Large Family Decluttering is something I’m always working on…it’s one of those jobs in the same category as large family cooking, large family laundry, and large family homeschooling. Decluttering is just never done. I’ve trained myself over the years to do a little bit of decluttering each day, the same way I do with my large family cleaning and large family laundry stystems.

However, I LOVE doing one big large family decluttering push right before I do my spring cleaning each year!

This just makes sense. If you are going to be doing a lot of deep cleaning, think about how much easier it is to clean a decluttered space. It takes so much less time, and it’s just a more enjoyable job. I don’t necessarily enjoy cleaning, so I need to make it as easy on myself as possible.

[Read more…]

Boy oh boy do I have some tips to share with you today on how to stop a stomach bug from spreading in a large family! We have been through the ringer for the last month!

If you read my last post, about surviving times of illness in a large family, then you already know that we have been battling the stomach bug. What you may not know is that we went through this stomach bug for four whole weeks! Eek!!!

Everyone in the family (11 of us total) got it, except for my oldest son, and four of us got it twice! Twice!!!

I always thought that once you caught it, you were good and wouldn’t get it again that same year. Let me tell you, folks. You CAN get it again!

I’m going to share with you today what we did wrong, and then what we finally started doing that ended up containing the virus and getting it out of the house. It was NOT easy. We basically adopted hospital grade sanitation procedures. But it was necessary. And now that I have these procedures, I have some hope that in the future, when we get the stomach bug again, we won’t have it for nearly as long, and we might be able to contain it to just a few people coming down with it. We’ll see.

But hopefully not anytime soon!

[Read more…]

I am not a naturally clean and organized woman. I love and appreciate the benefits of a clean and organized home, but when it comes to actually doing the work, I’d rather be doing just about anything else.

As a large family mom though, keeping the house reasonably clean and picked up is more of a sanity-saver than a choice!

The Ten Minutes Until Clean Philosophy

This philosophy is a self-regulating tool that I use to keep my home from getting out of control. It gives me freedom from perfectionism because it sets up boundaries around how messy a room can get before we need to pause and pick up.

Let me explain how it works.

[Read more…]