Organization and Systems.

From a very early age I was neurotically organized and neat. I was, and am, still socially strange. And so I would hang out by myself in my room and play the clean up game. I would hum to myself the clean up song. (Imagine a little gollum) "We start with my clothes, and then my art supplies, and then my toys, and finally make my bed!" . I enjoyed the control in it I think. What I couldn't control was when a friend would come over and break one of my crayons... this was the worst! ... and now my two year old does it, and it throws me right back to 1985. "It's ok.... deep breath. It will be ok. The crayon still works". I mumble to myself in my head.  "It's just mangled and ugly and no longer fits back in the box oh dear lord he's pealing the paper off!!!! NO!!!! How will I know what color it is?" Shut up. I have issues.
 To calm myself down, or to sleep well I must have order. I have a cattle press in my room and my husband squeezes me in it, and I feel much better... hahaha no. I'm just kidding, but I sure wish I had one sometimes.  I have found that my animal friends also need order and systems. Children, Men, Pets, you name it. It all runs better on a schedule, and a system.

I'm here to help you. Take my hand and I will lead you down the path of CLEAN AND BEAUTIFUL AND ORGANIZED... lets sing and skip. Come with me my friends! La La la...clean up- clean up- lets play the clean up game...

FOOD:
If you want a happy animal FEED THEM AT THE SAME TIME every day. Don't go changing it up on them. This is the primary reason why cat's pee on your bed. They are mad at you. I found this to be especially true with my chinchilla "Chinchy". Chinchillas defend themselves by hopping on their hind legs and pee in your eyes. They have amazing aim. You can be standing and it will still some how make it on your face.
Anyway, I had an angry little chinchy. She was horrible. She was miserable... I tried everything except a schedule. So then one day, I started to write down what I was doing wrong. As I started to log in hours, I realized that the only non constant was food supply and time. We do it with horses... I thought. Imagine if I missed feeding 25 horses at 7am... what would happen? They would kick the door down and act all crazy. So it started. Chinchy was fed first thing in the morning always before 9 am. She always got one scoop. After that, no more pee. She cuddled, she loved, we laughed even. It was beautiful.

So then I tried it on my husband. Same thing. He lost weight, he liked me, he came home expecting dinner and if there was none... he would turn into a total dick with a giant attitude problem -and... would he tell you he was hungry? no! I had to figure that one out. Lesson learned. Food equals happy. No food- no happy. This is especially true for me. If you dont feed me or let me eat, your in for a bad time.

SLEEP:
I keep my kids on a tight schedule. They wake up 7:45. Eat breakfast. Play. Eat lunch at 12:00. Nap time at 1:30 they sleep for two hours. Dinner at 5:45, bath at 7:30 Sleep at 8pm. This happens everyday. No arguments. However, when my husband is home on weekends he likes to go out. He especially likes to go out during one of these scheduled times... and what we end up with are screaming horrible boys. You want good kids? Keep them to a schedule.

MESS:
Nothing horrifies me more than clutter. It makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out. I can't do it... I can't stand to sit in a room with things... everywhere. Before going to bed, I clean up all the toys, the clothes, and they all have a place to sleep for the night. If something doesn't have a home, than either it gets tossed, or it finds a place. And no... throwing it in a closet or on the floor to be dealt with later is a terrible system. Don't do it. Just do it now.
Also, don't let the mess build up. If you have a free second, (and we all do... if you watch TV) then you have free time... so instead of watching TV, take 15 minutes to sort through the homeless clutter. This is so important to my sanity, I even sleep better when there is no mess. It's zen. Have you ever noticed that you sleep better in a bed that has fresh clean sheets on it? It creates calm. I even go as far as taking all of my husbands black work socks, match them and lay them all out so that when he wakes up at 6:15 he can just grab and go, it saves him a good 5 to 10 minutes... which means that he can drive slowly listening to his audio books in the morning. I also fold and put away all of his clothes, and iron his shirts. He is a pretty neat and tidy guy but when it comes to his closet and clothes, he is a pig. He has no system, he just hangs his pants up over the pants he wore yesterday and then it falls to the ground, and then it's wrinkled, and then he has to take it to get dry cleaned, when it really could have all been avoided. He can't break this bad habit though... no matter how hard I try. So I do it for him... in front of him, so he gets all flustered and starts yelling for me to get out of his part of the closet. If I do it not in front of him... he doesn't notice. If you want praise do the work in front of the person your working for. Nuff said.

SYSTEM:
Last but not least... systems. I have a system for getting the kids out the door in under 5 minutes. I have a diaper bag packed with diapers ready to go. I just pick that sucker up and out the door we go. It has one change of clothes, and diapers to last a week. I have zip lock bags filled with "munchies" that get tossed into my huge purse. This is all I need. My husband and I also have an unspoken system with the kids. He has Watts (the two year old) and I handle James (The 6 month old). He gets Watts in and out of the car, and I do the same with James. Anything that goes wrong with Watts... thats his problem, same goes for James. We are team mates that run a well oiled rig. Without having this system in place it would be chaos.
I was just going around doing my 15 minute clean up when I came across some bills that were not filed.  (Crack goes the whip) I have a system for that too, so that this tax season will be super easy. I have an accordion folder with manilla folders inside. I label one in red, Pending Bills, and than the others are, auto, medical, utilities, loans, manuals, and other. The Pending Bills is the most important. It holds all the bills that have not been paid yet.( I learned this from my old boss. She was a freak too. It's her birthday today. Happy Birthday Buttercup! I love you.)  I then have a white board in the kitchen. I open the mail, I see a gas bill. I go to the white board, put when the gas bill is due and the amount, and then place it in the Pending Bills folder. I pay it a week in advanced and then I write on the bill the date it was paid and then it gets filed in the Utilities folder. It took my husband a while to get this system down because his job is to get the mail, open the mail, and look for bills, he is to write the amount on the board and put it in the pending bills folder. If I find a floating bill on the dining room table he gets in trouble for breaking my code of conduct. Which is another thing. Men like discipline, and so do my kids. Crack goes my whip. So basically, I do all this to save me time and energy. Many times I have needed a telephone bill from 2009.. I have it. Or. The hubster will ask for something ridiculous, that he needs to fill out something stupid. I have it. This was especially useful when we were filling out forms for the new house. He needed all sorts of proof and paperwork, and copies of this that and the other, and I was able to find it in seconds. Although, there was this one time that I couldn't find my W-4's. It was a huge problem. I was freaking out. It should have been filed under "tax and government" Was it there? No. Who was the last person to use it? The hubster. Did he put it back? nope. Not in the right folder anyway. He is no longer allowed to touch any of the other folders... just the pending bills folder. Cause it's red, and he can't mess it up.

My love affair with organization. Keep in mind this used to be a binder and everything would get hole punched... this system is way more efficient. My husband thought of it. He's good for something sometimes. 

Anyway, I hope some of these things help you out with your day.
I have included some of my helpful tips.

everything has a place to live. 

BOOM. Done. Pick those bags up and toss them in. Quick and easy. I actually have  another bag set that stays with the diaper bag. It's aways loaded and ready to go. Another great thing about the ziplock system is I can see how many diapers I have. When I'm running low I can tell immediately.

Ziplock bags are great for quick grab things. I label my bags so I can quickly grab a diaper without thinking what size or for who... and they are quickly portable. So portable, that Watts knows which bag to grab now for a diaper change. 

Cattle Press. It squeezes the cow to feel like a hug and helps calm them down so you can milk. 

After reading this blog the hubster commented through email that :"There were no bills floating around. And the cows don’t  think the press feels like a hug".

Well it looks like the cow is getting a hug but I don't know what cows think. My hubby does though.