One only needs to walk in my front door or glance into my car to know that I am not an organized person.  I love everything to be clean and in its place and though it’s how my mother raised us to be, I am just not capable of it.  My sister inherited the neat gene leaving me surrounded by dust and clutter.  I take offense at well meaning people and magazine articles that tell me I should just do this or that and everything would be so simple and so much better.  Just take 5 minutes a day to run a cloth over the furniture or convert empty shoeboxes into the most adorable toy holders.  If I had 5 extra minutes a day I would put it to better use – like showering, or cutting my children’s nails instead of letting them grind down naturally like rodents.  So, I’d like to take five minutes to tell you what I do to get by and stay sane with 3 small children and two jobs.  And it has nothing to do with shoeboxes.

1. I do not bathe my children every 24 hours and generally not before bed.  There’s enough chaos before bedtime and my kid’s just aren’t that dirty.  A much better time is when everyone is melting down and I don’t know what else to do with them.  Late afternoon is perfect.

2. When I am at work, I’m at work.  This means I don’t answer the phone if the call is coming from my house.  I have no interest in knowing that my son doesn’t like the meatballs I made for dinner nor do I want to figure out where the remote is.  If it’s an emergency, my husband calls 3 times in row.  Only then will I pick up.

3. Speaking of dinner, yes, I try to leave a meal prepared when I leave for work. But I also keep the freezer stocked with more or less healthy frozen food for the times when I just can’t or won’t.

4. There is nothing in my house that needs to be kept alive other than the children.  No pets, no plants, no sea monkeys.  I have no energy to garden – that’s why I join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture - a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer).

5. My guilty pleasures are Ziploc bags (all sizes) and paper plates.  I justify using these by the fact that I used cloth diapers…for two years…for twins.  That surely has reduced my carbon footprint enough to sustain my baggy fetish.

6. Key hooks are essential in my life.  I have one in my house on the refrigerator and one in my office.  The first thing I do upon entering is to put my keys on that hook.  If I do not follow this rule, bad things happen.

And that’s really it, except that I’ve stopped buying magazines telling me how to simplify my life.  I found their suggestions too complicated.  What helps you to keep your life sane or, better yet, what do you refrain from doing that others think would make your life easier?