Simple Ways to Organize Your Home and Family

Finding trusted faith-building entertainment for your kids is easy with the Adventures in Odyssey Club. It's an online community with almost every episode ever. And a Focus on the Family Clubhouse magazine subscription. aioclub.org slash radio. I'm really good at ballet and I like to dance and I like to cook and I like to organize.

I wonder if you caught that last part of that. There's an eight-year-old saying she likes to organize and that is not something you hear every day. Well today on Focus on the Family, we're going to talk to that little girl's mom to get some tips for getting kids motivated to get involved in your home organization.

And your host is Focus President and author Jim Bailey, I'm John Fuller. Hey, keeping a house tidy and organized is perhaps one of the great challenges of all of us today, especially when you have young kids. I mean that that becomes a real challenge. It's almost like trying to brush your teeth while eating Oreos, you know, it just doesn't work. Today we want to offer parents some help for establishing a chore system. Doesn't that sound good? It does. It's very sophisticated and that's how to get kids involved in house cleaning and tackling common issues like laundry and storage and maybe even the kitchen.

Maybe we'll tackle that one along the way. Well we have Christy Clover with us today. She's a home organization expert and a mom of five kids ranging from preschool to young adult and of course one of those children we heard earlier, she's eight. Christy is also an author and her book is called Mom, M-O-M, Master Organizer of Mayhem, Simple Solutions to Organize Chaos and Bring More Joy into Your Home and I will encourage you to get a copy of that.

We've got a link in the episode notes. Christy, first time here at Focus. Welcome. Thank you so much. It is just a joy to be here.

Well it's good to have you here. So that little girl, I mean how much money? Come on, just fess up. I know, right? What'd you pay her?

I just slipped. Here's a hundred, kid. No, I mean that's not her economy. Her economy is cookies.

Oh yeah, cookie economy. I like that. She's my kind of little girl. That's right. That's fun. You've raised a daughter who loves to organize.

I don't think that was always the case though. How'd you do it? How did you really without money and cookies? I know, you know, honestly I think it's a lot of prayer but she is hysterical because she does know that she is truly one of the messiest ones in the house. She's the one that like if she's walking and she's done with something, she'll just set it down. She does not care what, I mean we'll find things everywhere and one day we were in our homeschool room and I was working with one of my sons and she came running and she goes, Mommy, come and look at my room.

I was like, oh, okay. And so I went in and she's like, I organized it. And I was waiting to like see things like stuffed under the bed, stuffed under a chair, stuffed in drawers. And she really did, you know, look and see what had happened. You know, like she had looked at the room and put things where they're supposed to be. And so I asked him like, what in the world did you do? What made the difference to you? And she told me, well, I did what you said.

I looked at the room and I thought about what I wanted it to look like. And so it's something about that like clicked with her that morning. And she has just been this little person who loves organizing. And so this was at eight, right? This was at eight. Yeah. So we had that same epiphany with our oldest, but he was like 18.

So something you did a little differently. In fact, we have a clip. I want to go ahead and play it right here of your daughter.

Let's listen. I took everything out and then I thought in my mind what it was going to look like. So then like, let's say dolls. If you have dolls, you want to put, stack them up together neatly, but Legos, you don't want to just stuff in there. Oh, ones that are made.

Ones that are made you want to set neatly into the box. I loved the part about her kind of envisioning what it was going to look like. Yeah. That's all the good stuff. Right. But the reality is it always wasn't that way.

Not just with your daughter, but with you. Yeah. I mean, you had a point in your, in your life where you thought it was all falling apart and it was kind of the, the D day of home organizing. So what happened?

Oh my goodness. Well, my story from that standpoint, you know, you kind of like try to keep on top of things and kids come into your life. And so we, kind of had, when people say everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong, that was where we were at. My husband, we'd gotten transferred to San Diego, which I know, poor me, but we got transferred down there.

Best weather in the world. And my husband was covering two territories at the time. And so he was traveling like crazy.

So he was just gone. So we had stress in our marriage. We both between the two of us had three surgeries that were completely unexpected. The house we were moving into was just not getting finished.

It was like a new build, but I'm already feeling this. Oh, it was crazy. Just crazy. And we were just not getting the work done. And so this one morning I apparently was so stressed out that my body had a little reaction. And so I'm trying to nurse my son and just nothing's happening. And so I called the contractor and I was like, all right, I've tried to be a really nice Christian and being a Christian.

And I was like, really nice Christian and be encouraging and patient and kind. And if you do not get people over here within, you know, like the next hour, I'm going to lose it. I am just going to lose it.

And I go, do you hear that? That's my son crying. I am so stressed out.

My milk will not let down. Okay, lady, we're on our way. I hung up and I like drove out the door and I'm sobbing.

And the hardest part was when I came home because I was so embarrassed and I came home. He's like, I'm so sorry. We've got our team here.

What else can we do? And he's like, and how's your milk? Wow. I really did say that. I bet he's never had a call quite like that one. I am sure he has it. I am sure.

It's a great tip for other moms. Wow. Okay. One of the things that you mentioned in the book is this homemaking ADD. Yes. So my wife, Jean, totally connected with that.

Define it though. Oh my goodness. Well, that is when you just are constantly distracted. So my in-laws took my kids for a weekend and I was like, sweet, we're going to tackle the house. So I started a project downstairs.

Everybody's dream job. Oh, I was like, no kids undo what I'm doing. So I went downstairs and I started a project. And of course I needed something for the project upstairs.

I go upstairs and I realized, oh, look, I could get this done. So I suddenly had like multiple projects all over the house happening at once. So that's really what homemaking ADD is as well as just the normal mom thing, which you've got kids who are interrupting, moving things, picking things up and just life interrupts you. So it's really hard in homemaking to stay focused, but that's what I'm really trying to help people to figure out ways to do that and to kind of stay focused, pick one thing and tackle that one project. You've developed a strategy called the master list.

Now, you know, sometimes I'm kind of going, oh, no, there's more more to do's here. But what is the master list and how is it effective? So the master list is what I encourage you to do, because when we walk around our house, I always have people say, I've got too many projects, too many things to get done. So what I encourage them to do is take this master list. You basically put a room, you know, at that you label the room and you walk through the room and you're literally looking for either things that do need to get done or things that are driving you absolutely crazy. And there's something magical that happens when you write down things that need to get done on a list that actually takes the stress away because you realize you have to keep thinking about.

Right. I now know that this is something I need to get done. And it's on this list that I'm going to tackle one project at a time.

Give me an example. Let's go through something that you did. Yeah.

So one big thing for me is always the garage. I don't care. I love you. You're my kind of person.

Oh, yeah. I will clean that thing. And it's beautiful. And then all of a sudden it's not. And, you know, and that's it's definitely a collecting area. And so that's when I just for that one, you need a bigger chunk of time. That's not a small weekend thing.

It is. So, OK, let's say you have the kitchen on the list and you have your bedroom and, you know, the bathrooms. So just walk us through that. How do you say, OK, this is going to be first and why is it first?

Well, what I do is I kind of I encourage people to kind of categorize it. So you look at each room and you might circle the things that drive you craziest in each room and then you want to go through and I have an ABC system. Oh, I see. So first of all, you got bathroom and then you've got drawers. Oh, clean out the drawer. Well, you could go that far.

And really, I'm just trying to tackle like what's wrong. So when our bathroom I noticed my problem areas, my bathroom sink often. So what I realized is that I needed a system for this. And so I basically went through and that's when I did reorganize the drawers because it wasn't working. And so I needed a way to easily put things in the drawers in a nice, neat place.

And so that's that's what I did for that particular problem. But as far as with the master list and picking, I mean, we all kind of know what's bugging us the most. Closets. Closets are a big one.

There can be drawers. You're hitting on all the things. That's because we live it. Right. We are normal disorganized people.

I know. And we all struggle. And so I like to encourage people just give themselves grace. So pick that one thing. And so when with the ABC is, you know, what absolutely do you need to get done?

Because there are some times when, you know, something might be driving you crazy, but it can wait. Well, this is, you know, this is really serious marriage advice. So, okay, so I'm the owner of the garage. That's my thing. And, you know, I'll clean it up.

I'll spend 8, 10 hours getting it back to where I like it. And over the course of a month, it goes right back to the disarray that I cleaned up. But Jean was very good because I would come home, walk through the garage and go, what has happened to my garage? And so the first thing I would say coming through the garage door into the house would be, have you looked at the garage? And she schooled me to say, you know, when you're coming home, why don't you say hi? Not the introduction of how bad the garage looks. And, you know, but seriously, you know, she was taking it very personally because I was probably jabbing her very personally, like, you're not respecting my space.

Yeah. And so, I mean, seriously, how do we manage that conversation in our marriage when you're not respecting my space that I've spent a lot of time cleaning up? Yeah, well, as I mentioned, my husband's been traveling.

He's traveled for 20, 21 years of our marriage. And when he would come home, I put all the stress on myself to like, make the house perfect. And there is, I mean, I don't, I haven't looked at all the research, but there is this element of, as a wife and a mom, like the state of my house really does tie into how I'm feeling I'm doing. Your self-esteem.

Oh, absolutely. And so when I am like, feel, and this is how it feels, sometimes I feel attacked, like, oh, you know, we need to get on top of this. And it's like, oh, I'm sorry, I haven't been doing a good enough job. And then I start feeling like a failure. And my husband's always so sweet because he's like, I didn't say that.

But that's how I interpret it. So what I learned one time is my husband had been gone and I just, you know, it had been one of those weeks. I had two little boys running around the house and it was just, dishes were out, things were crazy. And he came home and I literally greeted him in tears. I'm like, I'm sorry, I failed.

And this house is a mess. And I just, I felt so guilty. And he's like, what are you talking about? And that's when he said something I had never even expected.

And he goes, really counters and just knowing we have a game plan for dinner. That's all that matters to me. And I realized in that moment that we needed to be communicating better. So if garages are your thing, then maybe that's something that either you or she or both of you together, you know, have some ground rules there. So I just accepted it as the thorn in my side.

That's it. You did pick a really tough room because that's a room where you're moving things from the house. You don't really need it needs to go in. But the bottom line, I really do want to make sure people are listening couples is back off. I mean, don't don't use it as a weapon against your spouse.

You need their direction, right? I'm sure a lot of wives feel that way. You know, the husband might feel good about his clean garage.

But when he comes in and starts critiquing the dirty kitchen, yeah, just be wise about it, communicate about it. I want to spend a little bit time on the parenting side of this. You say that if a child is old enough to walk, they're old enough to have chores. Wow. Really?

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, give me the chore list for a two year old. And I should say chore training at that. Okay. So when they're two, their first job is helping to put away the silver in the silverware drawer.

And so like when they come out of the dishwasher, and I'm literally holding a leg so they're not falling. Wait one second. I need a disclaimer.

Yeah, I should not be touched by children. No, no, no, no. Okay, go ahead. Absolutely. So I clear all the sharp objects.

Okay. I just want to make sure we're getting them forks and spoons and the table knives. And so they're learning and that's kind of a matching thing too. So they're matching.

So see homeschool. Have they ever put their mouth on it before they put it into the drawer? Yeah. And it goes right back.

Just a quick question. Oh, yeah. Or they'll like, you know, do something or they drop it.

Well, that's good. Now you speak to that chore system. Again, some organization around that.

What does that look like the chore system? So it can be all different things because everybody's different. So you've got sometimes where everyone in the house is, you know, hot mess. And then you've got times when everybody's a neat freak and you've got a combination of everything in between.

And that goes for the kids too. So just like that, you've got to find a system that works for you. So I go through several different systems that have worked for us in the past. Our favorite and what we use is kind of this big tour board. In fact, I laugh because I have this really pretty chalkboard that when I normally for the beginning of a school year, we go through, we reassign things. But during COVID season, I got a big old whiteboard and because we didn't have a house cleaner, so it changed every day we could. And I thought it was going to be temporary and then kept happening. It just kept happening.

It has not made it to the chalkboard yet. But you go through and you just assign different tasks. And so sometimes like with my youngest, who's seven, she'll be a buddy because she's learning a chore. OK, so you call her buddy. Oh, yeah.

Well, I don't call her that to her face. Yes, OK. My older son knows that she's his buddy. But, you know, so she'll do the bathroom counter in the sink and then he'll kind of make sure it's done. That's great for the older child, too. It is because it tells management skills, management skills. But also when you teach something, you learn it better.

And so you really become a master of that thing when you're teaching it to someone else. And I do think because like Ashlyn is the one that we listen to the audio of, she's the oldest daughter. So even though she's number four in the lineup, she is older than her sister. So she's become that example. And so she's really taken ownership of a lot of things. In fact, when we had the Choreboard, she's like, oh, I'll do this and that. And she was like all over everything. And it lasted for, you know, like the first week or so. And then she was like, this is a lot. And I told you was it was a lot. Let us help you.

But that's a good experience, too. In addition, you have three tips that kids need to stay organized. OK, moms are getting pen and paper right now, right now.

Or maybe we can just post these at the website. You have to write it down in case you're driving. But what are those three tips? Well, number one is decluttering. And what's actually I mean, there are times when I declutter without kids around and I use a black trash bag so they're not going, but that's my trinket from, you know, whatever. That's my Lego in the carpet. I stepped on those things.

Oh, my goodness, they're dangerous. But so to declutter in one of what I think is good when you're helping kids to learn to declutter is that you want them to realize, am I really playing with it? So does it have value? But also is, you know, does it is it totally broken and not worth saving?

Should I just toss it? Or can I bless someone else with this? And so that's been what's really neat is that we've been blessed with hand-me-downs through the years. And so getting to have them start thinking like this is a toy I don't play with, I should give this to someone else. And then we also have that's good. So you have your child think that way. Absolutely. And so whether I'm dropping it off at a donation center, or sometimes they'll save things for garage sale that doesn't always happen to be honest.

And so you know, maybe they'll think about selling things, especially if it's an item that may be worth something more than they're going to be, you know, thinking about selling that that is great. You know, one of the things Jean did so well, and I just give her so many kudos for this, the boys started doing laundry pretty young, like 10, 11. And they've kept it up. You know, Jean just said, Hey, if you want clean clothes, clean them yourself. And she really stuck to it. And it's probably one of those great stories, because they are good at doing laundry, and they do their own laundry.

And they have been for years, you did something similar. How did you get them to do it? To do the laundry? Well, with laundry, I always encourage them. So I'm big on doing a load of laundry, like my own laundry, their own laundry once a week, because you want your loads to be small. And so the smaller the load, the easier it is to actually get it out and fold it and put it away. It's when you are trying to these massive loads or lots of loads in one day that it gets overwhelming.

So with the kids, I just I train them to do it all on cold. And I don't buy a lot of white clothes. And so I kind of there's a wise person.

I know. And the white clothes they have, they know to not wash it with everything else, they'll put it to the side, like they'll put it usually in our laundry basket because we do separate our clothes. You know, we just start young. And so I have them helping me.

So when they're really little, they're the helpers that are moving it from the washer over to the dryer and then helping me bring it out and go through all the different things. So so what age do you say there? You've got it. It's yours. You do it.

It's really child dependent, but usually around five. Wow. We're late to the game.

I was happy. Hey, look at all the bleach I'm putting in, mom. Oh, yeah. Five is supervised. And they usually need some help with the folding elements, like parts of it. But that's one of my other tips for kids. So number one would be decluttering. But number two is having the right tools.

And so with the right tools, they'll, you know, they have more fun with it. So the tool for laundry that we use, we found this thing. It's called the flip fold. Flip fold. Flip fold.

Is that online or where did you get it? So you can find it on Amazon, whatever. And it's what stores use to put their shirts, right? It's so fun. I mean, they literally get excited. The day I brought it home, they're like, what else can we fold? They were taking everything off the hangers to fold them. It was hysterical, but it's still fun. It's a novelty.

I mean, you're acting like I act about Haagen Dazs. How could you be so excited about folding clothes? You need to get yourself a flip fold. I should have brought one with me. It's so fun because it's like flip, flip, flip. It's perfect.

And so they get excited because you can do it and it's perfect. I had a college roommate that could have used one of those. His idea of doing laundry was after it comes out of the washer, it goes into the basket and it just air dries in a wrinkled mess. It was bad.

That would be really bad. Is this a friend of yours? It was a friend in college. I know that. Could have used one of those fold things. When it comes to kitchen organization, let's get back there. You say using labels has been a lifesaver for you. Now don't tell me you're labeling the soup area.

Not always. So I do canned goods. Okay. So you just put what you seriously to use that punch label thing to say canned goods? Not a punch label.

It's a little digital, fancy one now. I stick them on. Okay. So the caveat here. Are you OCD by chance? A little. Now it's coming together a little bit.

This is actually an intervention. Okay. So you're labeling now the shelves. Is that right?

Yes. But I need to do a big caveat here. So we're a family of seven. We have five kids.

We had another family come and live with us, but ended up being six months. They had five kids. And so we had 10 kids. Oh, it was, we joked. It was like family camp every single day.

I mean, it was so fun. But when I would go to the refrigerator, there'd be three applesauces and like two or three peanut butters. And so that was when I don't always recommend it. But when people aren't figuring out where things are, you're wasting food. So from even a budget standpoint, it makes sense to label things. So my kids know that if it's not on the shelf, yes, please do a quick little glance to see if somebody put it somewhere else. But that was the day I started doing our refrigerator. So I started labeling things in the refrigerator and even just mild labeling in the pantry, because I really needed people to know where things were, because we were going through food. And I mean, when you're paying for that much food, you really need to take it, you know, take a step back. Yeah.

Well, it's the same with what happens. I'm the oldest of four. My mom early on, and I think you did this too, or do this. My mom had us kind of choose a glass for the day. Yep. And there was a place that I put my glass for the day and nobody else had that same place. You've got something similar?

Absolutely. Well, when we have this other family with us, that's disgusting. What if you put milk in it? Well, then you got to get a new one.

Oh my goodness, you guys. It's a water glass. Ease up on your glass consumption. But if you've got 10 kids, they're going to go through like 50 glasses in a day. And then it's like, was mine a little to the left or the right?

I mean, then you have glasses everywhere. So we had a spot on the counter and I just got Mason jars and I got these really cute, colorful, it's called washi tape. It's just this colorful tape. And everybody decorated their own thing, put their name on it. And then suddenly we knew whose water glass was whose.

It was super simple and it kept it just organized. But speak to Jim's concern here, because there is a balance, right, Christy? Oh, absolutely. Because if you grew up in a militant home about, hey, that's the wrong place, you're going to have kids who are kind of nervous. Oh yeah.

And you know, if you are having many things, I mean, again, it just depends on the dynamic of your family. So you don't have to do that, Jim. Okay. You can use your own glasses.

You can do it in the garage. I mean, you have two glasses a day. That's right. One for milk, one for water.

I know. But think about it though, if you have a glass of milk and you set your glass down and you have a glass of water and you set that glass down and you decide, I want some juice, I want some soda, then you have four glasses and you're one person. So then multiply that by all the people in the house. You end up with a ton of glass. You just, okay, so next time we have some. And then you load it into the dishwasher. No, it's 10 times a day.

It's a really good, I'm kind of teasing you. We mentioned this, but I do at the end here, I do want to come back and address this once again for those that may have joined us a little later in the conversation. There was a study that found that almost 90% of women feel like the cleanliness of their home reflects their success as a wife or mom.

And I know Jean has felt that way. That's why if I burst through the door and make a comment about the garage, it's not the best way to start my reconnection in the late afternoon when I get home. But speak to that woman and then those husbands that may not be understanding what they're doing to disconnect from their spouses. How does a wife and a mom learn not to take that personally?

Yeah, you have to disconnect. I mean, there's definitely, you have to realize that my worth is in Christ. I mean, my worth is not in how clean my house is, but you also, I think it's an area that we don't think to discuss with our spouse. We just kind of, everybody's doing their thing and okay, can you help with that? And you just kind of get stressed and busy. So it's a good time to actually slow down, pray together and even just pray. Like I always encourage you to pray for a vision for your room.

Well, why not pray for a vision for your home and do that with your spouse and then divide and conquer and figure that out. But you have to give yourself grace. And I really want to encourage husbands and wives to give each other grace too, because it's just, it's too much and it's a lot to manage. And I love the fact you're using that word guilt, because I mean, spiritually speaking, that's the whole ball game.

I mean, guilt of our behavior, guilt of our thoughts, guilt of, and Jesus has come to set us free from that guilt. And maybe even in this area that is a bit winsome. I mean, these are funny things. We've had a great time talking about it, but not to be too serious about this stuff.

This is not eternal. In fact, you experienced, I think, a fire down in the San Diego area, which put all of this into perspective. What happened? Yeah, when we were, we had two little boys and I was pregnant with our third and the fire was coming right up our back canyon. And so we were told to evacuate.

It was like 2am, we got the call, you must evacuate. And we'd kind of known, so I'd taken some time to kind of think through what should we grab. But you grab what's most important to you. And for us, that was, you know, our children, you know, Steve and I grabbed ourselves.

But I mean, that's when you're grabbing your important documents and photos. That was one of the big things that made the list and our dog and dog food. I was proud of myself remembering dog food.

And we left and I will never forget that moment because we got to the hotel and we're checking in. I mean, everything, you're watching the news and it was like they're going to have three days of strong wind. This is the direction it's going. And our house was like in the middle of all of it. And so that's what's really wild about when you are truly decluttering your home or just trying to organize your home as you're trying to free yourself from a lot of the stuff that you just don't need. And you can think about that both from a spiritual standpoint, and you know, your house standpoint. Yeah. And that's the beauty of it.

I mean, these are metaphors. This one, you know, is living out how your home looks and how you feel about it very much would be rooted in your temperament, your personality, all those things. But Christy, you've done a fantastic job with Mom, Master Organizer of Mayhem.

I think Jean really loved that title, by the way. Thank you. What a great read and what a great tool to help people get better organized when it comes to their home. So thank you for that. Thanks for being with us. And listen, we want to get this tool into your hand. Make a gift to focus for any amount and we will send it as our way of saying thank you.

Yeah. Donate on a monthly basis or make a one-time gift and we'll be happy to send a copy of this great book by Christy Clover, Mom, Master Organizer of Mayhem, as our thank you gift for joining the support team. Our number is 800, the letter A and the word family, or stop by the episode notes and we'll have an opportunity for you to donate there and get the book. Now, Christy, just at the end here, I'm going to make a commitment. I will not complain about the garage to Jean anymore. Just that's the impact of what you have done here on this broadcast. So thank you. Oh, absolutely. And you're welcome, Jean. Thank you for being with us. Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

This was fun. Well, it really has been great. And I know a lot of women in particular have benefited from what you've shared today and be sure to join us next time on this broadcast. As we hear from Patsy Claremont, it's going to be encouragement for you in difficult times. Never underestimate the ability of our savior to see you. He cares for you and about you and he has not forgotten you. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. The seasons of your life are always moving forward. Singlehood, marriage, parenting, aging well, and through it all, Focus on the Family is with you 24 7. Download the Focus on the Family app today from the App Store or Google Play.