Hasta La Ideas

Parents often ask me what chores and responsibilities are applicable for toddlers. They want to start teaching their children about putting away their things, but they also don’t want to bestow unreasonable demands upon two, three, and four year olds.

Young children are eager to be independent, and helping your child learn skills that foster this independence as well as acquire valuable organizing concepts are a great place to start the teaching process. The following are a handful of suggestions for responsibilities that are appropriate for toddlers and some recommendations for teaching these skills:

• Hanging up her coat. Put a couple 3M removable utility hooks on the back of the coat closet door at a low enough height that your daughter can reach the hook but high enough so her coat won’t drag on the ground. When your daughter comes inside the house, let her be responsible for putting her coat on her hook.
• Wiping down the bathroom countertop. Get a small step stool for your child to use in the bathroom when he is brushing his teeth, combing his hair, and washing his hands. Have a stack of wash cloths or hand towels within reach that he can use to wipe his face, dry his hands, and then wipe up any spilled and splashed water from the counter top.
• Making her bed each morning. Pulling up the sheet and pulling up the comforter are tasks that most kids can handle by two and a half.
• Putting dirty clothes in the hamper. Have a hamper that your child can easily put clothes into and see the clothes inside the basket. After you assist your child in getting out of his clothes and into his pajamas, hand him his clothes and ask him to put them in the hamper. As your child gets older and can dress himself, simply monitor him to ensure that he continues with this responsibility.
• Setting the table. By age three, most children will be able to set a table with minimum supervision. Place setting placemats are terrific for helping children learn where cups, plates, silverware, and napkins typically go on a table.
• Returning toys to their storage locations. After playing with toys, toddlers should return them to their proper storage bins or shelves. As a result, storage shelves and bins need to be within your child’s reach. Label bins and lips of shelves with adhesive tags that have an illustration and title of what belongs in each space. Programs like Microsoft Word that include clip art are great for finding toy illustrations. It takes younger children significantly more time to pick up toys than older children, so be sure to leave time in your schedule for your child to pick up her toys before needing to move on to another activity.

At age two and three, most of these chores will need some level of supervision. The closer your child gets to elementary school age, however, the less supervision she will need to successfully carry out the task.

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1. Lose your calendar.
2. Recall very little from your lost calendar.
3. Have people in your life who are laid back and won’t send you reminders about your upcoming engagements with them.
4. Don’t call anyone to see if you have upcoming engagements planned.

Obviously, these four suggestions are a joke. You should always keep a copy of your calendar — a daily backup for a digital calendar and a regular scan/copy of a print calendar — so a situation like this would be avoided.

However, I think we can all recall a time in our lives when we wished we could lose our calendars. We feel so overwhelmed by our obligations that we long for a way to be set free of obligations without any guilt.

Instead of chucking your calendar out the window, the next time you feel overwhelmed by your schedule try these steps to alleviate some stress:

1. Say “no” to as many future offers as possible until you feel things are becoming manageable again. You’ll need to say “yes” to things that keep you out of jail and from being fired, but most everything else can temporarily be put on hold. You’re also free to change your mind, just remember there is much less stress involved with changing your “no” to a “yes” than having to back out of something you’ve already committed to.
2. Review your schedule and see if there is anything you can gracefully back out of without much guilt or repercussions. Then, cancel the obligation. At this point, it’s probably best not to reschedule.
3. Review your schedule and see if there are any appointments that can be moved to a better time. An early morning appointment might be more manageable as a lunch meeting.
4. Identify the obligation on your schedule that is causing you the most dread, and make a plan to eliminate or reduce the stress surrounding it in the future. Knowing that something you dislike will be minimized in the near future often makes it easier to address in the present.

None of these steps will completely eliminate stress, but hopefully they will help to reduce it to a manageable level. Once you feel that things are back under control, you can start to say “yes” to non-essential obligations again, if that is what you wish to do.

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The past eight weeks have been a blur. I’m certain I will not look back on this chaotic time fondly. Rather, I think I will only feel a sense of accomplishment for merely surviving. It appears a period of calm is on the horizon, though, and I am looking forward to declaring April as 2011′s Super Simple Month.

Large disruptions are a part of life, and recovering from them can often feel as stressful as the disruptions. Returning to normal, or a new normal, can happen, but it won’t happen magically. Try these tips to help you get back into a manageable routine — this is how I’m getting out from under the overwhelming backlog of responsibilities:

• Don’t try to recover from the disruption in just one day. Give yourself a week or more to stop feeling like you’re drowning under catch-up work. The aphorism, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” is applicable here.
• Try to schedule part of your day focused on new items and part of your day on ones you missed while you were gone. This way, you can keep items from continuing to pile up.
• Schedule actions on your calendar and double or triple the amount of time you think it should take you to accomplish the task. If it usually takes you an hour a day to respond to voice mail, block off two or three hours to do it.
• Schedule the task you will feel the greatest reward from accomplishing first. You need momentum to propel you through the next task, which will be the thing you need to do the most.
• Now is not the time to multi-task. You likely still have a lot on your mind, and that will be enough of a distraction from your work. Go through your email backlog in a batch, keeping track of action items on a piece of paper or digitally. You can tend to the action items in a batch at a later time.
• Take care of yourself — eat well, sleep well, and ask for help when you need it. I realize it’s easier said than done, but try your best to keep your energy levels high.

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Reader Kristen submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

My fiancee and I will marry on May 1, and although we both currently room with VERY messy and disorganized roomies, we both agree on keeping our future home clean and organized. Do you have any suggestions, ideas that we should start out doing at the beginning, in order to build a “neat” future together?

Congratulations on your impending nuptials!

The two of you are already headed in the right direction with regard to an uncluttered and organized future because you are discussing these issues before moving in together. Open lines of communication are essential if the two of you want to avoid frustrations in your married life.

You may have covered many of these topics so far in your discussions, but give the list a look to see if there are still a few things you can hash out before heading down the aisle. Have pencil and paper with you during your discussion so you can make lists, charts, or just take notes about your talk so you can review them once you’re in your new place:

• A vision of your place together and how you will live in that home. Will your home be a place to entertain your friends and family, and how often? Will your home be a place to relax and rejuvenate after a day of school or work? How do you want things to look and what do you expect out of the space?
• What both of you be responsible for every day. Do you expect dirty clothes to be put into the hamper? Do you want all dirty dishes to be loaded into the dishwasher or will it be okay to have them sit in the sink? How long can a project mess be left out on a table or in a room? How will these responsibilities be met and when?
• What chores each person will be responsible for in the home. Will you take out the trash or will he? Will you change the kitty litter box or will he? Who will cook, clean up afterward, scrub the tub and toilet, vacuum the carpet, dust? How will these responsibilities be met and when? Divvy these chores up now to ensure that one of you won’t be carrying the full load.
• Plan for handling frustrations in the future. There will be times when one of you will be more messy than normal and this will bother the other person. How will you handle conversations about these frustrations so you don’t hurt each others’ feelings, show respect for each other, and help you find the best solution?
• Review policies. How often will you review your daily and chore responsibilities? How often will you unclutter your closets, garage, basement, and other storage spaces? Will you take on spring and fall cleaning? If you hire someone to clean, how often will you review their services and decide if you should keep them or hire someone new?

I’ll admit, these aren’t sexy topics to discuss before getting married, but they will help you significantly in your future life together. I wish my husband and I wouldn’t have waited more than a year after we were married to discuss them — it certainly would have alleviated a great deal of stress he felt about our place because of my clutter-bug and messy ways.

Thank you, Kristen, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column. Again, congratulations on your big day in May!

Do you have a question relating to organizing, cleaning, home and office projects, productivity, or any problems you think the Unclutterer team could help you solve? To submit your questions to Ask Unclutterer, go to our contact page and type your question in the content field. Please list the subject of your e-mail as “Ask Unclutterer.” If you feel comfortable sharing images of the spaces that trouble you, let us know about them. The more information we have about your specific issue, the better.

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This winter has been hard on the trees in our area. The rain, wind, and ice took down a lot of twigs and branches, and many trees toppled over pulling their root systems right out of the wet ground. As a result, we have a lot of yard work to complete at our new house, and we’ve decided to take an organized approach to getting it finished.

• Research yard debris collection options in your area. Many cities and counties will collect sticks left on your curb and turn them into mulch for parks and gardens. Some areas have trucks that suck up leaves that have been raked into street gutters. If none of these options exist, you may wish to invest in a wood chipper to create your own mulch.
• Trim tree limbs and bushes. In addition to it being aesthetically pleasing, it’s also good to take down any limbs that might have been damaged but haven’t yet fallen to the ground. Large branches may need to be professionally trimmed and hauled away for disposal.
• Pick up sticks. Any fallen sticks you can easily carry and small limbs you trimmed should be picked up and gathered into a pile.
• Prune plants. If any of your plants require spring pruning, now is the time to do it. It’s also nice to prune back and edge any plants that have grown onto paths or out of their containers.
• Rake. Dead leaves, plant prunings, and tiny twigs should be raked up and gathered into the gutter (if your area has vacuum trucks) or composted.
• Clean outdoor furniture, hose down paths and patios, sweep stairs, etc.
• Draw a picture and make a list. If you plan to add new plants, bushes, flowers, or trees to your yard, do what a landscaper does and create a drawing of how you want your yard to look. From this drawing, make a list of the plants you want to purchase before heading to the nursery to make purchases.
• Plant or transplant any flowers, bushes, or trees you wish to add to your yard that have recommended spring planting dates.

I prefer to do yard work over the course of a few weekends instead of investing all of my effort into one very long, yard work-focused weekend. I’m also trying to get our new yard full of plants that are easy to maintain, so there hopefully will be less yard work come next spring. How do you tackle the work in your yard? Do you take an approach similar to mine, or do you work in sections and do everything for that section? Share your expertise in the comments so we can all benefit from your experience.

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