homeWork: Systems

laundry1The second you walk into your home, there is a system in place. What do you do with your shoes? Do you have a shelf, a basket, or how about just a heap of shoes?  In the northwest,  it is common to take your shoes off when entering a home.  We have  a big wooden  box with a lid that is child proof.  I love that the shoes aren’t a visual.  In my family of six, shoes can be  overwhelming! The children are great about immediately taking their shoes off and putting them into the shoe box.

In theory, systems should make work flow easily.  Systems are the various methods in which to organize your life, stuff, and sometimes relationships.  A trash can is a system. A fridge is one. Anything that collects things and has a purpose. Closets, cars, drawers, email, moleskines, dressers, shelves, cabinets, and even your home is a system. In it contains things to organize and steward. IT is either chaotic or has some sort of order, which is a system.

Some systems work. Some don’t. And systems change according to their function over time as the needs change. For example, my toys are organized in to a system.  I have bins for categories of toys. Balls, dress up, characters, legos, puppets, cars, etc. Having toys streamlined in this system keeps our family organized with the toy clutter. The toy that the eager child is searching for (hopefully) is always in the designated place. This is helpful to parents as well. How many times have you been asked to help search for the lost toy?

Paper systems are WAY more difficult for me to maintain. We have a mail inbox, every day the mail goes in and once a week it is gone through. Coupons and paper reminders go in either my moleskine for shopping list or the junk drawer. Sometimes they go on the fridge. I have a difficult time keeping up with the flood of paper and toys in the house, van, purse, backpacks, mail, etc. The systems that don’t work for me are the things that I don’t see. Like my garage for example. Out of sight out of mind.

Your child comes home from school.  Another thing to “process”. The lunch box gets emptied and put away for filling it the next morning. The papers in the folder: looked at and complemented, some tossed, some saved. The saved ones go to the “child saved papers” bin in my office area. The homework gets done and put back into the folder. Then, the notes from the teacher or fliers to be saved, all processed. If they aren’t, you have your self piles of stuff.

Systems take the guess work out of where things are. If you don’t keep up with your systems daily, then they really have lost functionality. You can find yourself guilty and overwhelmed real quick! Your email is a system. In Getting Things Done, Allen talks about the 2 minute rule.  Answer each email right away if you can do it in less than 2 minutes. If it is a deeper, more heart felt email, requiring you to think more, flag it and come back at a designated time to answer the flagged emails. If you do this each day, you can reasonably keep your inbox empty.

Processing your inbox, putting clean clothes away, clearing counters, keeping up with your lists, and projects, are all examples of maintaining home systems. Not maintaining systems gets you in house work debt.

I need a better system for laundry. I have to do 2 loads each day, or I am in over my head with laundry debt.  I dream of a laundry shoot and envy my friends that have one. I lug two hampers down the stairs to keep my system going, but surely there is a better way! Once the clothes are in the laundry room, I sort.  I usually have at least one pile of dirty or clean clothes on the floor at any given time.  Any thoughts on laundry sorters or containers for laundry rooms?

What systems are not working for you in your home? What systems would help you be able to steward your home more effectively? Do you resist systems?

I would love your thoughts!

Posted on 2 February '09 by , under home management, Joyful Work.

4 Comments to “homeWork: Systems”

#1 Posted by Melissa (02.02.09 at 16:06 )

thanks for writing your blogs… I like reading them!

For laundry: this is what works best for us. I only do laundry one day a week (every once in a while it will run into the next morning or I will have to do a load another time, but not very often)

So, Monday is laundry day. Every kid has their own laundry basket. I usually have them bring the basket into the room in the morning and I usally sort them (but the kids like to help too) into piles by color or type of clothes (jeans, ultra delicate, etc). Then I just keep plugging away on it all day. I need to plan to be home the majority of the day, but it still works bringing kids to/from school. I don’t usually do any other house chores that day and just focus on the laundry. I love that I can just think about it for one day and then not for the rest of the week! It usually ends up being somewhere between 5 and 9 loads of laundry for the day, so it is a long day. Often I do the easy to fold stuff first (towels, sheets) and save other to fold while watching TV in the evenings.
It works best at our house where I have a front-loading high capacity washer and dryer, but it has also been working here at the apartment for the last 8 months.

The down side is that Sunday, the laundry baskets are pretty heaping and the kid’s underwear supply is getting low, but just more motivation to focus on it again on Monday! :)

#2 Posted by trisha (02.02.09 at 16:14 )

Dang. I love this idea. I wish it could work for us! we are on a Septic Tank, a very sensitive one. We have to be careful to not use two much water in one day. I have to space stuff out, constantly.
We can connect to the sewer, but for $15K. So, until then we are forced to do a load or two a day. Both dishes and clothes. UGG! Great plan, though, Melissa!

#3 Posted by jen zug (10.02.09 at 08:25 )

Ugh. Laundry. I also do 1-2 loads a day. I designate a day for each load so I don’t run the risk of any one load piling up. For instance, I do sheets/towels on Monday, kids on Tuesday & wednesday, Bryan and I on Thursday & Friday. But to be honest, I usually end up folding it all on Thursday or Friday night!

As far as sorting, I have a three compartment sorter in the bedroom, and another in the bathroom. They are for lights, darks, and towels/sheets, so everything is presorted. The kids have their own hampers, which I never sort because their clothes are mostly second hand and don’t run the risk of bleeding between light and dark.

I feel you about the laundry baskets down the stairs. We have a three level house including the basement, so I have a long haul with all that laundry (our machines are in the basement).

I just taught Ruthie how to do her own laundry, so she mostly does that by herself now. She drags her laundry bag down the stairs, loads it into the machine, and starts the water. I have to help dispense the soap because the button is too hard to push. She can also switch the laundry from washer to dryer with the help of a stool (we have a top loading machine), and start the dryer. We fold the clothes together.

She’s been doing this a few weeks, now, and last week when I asked her to start her laundry she kept telling me “later, later.” Eventually she ran out of clothes and had to wear her “stupid jeans,” so it was a good lesson in natural consequences. She did her laundry that day after school. :)

A long time ago when I used to follow flylady.net, I remember her site had lots of suggestions for laundry systems.

#4 Posted by Trish (12.03.09 at 17:28 )

My new system: Instead of mixing up the whole family’s laundry together and then sorting into color piles to wash, I’ve assigned a weekday to each family member. I only wash that person’s clothes that day and it’s usually a load of lights and a load of darks. (Unless you need to bleach some whites- then it’s 3 loads). It makes the folding, sorting and putting away process easier because you just take the laundry basket of clean clothes into that person’s room and put them away as you fold. It’s really quick to shove clothes in a drawer and hang clothes in the closet if you don’t have to sort everyone’s clothes into different piles and haul them to different places in the house. I can do extra wash like bedding & rugs on the weekends. Here’s the bonus: I’ve noticed that I have a better attitude about this dreaded chore because I feel like I’m focusing on serving a specific person that I love that day instead of just “doing the laundry.”