Getting Organized...

Now that I'm pretty confident that the majority of our 'to-do before babies' list will be complete before the boys arrive (hooray!) I'm now starting to worry about how everything is going to get done once the boys arrive.

For the last couple of years that I haven't been working full time we've (I've) fallen into a routine of just getting the housework done as it needed to be done. Since we don't have a ton of visitors at our home, some things slip through the cracks and it would turn into somewhat of a mad dash to clean every room in the house the week before we had company coming. I have a feeling that spending a week cleaning/organizing/catching up is a thing of the past and will no longer work for us. Gone are the days of leaving the kitchen a mess at night so we can spend some time together in the evenings and cleaning it up the following morning after my husband leaves for work, or allowing laundry to pile up until we start running out of things to wear (which takes a VERY long time!). So, I've decided to start getting into a new routine NOW, so it will be second nature once the boys arrive. 

I know that both now, and in the early days of parenting twins there isn't a whole lot of energy to get long lists of things done on a daily basis. For this reason, I've chosen three to five things to get done everyday and one of them is as simple as figuring out dinner for the following day and either making sure we have what we need on hand, or defrosting a meal/meat. Generally, I've given myself one room to clean/pickup, a load of laundry to do and some other random housekeeping things that would take far less time if they were kept up each week. 

I started working from the list this week, and so far it has made my life about one million time easier. Not only do I feel like I have a plan each day, but it also feels like I have an attainable goal for each day which seems doable even when I have two little guys to take care of. Sometimes less really is MORE! I typed up the list, printed it out, slipped it into a plastic sleeve and attached it to the side of our refrigerator along with a dry erase marker. I used to make these lists on my phone, but I then realized that it would be really helpful to have a visual for both my husband and anyone else who comes to help once the babies arrive. Now, things can be kept up with even if I am not able to do them. I am well aware that there will be days when even a simple short list will be too much, but as it stands, if a couple of days get missed every week, it isn't going to be the end of the word.... as long as we aren't missing the same days every week consistently :)

We were given a lot of great tips for once the babies arrive at our multiples class and I'll share some of them with you guys in the next few days. I know when the instructor was saying them, I was thinking... 'geeeze, sounds like OVER planning to me', but now that the birth is getting closer and closer I'm feeling like the more planned/organized we can be the more smoothly things will likely run!