Daily Organization

I am finding that I constantly have to re-organize things as our lives change and the farm changes or grows. I used to use a home binder and highly recommend it for those just starting out. I have several older posts about it and how I adapted its use to farm life. However, as the farm duties grew and my children's activities grew I have had to change how I do things around here. It got to the point that I spent more time organizing the binder than doing the chores. Now I use a large desk calendar that hangs on the door to the laundry room. It gives me plenty of space to write activities, outings and chores for the day. On the top of the calendar I write out chores for the kids that happen daily like making the bed, sweeping the kitchen and dining room, emptying the dishwasher, etc. My oldest is now doing her own laundry and so she has a laundry day in which the laundry room and clothesline are all hers. I have chores that are done daily and other chores are written on the day that they are done. For instance, I vacuum on Mondays and Thursdays. I clean the bathrooms on Mondays and Fridays. I mop the kitchen floor on Tuesdays and Fridays and the dining room on Tuesdays. I have done the same thing with the farm chores that don't need to be done daily, but do need to be done regularly. I find that this is working out much better as the farm grows. Organization is something that I have always struggled with and something that I am reworking on a regular basis. Right now, we just have too much stuff and so my goal this year is to really downsize all of our clutter. Part of this problem came when my mother in law died. She was a hoarder. My brother in law still has tons of her stuff, truckloads(literally) were donated and given away. Lots was thrown away and then many things came here to live with us or be sold on ebay. Many things didn't sell and are just sitting in boxes. We are going to have a large yard sale and then many things will go to a consignment shop. I have also already taken several carloads to be donated to the Faith Rescue Mission. I am also tired of cleaning family heirlooms, so I am going to be boxing those up for storage in the studio. The girls can then have these boxes when they start their own homes. I simply have gotten to where I cannot stand all of this stuff any longer. To me the heirlooms while precious are a burden. I think this is simply because we have so many from so many different people....my grandmothers, my father, his parents, his grandparents, both of our great-grandparents, etc. etc. I don't want to get rid of these things, but I am so tired of cleaning them all the time. And to put it frankly, I don't have the time to clean them all the time. Or I could do like my great-grandmother did with her heirlooms. She rotated them with the seasons. Every three months or so she would box up what was in the house, put them into the storage shed and take into the house boxes of different heirlooms. Each box was marked with the season that she would change it out in. I probably will do something like that, but instead of every 3 months or so...may every 6 months have a few boxes to be changed out. I also am on the warpath with our books. We have so many we could open our own library and the bookshelves are threatening to take over our house. We have our favorite authors and a large collection of classics. But we also have books that we have never read and probably will never read as they really are not things that we read. So those will be taken to the book traders and we will get a credit for books that we will use for school or will read. Maybe I can even get rid of a couple of bookshelves in the house. I love books, but they do take up lots of space and I think 10 very large bookshelves in the house and 3 in the studio is a bit much. Not to mention it is impossible to keep all those books dust free. Well, I guess that is enough of a rant about my spring cleaning and organizational woes. It is 7 am, time to wake the troops and get to work! Hope your day is a productive one! Blessings, Kat