean the table after lunch, then haul everything back out. If we were in the middle of working on something, it made it much harder to get everything back in order after lunch.

So at the end of the summer, I spent a solid week in our new “school room,” which was formerly our playroom. I re-painted it, then got all of our books organized. I got all of our supplies in order so I didn’t have to spend 20 minutes looking for a pencil before starting school.

This school year has been much smoother. Although it took a while for the room to transition from “playroom” to “schoolroom” in my kids’ minds, it has helped so much to have a defined area for schooling.

When we’re in there, it’s school time, as opposed to being in the kitchen, where food is always on the mind!

2. Toys

I wrote an entire post dedicated to our toy organization (you can read it here), but the basic premises are: purge, purge, purge!

Then, when you’re down to what your kids actually play with, find unique ways to organize them that work for your family.

This is the key in all areas of organization — if it doesn’t work for your family, it won’t help you! We use a dresser in our living room to “hide” our toys when they aren’t being used. It’s one of my favorite organizational tools in our home!

3. Paperwork

This is one area of our home that I feel will always be a struggle for me, but I have found some ideas that have helped tame the paperwork beast a bit.

I use organizers on top of my desk to separate medical bills from kids’ shot records, etc. and that has helped tremendously. I also toss junk mail in our garage trash can before it ever even enters the house. Paying bills as soon as they arrive is also helpful — and you’ll never pay late fees again!

Although perfect organization  is an illusion — especially in a home with six people — taking proactive steps to get a few areas of my life under control has been such a blessing for our family!

Kelli is woman who is never bored! Between loving on 4 kids and her husband, serving her church as the pastor’s wife, developing (and tasting!) new recipes, and looking for the next great book to read, she’s always on the go! You can follow her family’s adventures at Eat Pray {Read} Love.