.SOMETIMES RAW.

*I am NOT a helicopter mom. Far from it. But this is just accumulated wisdom I heard from those kind of moms you should try to avoid like the plague. If you hear any of these below statements, RUN!

Do you have kids? Why not? You’ll never know real love until you have a baby.

You’re trying to get pregnant? Yeah, not as much fun as it seems. Good luck to you! It will probably cost a fortune. It will be worth it, though. Just be as calm as possible about it.

It isn’t like you’re eighteen anymore, amiright? Tick tock.

You’re going to the gym and getting healthy, right? I mean, you really should. Look at those hips! At least the baby’s head will fit through. Don’t exercise too much, though.

You’re pregnant? Well, sleep now is all I can tell you. This is your last chance to sleep for 18 years.

You’re tired? I couldn’t sleep at all when I was pregnant. I felt like a beached whale. Forget the body pillows and the stretching; nothing will help.

Did you finish the nursery? What’s your baby’s gender? Well, at least the room has a theme, right?

You’re eating organic, right? Why are you buying carbs and frozen treats? You’re acting like you don’t care about your baby.

Why do you think you need a bouncy seat? Are you planning on putting the baby down? Babies like to be held. You can’t spoil a baby!

You had your baby? Well, good luck to you. He’s screaming a lot? Yes, that goes on for a long time. What, are you worried about him? That’s what babies do. They scream and scream and scream. Turn on the television and you’ll both be fine.

Doesn’t motherhood give you perfect memory? You remember every lullaby your own mother ever sang to you, right?

Are you still recovering from the birth? Yeah, that takes forever. I ached and had weird pains for months.

Are you tired? Sleep when the baby sleeps. You should probably do laundry when the baby sleeps, too. And food shopping. And catch up on emails. Come on! Everyone wants to know when they can come and see the baby.

You need a shower, too? Oh, do that when the baby sleeps.

You’re getting rid of your maternity clothes already? But it will be months before you can even think about wearing pants with buttons or zippers again.

Did you at least check your walls, water, air, and insulation for lead? What about your plates? Your breast milk? You can’t forget to check everything.

Are those disposable diapers? Really? You made that choice? I see. I thought you cared about the environment.

You’re using cloth diapers? I thought you needed more time for self-care? You have to take care of yourself, you know.

You’re looking for a daycare spot? Pretty late in the game, I’ll say. Good luck trying to find a place that’s even legal.

How did I find a daycare? I don’t remember. This is your brain on motherhood! I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast.

You gave him solid foods already? You didn’t hear about the kids who ate solid foods?

Walking? Oh, no! You’re in for it now. You should have tried to travel, or at least go grocery shopping, before that happened. Good luck to you.

Did you baby-proof everything? Make sure you cover everything pointy and hard. Every edge and surface! Soon he’ll be tall enough to reach even the top shelf of your bookcase. You should probably just put everything in storage.

Is she smiling at me? Watch out. Get that rifle ready. Oh, right, it’s a boy. You’ve got a ladies’ man on your hands. Watch out.

Wait, is the TV on? You didn’t let your baby see the screen, did you?

You’re excited about his birthday party? I see. You’ll get tired of having them and going to them soon enough. Enjoy this one, I guess.

When are you going to have Baby #2? Don’t you want someone to love Baby #1 after you die?

He’s starting daycare? Wow. He’s going to be sick Every. Single. Day. You, too. But then no one will ever be sick again! You are responsible for training his immune system. I guess your mother didn’t know to train yours.

You’re spending all of your money on private school, right? So expensive, but education is the most important thing. You’d do anything for that child, right?

You didn’t open a college fund to put all of your money into? I thought you agreed that education was important?

You aren’t sending him to public school? Don’t you care about your community?

You didn’t sign up for summer camp yet? It is already January! What are you going to do, quit your job?

Wait, you went back to work? You want strangers to raise your child?

Oh, you’re home with him. I hope you’re at least bringing him to reading time at the library. He needs to get socialized.

Want to meet up for wine tonight with the other mothers at 9 pm? You should join our “Mommy’s Night Out It’s Wine O’Clock somewhere Party!” We thought of a few more things you need to know. Get some rest today! It will be a late night.

Shannon Cartier Lucy

The drying rack is full of clothes to one side of our living space; there’s another small pile of clean laundry to be folded on the couch. My son’s school books are all over the floor. On the top of the sideboard there’s a roll of tape, a random rope(?), a book of paper airplane instructions, and a few paper airplanes. On the dining table, you’ll find my son’s half-eaten breakfast muffin, a card game, hand cream, a whistle, and a coffee table art book. Sound familiar?

Most nights, after I have put my son to bed (still a ritual even though he is almost 12), I finish the dishes and then completely reset the house. Resetting the house is not a fun chore, but it’s the secret to living small. For me, it’s also something more: It’s a way to set myself up for success. Since I live in a rather small house that can become overstuffed easily, organisation and clutter-free is key otherwise the place becomes too messy.

What is your home’s baseline?

Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition of ‘baseline’ is “a line serving as a basis; especially: one of known measure or position used (as in surveying or navigation) to calculate or locate something.” 

In the case of your home, the baseline is not the starting point of where you are today. Rather it is your house on its best day. Baseline is the way it looks when you’ve done a full tidy before guests come over. It’s the ideal you’re always trying to get back to—and in a perfect world, we’d get back to baseline every day. In reality we probably only get close. 

Why is the starting line important?

A baseline is important because it gives you a clear goal: You know what you are striving towards when you’re tidying up. For some people, especially parents of young kids, baseline has been obscured for so long that they can’t even picture what it is that’s worth taking the time to declutter and tidy for. You might not even know what your baseline is until you do the work to get back there.

I believe that a clutter-free, tidy home is worth the work. 

For me, I feel my best when my home is at its best. When the house is tidy, I feel better prepared to face my day, I can focus. When it’s disorganized or the surfaces are cluttered, I tend to feel overwhelmed, I can’t quite think straight. For me, maintaining order is self care.

Find your baseline

Now, it’s time to get your house to the starting line. Tidy up like you would if important guests were coming to visit or if you were showing your house to a real estate broker. Get every space to its best self. If your house is on the more cluttered side right now, don’t try to get to baseline all at once. Instead, go room by room, getting each room show-worthy, and then making an effort to maintain that room as you work on the rest. 

Focus on horizontal surfaces

As much as possible, your baseline should keep your horizontal surfaces (bureau tops, counters, table surfaces) clear. The flat surfaces in our homes, especially small homes, are where mess builds up, clutter hotspots, if you will. Whenever I keep books and a stack of magazines on our coffee table, they are like an invitation for more clutter to gather. With an empty coffee table as my baseline, I force myself to get everything off the surface each night and everything feels 10x more calm and orderly.

Restore order every night

I’m so sorry, but if you want the awesome feeling of a clutter-free home, you’re going to need to tidy up every evening, especially if you live in a small space. It’s the only way. Sure, you can take a day off and you can be more relaxed some days, but at the very least, you should be resetting your home to baseline 2 or 3 times a week. Even trying to do it all in one big sweep on the weekends lets too much disorder arise. You don’t want to get to the place where you have to spend a whole day getting back to baseline. 

Once you’ve established baseline, push further

Everyone’s idea of tidy or what Shira Gill deemed “clutter tolerance” is different—and that’s okay. But the aesthetic of our home is not the barometer for a good baseline. The way to know if you’ve found your optimal baseline is if it is easy to maintain. 

Most people are trying to store too many things in their home–or they don’t have good systems to store them (this is especially true in smaller homes). And therefore maintaining that order you’ve created is too hard–it takes too much time and effort. The goal is to keep refining your baseline (decluttering, creating storage solutions) until tidying up every night is relatively easy, a 20-30 minute task—not a Herculean, hours-long effort.

So, let’s say you’ve gotten your kitchen to baseline: There’s no stack of papers on the countertop, everything is put away. Now it’s time to assess how your starting point can be improved. Look around: What spots look cluttered up? What could you do to streamline further? If you’re having trouble seeing what might change, try taking a photo of the room: It can help you see what spots are still congested. Is there a rarely used appliance that could get put away in a cabinet? A decorative item that is always in the way when you clean? Maybe you could thin the collection of spoons and spatulas? Would a tray beneath the oils and vinegars make it easier to wipe the counters nightly? 

Make everything easy to put away

This is the key to staying organized: It has to be easy to keep up your baseline. If something is difficult to put away, it’s probably because there’s too much stored in the place where it is meant to go (if your shirts only fit in the drawer when perfectly Kon Mari folded), or you’ve set up a system that’s impossible to maintain. Identify and work on the things that are hard to keep tidy.

The underlying question to ask is: How much stuff is the right amount for your space? The goal is to get to a place where the tidying takes less time. THIS is why we declutter: To gain back time.

Play detective while you tidy

Think of your nightly side work as an opportunity to research your home. As you get into the habit of a nightly tidy-up, you’re going to encounter items that need to be put away. Here are four ways:

Make note of the objects that are always out of place. These items might be stored in the wrong place to begin with. For my family, this was shoes and books.

Zero in on the things that have no home. Are there items that you really have to think about where they should go? These things need to gain a permanent home so that you (and your family members) aren’t always trying to find a place to wedge them in. 

Notice where you’re cramming. If you’re constantly squeezing or rearranging things in a particular area, you’ve got too much stored there. For me, this is all our book shelves. The solution: Sell or donate a few books until the book shelves don’t look too cluttered. I keep changing books in my Free Little Library as well. Also, I gave myself a three months book-purchase-stop to read all the books I already have which made a huge difference in the shelves and my wallet.

Create a transitional zone 

There are always going to be some items that don’t have a permanent place in your house: An online purchase that needs to be returned, library books, a gift that needs wrapping, the weekend newspaper, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a designated home too. Things like a basket for mail or an “outbox” basket for packages near the door can help tame the transitional clutter in your home.

Tackle the hidden messes

I’ll never forget when Yumiko Sekine the author of the book Simplicity At Home suggested forcing yourself to look at your hidden messes, writing, “If you only have cabinets with doors, try removing the doors and see if that changes the way you organize and use your belongings.” You don’t need to take a screwdriver to the kitchen cabinet hinges, but imagine the doors gone: Would you like what you see?

Finally, elevate the baseline

Another way to improve baseline has nothing to do with decluttering or tidying, but rather with restyling what you already own. Going back to our hypothetical kitchen, ask yourself what details could be elevated to make your baseline more appealing. Perhaps you decant your dish soap into a pretty pump bottle or you oil your wooden spoons so they look new again. 

This part may sound frivolous to some people, but I believe it is important because any time you can elevate the appearance of your home–whether that is bins, your baskets, your file folders, your recycling bin—it reinforces the idea that “This is my home. I want to take care of it and keep it organized.” 

As a last resort: Outsource

If you do all this and it is still too much, maybe you need help. You can hire someone to clean your home, so you can focus on maintaining order. You could hire a professional organizer to help you improve your systems. Outsourcing can also be less direct: You can pick up prepared foods or order takeout (and avoid the related meal making clean-up) on laundry night. You could have your children eat school lunch and outsource all the mess of meal making and lunchbox unpacking.

For me it is key to make my life as easy, organized and beautiful as possible. Simple as that. How about you?

*4-Year-Old’s Workday.

8:55 a.m. Arrive at office. Hang jacket on sunshine-shaped hook with name on it. Put snack in cubbyhole. Sing “Good Morning” song with co-workers. Tackle a Sudoku. Google “Best Toy Stores in Vienna” to see what’s new on the market.

9:04 a.m. Forward hilarious e-mail to everyone in address book. Subject line: “Poo-poo.” Skim through all the other emails you received and wonder why you are always cc’d in these informational emails when others get promoted.

9:10 a.m. Take spreadsheets out of Star Wars backpack. Stretch out on floor and begin making notations with crayon. Rearrange desk. Look important by shuffling papers from left to right. Print out funny pictures of coworkers and hang them in your office.

9:15 a.m. Drink juice box. Eat crackers. Look busy. Always look busy. Ponder the seedless watermelon— genius or troubling? Call your mom to say hi. Take a selfie in the huge mirror in the restroom. Send it to friends with the hashtag #suchabusydayatwork

9:25 a.m. Spend hour lining up office supplies on desk in perfect straight line. Toy with idea of sorting them by color but get distracted by imaginary conversation between stapler and three-hole punch. Complicated scenario ensues involving a lion, a puppy, and the mommy Hi-Liter kissing the daddy Hi-Liter.

10:40 a.m. Randy from accounting drops by and “borrows” pen with the springy pink feather on top. Grab pen back. Scream in each other’s faces until Randy takes a swing with copy of Needs-Assessment Analysis. Supervisor intervenes and sends Randy to the smoke room for a time-out.

11:05 a.m. Intend to begin debugging online program for gender equality and nepotism. Get caught up in Polly Pocket website instead.

12:00 p.m. Lunch. Trade PB&J for tuna with Jerry from human resources. Friendly banter about who could take who in a fight: the Poky Little Puppy or the Cat in the Hat. Notice Donna is wearing Finding Nemo T-shirt for fourth straight day.

1:00 p.m. Write up statistical profile of user satisfaction based on regional trends. Entitle report “I Like Stickers.”

1:30 p.m. Naptime.

2:12 p.m. Another Important Budget Staff meeting (that could have been an email) proves unproductive due to constant requests to go pee.

2:40 p.m. Telephone headquarters to discuss department budget for upcoming fiscal year. While talking, draw picture of house. Feel special pride in the way the smoke spirals out of chimney. Tape picture to wall next to trophy for company’s Hunger-Games championship in darts.

3:00 p.m. Attend mandatory Employees’ Committee workshop entitled “Ear Infections Are EVERYBODY’S Business.” Session comes to abrupt halt when manager of finance jams eraser up nose.

3:30 p.m. E-mail from director of marketing: “I’m not accusing anyone but my blanky was in the copy room and now it’s not. I hope whoever ‘accidentally’ took it will please return it, no questions asked. Otherwise I’m telling.” Schedule an emergency meeting on this topic. Invite the entire department, cc everybody else.

4:05 p.m. Ask Marco in adjoining cubicle to stop making “vroom-vroom” noises when he moves the mouse. Squeeze a stress ball.

4:45 p.m. Try to duck out early, thus avoiding mandatory singing of “Cleanup” song with co-workers. Busted by supervisor, who announces that no one is leaving until everyone is sitting quietly. Schedule another meeting, email everybody and discuss this topic. Keep everybody as long as possible.

4:55 p.m. Retrieve jacket from hook. Supervisor helps with zipper. Wave bye-bye to Dave at the front desk. Step into elevator. Press all the buttons.