The Poor Mom Revolution

The one thing I have not quite figured out is organization. It is the one thing I found that can either make or break my day. Being organized has been known to lessen stress levels whereas being an unorganized hot mess has been scientifically proven to drive me insane and cause my anxiety to go through the roof. I have tried all the bins, schedules, online hacks, decluttering and it seems that even though we do not have a lot of things, whatever you do have easily pile up and annoy me.

If I’m being honest, I am an organized person to an extent. If you’re talking about keeping a schedule and calendar organized knowing when every and all activity for our household is… I’m your girl! You need a trip planned, I’ll make you the itinerary. We’re going to a sports event or an all-day affair, I’ll have an entire bag packed with snacks, emergency kits, extra clothes and a phone charger. I have checklists galore to keep myself motivated and on task with whatever I have for the weeks to come. I do go in spurts, but I’ve always got a plan in my head for meal prepping and for dinners, especially when we don’t have a lot of time.

It comes down to my house. When we moved into this house we had nothing except clothes and bare necessities. We made it a point to get rid of all the extra stuff. We have the furniture we need and got rid of all the other stuff that didn’t matter. Of course over time and that we’ve been here for 4 years, things have gotten a little out of hand. Just about every paper the kids have brought home from school makes its way onto the kitchen counter or top of our fridge. Part of that is my fault since I should throw things away immediately, but some of them are calendars, teacher notes, or reading schedules that the kids do need at least temporarily. Some of the things can’t be thrown away and instead of filing them into some neat little accordion folder, they sit there bothering me. The issue with either of those is that not only is it an eyesore, but things move around and sometimes when the fridge opens, the papers will fall.

The most frustrating part is that I absolutely love this house. I want to walk in and be happy and proud of it, but I also don’t even know where to begin. This house is half the size of our last one and I knew that when downsizing a lot of it would become easier, but that some things would be more challenging. The most challenging part of it is that we basically have one common room besides the bedrooms. The house is built like a glorified apartment and we eat, hang out, do our homework, and play in our combo kitchen/dining/ living area. Since many of you have kids, you probably know what it’s like when you’re in the middle of a Lego, puzzle or slime experience, but that incredible piece of art is also our kitchen table. Even if it’s contained, the chaos of all the crap lying around instantly gets my blood boiling.

I’ve been looking online a lot and there’s always a list of weekly decluttering and cleaning up, but I don’t feel like that’s practical with our schedule. Inevitably I know I would start something like that, Miss a day or two, get frustrated and give up. What I did find is 52 decluttering activities for the year of 2025. So it gives you a weekly task which could be anywhere from decluttering the hall closet, organizing a pantry to purging clothes in a specific bedroom. The week seems a lot more rational and easier to handle as I can pick and choose doing a little bit each day or doing it all on one day like almost likely do. It’ll give me little checkpoints so I feel like I’m making progress and it’s not something that has to be done in one day as it’ll take me all year to do it.

Now I’m preaching to the choir here. I do have a quote on our basement TV stand that reads, “ Excuse the mess, we’re busy making memories.” I fully understand that I’m in the raising kids era of my life. Similarly to how I felt when the kids would dump four bins of Legos on the floor in the family room when they were 3 and 4 years old. I understood that it was part of life and I took deep breaths, but realizing as they get older, the mess changes from toys to everything you can imagine. I know this time in my life is temporary, and one day I will miss it. I know the issue is more in my head and my unrealistic expectations than everything else. I want to be proud of what we have and want to come home being able to sense the calm and clean environment and just breathe. I want my home to be my place of Zen. I continuously follow a whole bunch of social media moms that are big on decluttering and living a minimalist life. They’ve gotten rid of all of the extras and it takes them less than 20 minutes to clean up at the end of the day. Now I rarely have any physical or emotional attachment to things. I’m easily able to throw away or donate things that we don’t need without hesitation. We purge clothes a few times a year for things that we don’t really wear or grow out of. I’ve been following the concept of keep it if it brings me joy or toss it if it doesn’t. That’s where the difference lies… My family finds joy in everything!

I started this journey a while ago. The biggest thing that drove me nuts was doing the dishes and having so many things piled up on the counter because there was a lack of consistency. As part of our weekly expectations of living in the house, the kids are both in charge of loading and unloading the dishwasher at least once a week, although once a day would be my preference. In order to help ease the burden, we got rid of all of our plates, bowls and cups to have one per person. My way of thinking, was that if the plate that had your name on it was dirty, you needed to clean it in order to use it. What wound up happening is that instead of cleaning their dish they would replace their cup with a bunch of mugs or utilize someone else’s plate and then there were arguments about who was to clean up who’s. It didn’t quite solve the problem but it did minimize the dishes a little bit. A year or two ago we had redone our kitchen cabinets and reorganized our set up a little bit. Since that day, we haven’t truly figured out a system yet. And by system I mean we don’t have shelves or organizers in any of our bottom cabinets. This is my goal for winter break because everything needs to come out and be rearranged so it all has a designated spot.

I just have these unrealistic expectations of what the house should look like. And I call it unrealistic because my therapist told me so. We had broken down my day at one point from waking up in the morning until my head hit the pillow. At the time I was waking up around 5am to head to a kickboxing class, coming home to get the kids ready for school, heading to work myself and coming home around 6pm for dinner. Then, proceeded to get them ready for bed and by the time I settled down for the day it was around 8:30pm and I was exhausted. There was no time for a declutter or thorough clean on weekdays which caused pile-ups and an entire day of cleaning on the weekends. To this day we still spend one entire day cleaning and organizing which wastes precious time as a family. I remember my therapist trying to put everything into perspective and telling me the kids will never remember that there are dirty dishes next to the sink, or that there are three laundry bins filled with folded clothes and never put away. They’ll simply remember the time you spent together, the energy that filled the house, the laughter and love.

I know all of that is true. I don’t remember as a kid ever thinking about the cleanliness of my house or anyone else’s that I went to visit. It’s this ongoing mental battle that my self-worth is determined by everything I can accomplish in one day. When that checklist isn’t completed, it doesn’t matter what I got done in the 12 hours I wasn’t home, I can only focus on what I didn’t do.