It’s hard to have a clean house if it isn’t (at least somewhat) organized. Being organized really comes down to habits; daily, weekly, seasonally. Here’s my basics:

Daily:

• sort mail as soon as it comes into the house: recycle all junk, envelopes immediately, sort keepers into To Do, To Call, To File.
• A place for everything, and everything in it’s place. Try to do a once over at the end of the day to get things back in place.

Weekly:

• organize time with a schedule, and To Do/To Buy lists.
• choose a drawer or closet to sort and organize once a week while watching a movie or talking on the phone
• sort out kids crafts/papers

Seasonally:

• sort adult and kids clothes, toys, shoes; donate, consign, or give items away to friends who will use them

Saturday morning, I plan to catch up on some home organization:

• clean up our school cabinet (which is the dining room hutch pictured above. A Mess.)
• file some paperwork
• pack up my maternity clothes
• look through the kids toys to check for broken and unused toys; the two oldest children will be away for the morning working on their AWANA cars, so it’s a good time to clean out without resistance.

Plan: don’t get distracted by details (don’t sit down to look through art work or photos, just file and move on), take donations that day/give aways within the week (keep in the garage so they down migrate back into circulation).