Welp, the tribe has spoken! I posted a poll on instagram asking what I should blog about today and you guys said organizational hacks for us busy mamas. I’m not going to lie, my husband and I have laughed A LOT over this. If you know me, you know that in some areas im super organized and in other areas I am super far from it. In the areas im not there yet, I do have some great ideas that I want to implement…I just need to implement them. I am going to list my top 5 favorite ways I organize certain areas of my life. If I am being totally honest here, there are a lot of areas in my life where I feel like I have no control. This is because I obviously don’t – and thats where my faith in Jesus comes in. Thank goodness he Has control and I can surrender to Him. With that said, sometimes it feels really good to pinpoint some ways in which I can feel a little bit of (healthy) control. So here we go!

1. Kids organizational bins
   • Yall this is the best thing I did early summer. I went to my local staples and bought these clear plastic bins and file folders. I labeled each file how I felt most beneficial for our life. (for example: medical records, sports, awards, misc, preschool, kinder, 1st grade, 2nd..etc.etc. I picked my top favorite few pieces or artwork or keepsakes and anything really special, and put them in the bins accordingly. This is significantly reduced the overwhelm I feel when my kids come home from school with folders FULL of stuff. Before hand, I never knew what to keep and toss. Now it is super easy for me to recognize what I want to go in the bin to save and what I do not. I keep these in their closets. I let the boys decorate the front of their boxes which was super fun for them.

2. Family photo organization

• Okay I am going to have to write an entire separate post on this that includes alllllll the details of HOW, but keeping our family photos organized feels SO GOOD. If Meta or iCloud were to crash tomorrow, I have zero concerns about my precious family photos. I know exactly where they are located. As a motherhood photographer here in Winston Salem, I obviously more likely cherish photos more than the average person, so this was a must for me! I would say to ask yourself a few questions. 1) Do your photos on your phone, computer, and social media overwhelm you? 2) If where you store them crashed tomorrow, would you be devastated?
• Here is the short and sweet and then I will make a separate blog:
  • Go through your phone and spend an hour one night in bed deleting duplicates, blurry images, screen shots..etc. that you don’t need to go back and look at. After the initial phone clean out, do it once per month moving forward
  • Get an external hard drive
  • Back up to two areas (for example: the cloud and an external hard drive)
  • Get all your pictures in one place
  • Organize them on the hard drive by year, month, event..or what works for you
  • Pick your top favorites from each year and either make a book or print and put in a box for storage (I do both)

3. Laundry divider.

• Yall this is so simply and silly and im sure you guys probably have better ways…but I bought this rolling 3 part laundry hamper last year and its been SO HELPFUL. Reason why? Because im terrible at laundry with a family of 5. If you are great a laundry then maybe this isn’t for you…but with 3 messy boys, I need all the help I can get. As I get the clothes out of the dried, instead of dumping them all on the counter or couch to sort, I just throw them in each kids hamper section. After this, they can grab their bag off the rack (it velcros) and carry it to their rooms.

4. Declutter!

• You guys it took me years for this to actually sink in…but less is MORE. A month or so ago I went room by room with a giant trash bag and a giveaway bag and asked myself a couple of questions. Does this work? Do we NEED it? Have my kids played with it lately? I got rid of 18 GIANT bags full of stuff. The freedom this brought is unreal and the wild part, my kids haven’t even noticed whats gone. They have also played with the things we have kept SO much more. Having less around makes the home feel less chaotic and overwhelming. Here is an example of things I asked myself. “Do 2 adults need 15 coffee mugs? How many realistically would we use in a week?” “Do my kids need 40 t-shirts? How long would it take them to wear all of these?” After this, I bought some new storage items (some of these im still eyeing) and i will post them here. I also went on to organize a closet with games and crafts. I threw away all markers that didn’t work or crayons that were broken..etc.

5. Over the seat car organizer

• My kids love these things! I bought them initially for a road trips and they are so helpful for keeping junk from piling up in the car. Each kid has one and they can put their favorite little car toys in a pocket along with a snack, water bottle, a pencil, a coloring book, and a have a place for trash. On road trips I take them out and let the kids load them up and its so much fun!

I know these aren’t super life changing hacks and you have likely heard many of them before, but these are a few things that help me simplify being a part time working mom with 3 kids! If you have tried any of these let me know! I would also love to know your favorite hacks for mom life or life in general. I am all about getting more organized and putting simple systems in place.