I seem to have caught up with life...

(we'll see how long that lasts)

Seriously, though, I feel sane again.  My house is livable again.

It's nice.

As things go, I continue to learn things.  Things I should know but apparently take a while to actually thoroughly learn.  For example, it took this past year and a half of not having a dishwasher for me to understand how important (and how doable) it is to do the dishes every night instead of letting them pile up.

And I'm finally starting to learn that ignoring the laundry isn't any more effective than not washing the dishes.

I know, revolutionary.

I have no problem with picking up laundry, with washing, or with drying.  It's the folding and putting away that I put off.  But turns out you have to do it eventually.

Not to wander into yet another only loosely related digression, but I think the whole laundry process is inefficient.  First we get our clothes out of our dresser in one part of the house (in our case upstairs), we wear them, we take them off upstairs, haul them downstairs to be washed, and then fold them and haul them back upstairs to be put away.  Does anyone else see that as horribly inefficient?  I think all of this- dressing, washing, and storage, should happen in one common room.

Anyway.  I felt that, you know, since I have all my stuff in line for the moment, I should share some of my organizational strategies.  So here you go.  Keep in mind that things seem a little spread out, but all of these little organizational pods are in my kitchen as we don't have an entryway, so I have to squeeze them in where I can.

My meal plan and schedule wall, as well as the kids' art board- they are responsible for switching out their work.

The magazine box holds my chicken records, my control journal, and the folders I use to organize the kids' school info (this is right by the door).  Let's call this Launch Pad part 1.

(the other side of the front door...)  It's not pretty, but this is ours:)  Coat and bag hooks- most of the coats don't live here, as we have more hooks for them in the laundry room.  This would be launch pad part 2.

The side of the fridge, where I keep some office supplies, my grocery list, my to do list, and a list of lunch ideas for Izzy to take to school.  And, of course, pictures of the cutest kids on the planet:)

Bills and other important papers go in a box in the laundry room, which does double duty as a non-entrance entryway where we store coats, shoes, and bags as well.

I don't have it all figured out- I am constantly changing and revising my organizational methods to suit our lifestyle and our changing needs.  I've done a lot of things in the past that either didn't work outright or that worked for a while and were then cast aside.  For example, I've blogged twice about our chore charts... I'm still working on that one.  The last method worked great for like two weeks, but when school started was cast aside again.  I'm working on something more like a rhythm chart, as a full on chore chart isn't really age appropriate and I know that my kids need something more independent.  I'm just sharing my progress so far so you all can benefit:)