Lazy Geniusing Laundry

First of all, if you don't listen to The Lazy Genius podcast, and have any responsibility for household tasks, small children, or using a stove, go subscribe now. It's one of my favourites and I regularly feel proud of my own "lazy genius"-esque household hacks. I will never be a culinary artist, professional cleaner, or heavenly hostess by any standard. What The Lazy Genius, Kendra Adachi, teaches us is that we can do better without stressing all the time. She is also a great weekly inspiration on Instagram for things like meal planning, finding routines in the various seasons of life, and generally feeling okay about yourself. 

Now, to my own laundry hack that makes me feel like I've mastered one aspect of life. 4 laundry baskets. You heard it here first, all you need are a lot of laundry baskets. 

As a bridal shower gift, we received one of those wheelie laundry sorters that you can use as a hamper. I have never wanted to be a throw all the laundry on the laundry room floor person (although if that's you, no judgement as long as you're happy!), so I appreciated having the laundry sorted right in our own bedroom closet. However, by the time those baskets were full, it was extremely heavy and the bags would eventually start to rip. Smaller loads could have been considered, yes, but it just didn't fit with our life. Also, if we carried the laundry down in the special bag, and then life got in the way of putting things away right away, we'd be left with no place to put our cold colours. 

With the demise of our second wheelie sorter...enter 4 laundry baskets. We bought 4 matching baskets at Ikea, but any baskets will do. We have them on the floor of our closet in a line, and it is the perfect system for us. We typically have 3 loads of laundry that we separate and the 4th bin is there to keep the system going even while we have a basket downstairs with laundry spinning. The baskets are Cold Colours, Cold Whites, & Warm Whites. I don't know if we need to do this much sorting, but it makes for about the right sized loads each week and works for us. Do you sort your laundry? I recently learned that my mom doesn't really sort laundry and at some point I may graduate to that level of lazy genius as well. 

Below is the laundry basket that we selected (click for link to Ikea website for this beauty of a $9 laundry basket). Apparently we break a lot of laundry equipment, because our two previous laundry baskets both had broken handles. We chose this laundry basket because it is 1 piece, so the handle is less likely to separate from the basket portion. Also, it's a happy colour and doesn't have holes so nothing's falling out. I'm really questioning my load sizes right now based on the fact that our wheelie sorters and laundry baskets have broken multiple times. Add that to my laundry method, huge loads so you hardly ever have to do laundry. 

One question that I have for those of you at a different stage of life than we are, is how can we keep this going with kids? I can see how this is a perfect system for us because we keep all of our laundry in one room. What I'm imagining is that they'll have a hamper and every time I throw in one of our loads I would grab their hamper and sort it into our baskets. Would that work?

When it comes to laundry, I keep things very simple. I throw in the load of laundry with a Tide pod and a scoop of OxiClean and walk away. Our cold colours & cold whites go in the dryer on delicate, I hang zero items. Warm whites go on a regular dryer cycle as we don't worry about shrinking. Warm whites used to be hot whites but I recently read an article that warm is good enough and saves energy so I made the change. Laundry is one of my favourite chores because there is a machine that does it for you. I also don't iron. I sound a bit like a slob. I do have a steam drier if an item is in desperate need, but for the most part we get by with the occasional wrinkle. 

I'm not even precious when it comes to folding. The ever elusive fitted sheet? I roughly fold or roll it in my arms and shove it in the matching pillow case with the flat sheet and other pillow case. It is only right now that I'm realizing how lazy I am about laundry. Maybe someday I'll be a bit more particular, but I actually do like my system. I'm not the greatest at cleaning, but this is easy for me to maintain and we always have clean underwear. Share your best laundry tips with me. What can I do to be even lazier? One thing I'm definitely going to introduce asap is a container for the OxiClean so that this picture could have been more palatable. Happy Tuesday! Go do a load of laundry!

Day 4: Be Prepared/Take Inventory/Does Everyone Else Have Hand-me-Down Cleaning Supplies?

So you've survived a week of Reclaim 2013 (technically it's only been 3 days...and I haven't really survived...but who's counting). Great job! Last week was hard for me, some of those tasks were a bit intense (ugh cleaning out the fridge), but I think this week will be a bit better because not every area covered is a problem area. I think I might have heavily weighted the front of the month with items that I knew were plaguing me with my procrastination.

As you might have noticed...Day 3 didn't happen. I had big plans to conquer my kitchen cupboards on Saturday but with Philip working in the bathroom with a friend and creating a lot of messy dust and debris all through the house, it didn't make sense to take clean dishes out into the mess. Sunday we were out all day for Super Bowl fun and came home to a bit of a catastrophe related to the bathroom renovation...so this weekend was just not having it. Instead of trying to power through that today and then move on, I'm going to go ahead and save Day 3: Kitchen Cupboards for the Catch Up Day later in the month and just move right along to Day 4: Cleaning Supplies today. 

As you start organizing areas of your home, you'll want some cleaning supplies handy. Use today to go through your cleaning inventory to make sure you have the goods you need to get 'er done.

If you need the extra motivation..."Be Prepared" from the Lion King is definitely intimidating enough to warrant grabbing your cleaning supplies and doing a quick run through.

I haven't bought a lot of my own cleaning supplies actually, because when we moved into our condo Philip's Oma's supplies were mostly still there...and there was a plethora of them. I keep a basket under my sink, as well as one in the broom closet - and try to segregate items into categories as best I can - the main reason for this is that my two baskets don't fit together in the broom closet or under the kitchen sink...so two locations it is! That might change as we renovate things up, but for now it works. I'll admit I don't use half of this stuff though, so today's the day to get rid of whatever is never going to get used, or at least keep it somewhere else so it isn't getting in my way (I don't want to waste good products!).


There wasn't really anything to get rid of here, but I did move some of my extra cleaning supplies to the laundry room. 

Here are my two cleaning baskets!

I use mostly a multipurpose cleaner for a lot of things like cleaning toilets, floors, anything really. I have some bathroom sprays that were hand-me-downs that I use on occasion, Windex for my table, mirrors, windows, that's mostly it! Here's a great resource if you aren't sure which cleaning supplies you should have though:

http://housekeeping.about.com/od/productreviews/a/cleaningsupply.htm

Tomorrow we'll be tackling entryways. Remember to comment and tell me about your organization progress or instagram your photos! 

Day 2: What I Dreaded Most/Winner for Most Procrastinated

I hope everyone's working on their junk drawers today! The weekend tasks are fridge/freezer and kitchen cupboards so in order to stay a day ahead for you guys, I'm on to Saturday's task of Fridge/Freezer. Maybe a month or two ago...and this is embarrassing...some ribs dripped in my fridge. No big thing, left one spot. Planned to wipe it up. Never did. Who knows what kind of spills are happening in there. So it's time to tackle it!

Since this weekend is fridge/freezer as well as kitchen cupboards (what was I thinking when I made that calendar?) I had to start out by catching up on some dish washing. Good to start with a clean slate! So I washed all of the dishes, cleared out all the clutter and wiped counters so that I had somewhere clean to put all of the clean dishes that were going to be coming out of my cupboards. Then it was time to get to work on that fridge.

1. Empty Fridge
I just emptied mine one shelf at a time, wiped it, and replaced the items. My fridge wasn't too cluttered as we don't buy that much stuff and we're pretty in control of what groceries are in there. If your fridge is crazier than ours though, do what you have to do. Just make sure to get rid of anything nasty hiding at the back! One thing I implemented last time I cleaned out the fridge (although I've slacked on it lately) is writing down the leftovers on thee fridge so that when I'm making Philip's lunch I know what's in there that I should use up before it goes bad.

I started on the bottom shelf, where I currently have 4 lbs of carrots and 2 lbs of parsnips...all from Christmas. I don't lie. My mom told me they can last a long time though, and they still look good, I will make it my mission to try and use them in the next week so they don't go to waste. Philip hates when I throw things out. Some things are certainly going to be thrown out in the making of this clean fridge though.

2. Wipe all shelves
3. Clear out expired/old food
The only things I really had to throw out were a 3 month old thing of guacamole (I don't even like guacomole so I'm not sure why we had this...) and some chicken leftovers from too long ago to deem okay to eat. Philip  hates throwing things out and I know he would have loved to still eat it, but sometimes for his health I have to throw things away when he's not home.

4. Put everything back in
5. Empty Freezer
6. Wipe out
7. Get rid of food we won't eat - donate, share with someone
8. Put everything back in
9. Lather, Rinse, Repeat with Deep Freeze

Mine only took a small chunk of time because we don't stock up on tons of groceries that we don't need, but in just this small amount of time my fridge  and freezer went from...

This blurry photo of our fridge adds to the terror effect of what was inside. 

To...

And that's that! Now on to the kitchen cupboards. I'm going to start tackling them now so we'll see if I get the post up today or else I might break rules and post on the weekend. Just wait and see! Hope you're having fun exploring your junk drawer, instagram or post your pics on Facebook!

January Motivation

With 2013 in full swing, and my resolutions staying pretty strong so far, I thought I'd share a few of the January home decor/organizing/cleaning resolutions that I've seen on the interweb that you might be interested in participating in. Philip will be back for his regular Friday post at some point in the future, he's just really busy writing for the church's drama these days so we're giving him a little break. Plus he'll be sharing his resolutions on Tuesday so that's something to look forward to.

1. Apartment Therapy: The January Cure

Apartment Therapy has provided a calendar for January with tasks to do each day that are related to reinvesting in your home (buying flowers and hanging artwork), purging (using an outbox to help collect things throughout the month that you're ready to part with), and cleaning in general (this past weekend they tried to force me to mop and vacuum my floors - but I didn't have a mop handle after painting my ceiling and breaking two of them - so I fooled them!).  I've tried to follow along with it, although a few of the things weren't as applicable to me or I wasn't interested in doing them, so I've sort of tailored it to fit my own lifestyle/needs. For example, instead of buying flowers this past weekend since I didn't want to spend the money, and I am a plant killer, I rearranged my mantle post-Christmas with beautiful  new things that I was gifted and that make me happy. 

2. iHeart Organizing: Home Office Challenge

Jen at iHeart Organizing is planning a monthly challenge throughout 2013, each month focusing on a different area of the home. January is the Home Office, and it's a great place to start especially as tax time approaches and we want to get our paperwork in order. We finished renovating our office, but now there is stuff everywhere. Hopefully this challenge can motivate me to organize all our paperwork this month. I started the other day with a warranties/instructions binder to house all of the paperwork that comes with the furniture/electronics/appliances that we're buying for this new house. Once it's done I'll be sure to share it! 

3. Real Simple: Organizing Challenge

This challenge is a lot more open to your own ideas, basically you just send in a photo on instagram of the space you organized. This month is the kitchen, and they give a few suggestions as to what you can organize. Not sure if I'll participate in this one (maybe!), but I am a bit of a Real Simple fan and a subscriber, so I thought I'd share it. 

4. Home Storage Solutions 101: 52 Weeks to an Organized Home

I did subscribe to this one, but am unfamiliar with the site. We'll see how it goes, but I can always use weekly motivational reminders of projects I should be doing around my house. Especially as a new homeowner, I can let things slide just from even not knowing how often something should be done. The first week was making goals (did that), and the second week involves some kitchen cleaning that I will try and do tomorrow! 

Is anyone else participating in some internet challenges to help them stay motivated? Any interest in us running something like this? I'm considering a series in March or April on Spring Cleaning/Purging - I'm not a cleaner, but I am an organizer/purger so hopefully that could help me to get better at cleaning, and maybe I can motivate some other people to do something I'm passionate about - which is get rid of all the extra stuff in your house that someone else could make better use of. Let me know what you think of that in the comments, or even send me an email at cassondra.wiebe@gmail.com with ideas for the blog. 

Housekeeping at its Finest

This weekend was a very exciting weekend for our family as we welcomed a new sister into the Wiebe clan at my brother-in-law's wedding. It was a wonderful day, but came with the unfortunate side effect of a pile of dishes slowly piling up as we ate and ran continually through a very busy weekend. 

Housecleaning is the death of me, and so I've started the process of creating a home organization binder to keep things under control. I'm a list person, and so I'm hoping these lists will be just the motivation I need to get everything done on a regular basis.

I started by finding a binder in a pretty color to make it a little more aesthetically pleasing. Next up is a cover page, there's a placeholder currently made of a scrap piece of paper and some highlighter...this will be replaced at some point when our printer is properly set up and I don't have to go to my parents to print things. 

In the front pocket, I can keep extra papers that I'm working on. Currently I have a grocery list and a list of ideas for the December version of this binder now that I've learned a few tricks after a month of use. 

The first few pages are calendars of the month used for meal planning, event planning, and blog planning. 

After that I have a page for each week of the month. At the top of the page I have seven columns, one for each weekday, with the list of things I want to do everyday:

Wash Dishes

Make Bed

Put Away Clothes

Wipe Counters

Organize Incoming Mail

Tidy Up Any Clutter

Blog Post

Below that, I have a list of the things that I want to accomplish each week. This allows me to be flexible with which days I do things, but I know that by Friday I want all of the items checked off. 

Change sheets/towels, wash/fold/put away all laundry, clean toilets, windex mirrors, wipe down sinks/counter, clean shower, vacuum house, mop kitchen floors, dust, enter expense receipts in the budget, empty trash and recycling, clean out fridge, windex kitchen table, meal plan for the week.

I also write a few extra items that are specific to that week. I usually work on that Sunday night, or add things as I think of them ahead of time.

The last section of the binder are monthly maintenance items such as vacuuming out floor vents, cleaning out garbage cans, going through the freezer, and flushing drains.

Hopefully this plan will help me to get more organized and motivated on the cleaning front. I strive to be as domesticated as Martha Stewart but I am far far far from it. This whole housekeeping thing really takes a lot of learning on my front, it's not something I come by naturally and before I moved out I hadn't even done laundry. I'm getting there though!

What's your least favourite cleaning task? Most favourite? Any ways of making it more fun/engaging? Anything I should be adding to my list to maintain my home properly?