House of Order: Stay-at-home Cleaning Packet {Review & Giveaway}

This Stay-at-Home housecleaning plan from House of Order is great!  It has 156 cards of jobs that regularly need done around the house.  It has the jobs broken down into daily, weekly, monthly, semi-annual and annual jobs. 

If you are someone who needs a list to check off to get things done or just have a hard time remembering what to do when then this packet is great for you!  House of Order has many great products to help you get (and keep) your life in order. 

I love Marie Ricks website and check it out often for all the great ideas she has!  She has a quick tip of the day that is SO helpful.  Today it was - to use hair spray to get permanent marker off hands, hard surfaces and even clothes!  I thought that once it was on clothes or anything else- there was nothing to do!  Yeah for Marie Ricks and her helpful tips! :) 

NOW... you have a chance to win this packet!!!  Just enter below!

How to Enter:

Mandatory Entry:

Leave a comment and your email telling me what your least favorite room to clean is - or what room seems like it gets messiet the most?

 Additional Entries: (must do mantatory entry first!)

•  Follow Savvy Moms Save
•  Follow SMS on Facebook AND Update your Facebook status with a link to this giveaway
•  Follow SMS on Twitter-  plus 1 entry/day for Daily tweets
• One additional entry for each of our other giveaways you enter.
• Subscribe to our SMS newsletter
• Grab our button (2 bonus entries, leave a link)
• Rate me on Alexa.com  (3 bonus entries)
• Blog about this giveaway (3 bonus entries)

Giveaway ends 5/31at Midnight (Pacific Time). Winner will be chosen via random.org and will have 48 hours to claim their prize. Winner will be posted on this post- if an email is given, they will be contacted.. Open to US contestants only. 

Disclosure: This review is based on my own honest unbiased opinion of   House of Order .  You may or may not agree with my opinion. I was sent product free of charge to review. No one from House of Order was involved in the writing of this post.

Express House Cleaning Packet {Review & Giveaway}

I am sure many of you have the goal to have a cleaner house (at least I hope I am NOT the only one out there who has a messy house!).... if so... you will love this Express House Cleaning Packet!!!

Packet Discription:

32 printed, pre-cut cardstock cards with heavy-duty lamination, held together with two rings (4.25" x 5. 5" medium-weight laminated cardstock cards in pastel colors).

This 32-card Express Housecleaning Plan lists the various rooms and responsibilities which need your housekeeping focus.

Used in simple rotation, the ringed packet helps the home manager focus on one room/job at a time to complete simple routines to keep the house in order, the laundry done, and paperwork handled and filed.
It is best used when there is not time nor capacity to think about detailed housecleaning.
It will help keep the housework happening until you are able to graduate to the Stay-At-Home Housecleaning Plan or the Working Person's Housecleaning Plan.
Follow the included instructions , and you will be on your way to regular housekeeping routines!

SMS Thoughts:

I LOVE this!  Because - really- who has a lot of time to clean?  Normally the weekend hits and we look at our house thinking "EVERY ROOM needs 5 hours... but we only have 2!!"  Now- I say "Ok lets hit the kitchen for 15 minutes and then we will go...." I love it!  We set the timer and go from room to room.  The hard part is stopping when the timer goes off because you want to stay in that room until it looks great but when the rooms ALL look a little better- you are glad you kept going. 

Be watching for many more products from House of Order coming soon!!

Buy it HERE!!

OR ENTER TO WIN!

How to Enter:

Mandatory Entry:

Leave a comment and your email telling me something on your "I REALLY WANT to buy" list
mine?  A Clarisonic! and an XBOX 360 Kinect...

 Additional Entries: (must do mantatory entry first!)

•  Follow Savvy Moms Save
•  Follow SMS on Facebook AND Update your Facebook status with a link to this giveaway
•  Follow SMS on Twitter-  plus 1 entry/day for Daily tweets
• One additional entry for each of our other giveaways you enter.
• Subscribe to our SMS newsletter
• Grab our button (2 bonus entries, leave a link)
• Blog about this giveaway (3 bonus entries)

Giveaway ends 1/27 at Midnight (Pacific Time). Winner will be chosen via random.org and will have 48 hours to claim their prize. Winner will be posted on this post- if an email is given, they will be contacted.. Open to US contestants only. 

Disclosure: This review is based on my own honest unbiased opinion of  this product .  You may or may not agree with my opinion. I was sent product free of charge to review. No one from   House of Order   was involved in the writing of this post.

 

Crayon Containment

Here is a quick tip from This Present Life for containing all those crayons!

Put them in a wipe container!!  This will give your kids enough room to see their colors (my daughter always dumps her crayons out because she can't see them all).  I should give this a try!!

You could even add some vinyl to your wipe container to label it!

Quick Tip: Tupperware Organizing

Here is a quick organizing tip from one of our readers Becca (she recieved 3 bonus giveaway entries for this!)

A great way to organize tupperware is to mark each lid/container with a letter or number. Then when you're digging through your gazillion lids, you can just look for the match! Easy!

Ta-Da!!

This will also make it easy to figure out what is missing and figure out which ones to toss.

Project {HOME}

One of my New Years Resolutions was to get my house in order. I wanted to get it organized, simplified and decorated more.

I decided to take one room every other month and attack it! For Jan/Feb my room is my kitchen. I set a budget of $60 to use for organizing containers and decoration. I wanted to start earlier but have been getting over being sick and just felt up to it this week.

I will update my progress at the end of the month. Here is the PLAN:

Organize: Get rid of unused items. Group items where they will be most accessible.

Simplify: If clutter tends to fall in a certain spot no matter how hard I try to change it.... work around it. If mail always ends up on the counter, put a basket there for it. Find a home for things, get rid of extra stuff. Don't have too many files, "homes", spots to put things! Get rid of things that just add clutter.

Decorate: Add some color to the walls, vinyl, new decoration or just rearrange what I already have.

Here is what I have done so far!

I used to have a scrapbook room with an amazing scrapbook desk and things. I had room to be messy and then I could just close the door and hide it. Then I had to change my scrapbook room into a bedroom (not that I minded!). I then decided that I was able to get more pages done in my scrapbook if I had it downstairs. So I moved downstairs to my kitchen where I could scrapbook and still be part of my kids life. This was great!! I got so much done. The only problem was the MESS!!

And this was an improvement!

(I actually started cleaning up when I realized I forgot to take a picture...)

I decided that this would be my main area of focus for right now. It is my biggest eye sore in my kitchen/dining room area. Whenever I see it I think of all the things I should be scrapbooking and how far behind I am... My Mom came over and suggested that I buy a big trunk or something and put it all in there. We headed out shopping moments later!

I finally found what I was looking for (or close enough). Here is what I did:

Container #1: On the bottom, all my heavy paper! I am going to go through it later and get rid of a bunch of it. My main goal for this week was to get it put away someplace before my company came this weekend.

Container #2: Some more paper, "in progress" pages, and sets of paper. I will eventually make it so that there is only paper in the bottom, and the top will be for "in progress" or partially finished pages and my other scrapbook supplies- which currently have to occupy a cupboard in my kitchen.

The end result:

I LOVE IT!! The top container is for mail. The total cost was more than what I budgeted. The bottom container was a gift and then I purchased the top two which met my budget. Now I am out of money and need to finish up the rest of my kitchen. Wish me luck!

Feel free to join me in my quest for a cleaner, more beautiful home. If you do, please send me pictures so I can share them- OR - if you blog about it, share your link and I will help you show off your new look!

Ten Minutes: Sort Clothes

Sort through your clothes (or your kids) and either get rid of or pack up clothes that don't fit anymore.  In order to not feel completely overwhelmed I try to do this one at a time.  I chose mine this time.  I took EVERYTHING out of my closet and put in on my bed so that I could have an empty closet to work with. 
I noticed a few things while I was doing this.
1. It is going to take a lot longer than 10 minutes (so if you only want to take 10 minutes just look through your clothes and NOT take them all out of the closet)
2. I have a lot of clothes.
3. I don't wear half of my clothes
4. Some I don't wear because they are out of style and I am just keeping them because of sentimental reasons.
5. The other clothes I don't wear are the wrong size...I am sure most of you have clothes that you are saving for "some day".  I just had a baby a few months ago so most of my regular clothes still don't fit, but there are some clothes that were on the border of being too small even before I got pregnant.  I would love to say that I tossed them in a giveaway pile (to my credit, I gave some away) but I packed most of them up and put in the garage. 

This is a good way to get rid of some clutter.  Ask yourself how many _____ do I need!?  When was the last time I wore that?  Why do I still have this?  Will I ever (realistically) be able to fit in it again?

Another idea of what you can tackle today is your shoes, kids clothes, coats, etc.  Have fun!

Ten Minute Thursday: Toss it!

I am always amazed at how much cleaner your house gets when you just walk around and toss things out!  Take 10 minutes and toss 10 things that aren't really needed.  Junk mail, paper, magazines, catalogs, random toy pieces that have no home, and anything else that is cluttering up your beautiful home. 

My daughter is great at this!  I am always amazed at what she is willing to toss rather than put away.  She is good at thinking- "I don't feel like finding a home for it, it really isn't of any value, get rid of it already!"  Also, normally when I start doing this I find it so easy that I toss 15 or 20 things and the change in my house is amazing!  Have fun!

Thursday Ten Minute Organizing Project: The Kitchen Junk Drawer!

I find that if I have a list a mile long of cleaning and organizing projects it never gets done in one day!  So I try to break it down into little bits here and there.  Today my 10 minute cleaning project was my kitchen junk drawer!  I know someplace in your house is a junk drawer, and if not... well then you are organized and won't need to read my blog on Thursdays.  This is embarrassing, but here is my junk drawer. 

True to it's name there is LOTS of junk in it!  So much that we don't really use it, just toss randomness in it.  To start out with, since it was such a mess, I just dumped it all out on my counter.  This way I had a clean empty drawer to put everything back into.

I learned a few things today...1) I have WAY too many pens, pencils and dry erase markers (we have a dry erase calendar) and probably don't need to buy ANY for the next 3 years.  2) Luckily (or unluckily...) there wasn't very much garbage in there to throw away 3) I have hair scrunchies in there... helpful if I still had long hair.  4) Loose recipts GALORE!!  I put them in a bank vinyl pouch that has a zipper!  It works great! 

The finished drawer.  Ok, so I said this was a 10 minute organizing project and it probably would have been if I didn't have a sick baby.  It took me a few hours to work on it 10 minutes :) Oh well, at least it is done now!  I put rubber bands around note cards, put things that are alike together, and put all those pens in a plastic bag.  Have fun organizing your junk drawer!

This is what my 3 year old did while I organized :)  BIG paper on the floor, stamps and pencils.  It lasted her ALL day. 

Loose Change: I gave up!

About a year ago we bought a coin sorter.  We now roll our change and cash it in to use for something fun.  We collect it all in a jar with a lable on it stating what we are currently saving for.  It has ranged from a toy for a child, to eating out at our favorite restaurant, to a new "needed" item, and now it is saving for a new DVD player.  It always suprises me how much money we collect! 

I tried to just have us dump all of our change there (a semi-hidden spot in the kitchen) when we got home, but the change always seemed to make it upstairs on our dresser where we emptied our pockets before tossing our jeans into the dirty clothes bin.  So then I put a small change jar there to collect the mess.  I figured, better to have it in a jar organized than all over the dresser.  THEN I realized that sometimes it even made it all the way into the laundry room.  I tried to get the coins all sent to one of the two locations, but to no avail.  So... I gave up once again.  I then yes, put another jar in the laundry room.  Which suprisingly made the coins dissapear from the laundry room. 

In short, if you (or someone in your household) has a habit that is hard to break, organize around it!  Find a way to put organizing helps where the clutter falls.

Tip #2- Organizing Magazines!

When I get magazines, they used to pile up here and there and I never knew what to do with them.  They had things in them I wanted to save, but I never got around to taking out the article and filing it someplace. NOW I have a little container by my couch (that is semi-hidden from view) and when I get a magazine, I rip out the article I want right away and toss the magazine. That way I don't have magazines cluttering up my house!  Then there is less clutter if I don't get around to filing it right away.