My problem areas

With all the thought that I've been giving to becoming a professional organiser and all the research that I've been doing into organising, its made me think some more about my trouble spots. Those things that just keep biting me on the bum (no I'm not talking about my husband). The things that I just keep failing to make work in my house. 

According to a lot of the things I've been reading and podcasts I've been listening to (btw I'm currently totally addicted to the podcast Take Control with Nicki Kinzer), the general consensus is that if you are continually running into problems with something then you need to improve the system or put a better system (or just a system!!!) in place to resolve it. 

I have identified my 3 main areas where I struggle time and time again:

1. Planning ahead
2. Bedroom/wardrobe issues
3. Laundry

1. Planning ahead

By planning ahead I'm talking about things like packing the kids bags back up with nappies, pants ahead of time. I did try to do it the night before but I just found that as soon as they are in bed I flop and find myself unable to do much else. And packing the bags, while I would LIKE it to be top of my list, by that time of the evening, it just ISN'T! 

So I've decided that rather than trying to do it the night before after the kids are in bed, I'm going to start doing it as soon as they walk in the door. I work (and they go to childcare) on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And unless we are going out for a long period on my days off or the weekends, their bags are left untouched until the morning of the next working day. While it is always a little bit hectic when they walk in the door - they are always demanding toast or biscuits or TV the minute they come in (and I'm keen to just give them whatever it is they want so I can have a nice cup of tea - I know, bad parent that I am) but I figure that its just one more thing to do and I'm already still on my feet at that point. Its AFTER I've sat down that the impetus to get up and do anything is really an issue. 

I am in the middle of drafting another post which is a review of the iPhone/iPad app HomeRoutines and I'm updating this as a kind of diary of how I get on with it (how I find it helps me - or doesn't - with managing these tasks). I will upload this blog post when I have more to put in it. I'm slowly building up routines for it but I don't want to overwhelm myself and then give up which is what I've done before. 

2. Bedroom/wardrobe issues

This morning, and in fact every morning that I'm getting dressed for work (I work in an office), I get extremely frustrated by my wardrobe. I hate it. I have several issues with it. I will list them now:

1. Its too small. I hate having to share with my husband. I wouldn't be so bad if we had one side each but because of the layout of it we have half of a rail on the right side of it and one rail each on the left side (which is divided vertically). He has the lower half for his shirts and I have the top half for my things (except his ties are at the left of my rail and a couple of his jackets are on the very right of my rail. It just drives me CRAZY!!!! I DON'T WANNA SHARE!!!!! (sobs hysterically and kicks feet like 2 year old child). 
2. The clothes are outdated and old and I don't even like a lot of them anymore. I've been doing Weight Watchers since December 2010 and lost nearly 3 stone but in the last year or so I've been yo-yo-ing a bit and have struggled to keep the momentum but I won't go buy any new clothes (apart from when I'm in desperate need - although its getting that way now) until I've got to my goal of 11 stone. I really want to have a good old chuck out but I'm holding back because a) I need to save some money to buy new things with and b) I want to wait until I reach the size that I want to be (a UK size 12). I'm currently a 12 on top (mostly) and a 14-16 on the bottom. But I would like to comfortably be a size 12 all round (even a 10-12 on top). 
3. Because of the layout of the wardrobe nothing is very well organised and, even after I've tried to organise it, it gets messy again very quickly which tells me that the system I've put in place when I've previously organised it is simply not working! 

My ideal solution would be to move house, to somewhere with either an entire wall of wardrobe space or even a walk-in wardrobe with plenty of shoe storage. Sadly, that ain't gonna happen for a few more years! But in the meantime I am just not sure what to do. I feel like until I can purge a lot of the unwanted items from my wardrobe, I'm not going to feel happy about it. I don't like the cupboard space where I keep my tops. I reorganised the top shelf a few months back and I LOVE the boxes that I used in that space, but what do I do about the bottom space. Its too deep a cupboard for what I use it for now which is - pajamas on one side and tops on the other. However, I don't like to stack all my tops in one place as I have different kinds: work ones, going out ones, t-shirts for days at home, vest tops.... I can really only put 3 piles side by side and there is so much unused space that it feels such a waste - in fact, as a whole it feels like I barely use 20% of my wardrobe right now. Ideally I'd like to hang most tops on hangers (I bought some beautiful fuscia hangers a couple of months back) but I'm not sure if I have enough space to hang up those items. 

Anyway, I think I could go on and on about what my IDEAL solution would be and how much better my wardrobe could be if... well, if it was a completely different wardrobe and different room in fact. But I don't have that option right now. And I'm not sure waiting until I've lost weight (in 2-3 months) is going to help. I need something NOW!!! I need a system that works for me. So I am going to do the following: as soon as I have a space of about 2 hours I'm going to lock myself in my room. With a pack of bin bags and plastic boxes and be utterly ruthless with my wardrobe. Then make a list of what I need - clothes and storage solutions. I'll write more about that when I get around to doing it. 

Laundry

Laundry. Where do I start? In my house Laundry is probably my biggest issue. I usually try to keep on top of it on my two days off at home but notoriously I only manage to do some on ONE of my days off which means I'm really only tackling it once a week which means that on one day a week I'm trying to get through 4 or so washes a day. I don't have a tumble dryer (much to my sadness) so really after about 2 washes we run out of dryer/radiator space and we can only really get this many washes hung up and dried in a day if its sunny outside. And even then that's assuming I'm there to keep checking if the clothes are dry and replacing the dry stuff with wet stuff. 


The other issue is that once I've done the monster (how it feels to me anyway) task of washing and hanging 4 or so loads of washing, I have no energy left to actually put stuff away so that gets left to another day when we have time and so we end up with either a massive pile of dry laundry, or a massive pile of wet laundry waiting to be hung up. Basically laundry is my biggest housework nightmare at the moment. 


The solution is probably to keep up to date with laundry. Do a load or so a day. As soon as there is dry laundry, fold it and put it away. I'm going to try to do this. 






I am going to post this blog post now. Apologies if its a bit rough around the edges. I start writing it about a week ago. I've been feeling a bit harrassed due to trying to juggle too many balls at the same time and I just want to post it or it will sit around for another week or more!