There are a few questions I get asked probably most often and I would say the number one is this...how do you keep your house so clean with all your kids? I actually love this question because I truly find joy in cleaning my home and keeping it tidy (as much as I can). I know there are a lot of moms who don’t mind the mess and who even promote the mess as a good thing. Hey, no judgment here...that’s great if that works for you and you don’t mind the mess. For me and my family (well mostly me) we mind the mess ha! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that you should keep your home perfect at all times or that you should clean when your kids are asking to play with you; what I am talking about is keeping your house tidy in a way that’s not inconvenient but practical! Take it from the mom who bought a cream colored couch with FOUR boys…
Speaking of the couch, I think this is a great starting point to this blog post. Many of you have asked me WHY on earth do you have a cream couch with a big family. Glad you asked. About 4 years ago I tried to convince my husband to get rid of our old IKEA couch and invest into a Z-gallerie sectional. Let me spare you the details but it did take some convincing and let’s just say I was able to persuade him haha. This particular couch is made of polyester and when I went to the store to order my couch I was told by the sales representative how amazing this couch was and that we would not regret it EVEN with kids. I was told EVERYTHING comes out of this couch with water. That’s right, water! Ordered the couch and once we received it I started second guessing the cream color. I was nervous we wouldn't be able to enjoy it without being terrified of something spilling on it. Well the first get-together we had with family, my sister had a glass of red wine and spilled all over the couch. I FREAKED out! I think I blacked out to be honest...my mom was there and I yelled, “MOOOOMMMMM my sister spilled on my new couch.” As if we were kids again and that was going to get her in trouble. Anyway, we did what we were supposed to and got water and a washcloth and sure enough without even really trying, the wine came right out! Talk about breaking in a couch. Now, four years in we have had, baby poo, throw up, coffee, wine, pen marks, you name it we have had it and it ALL has come out and with just water. Don’t worry, I’ll link this couch if you’re interested. Okay, sorry for the long couch story but now you know why we are good with a cream couch with four boys.
We moved into our home over three years ago and have had some fun recently renovating some of our home. We were able to add-on to our kitchen, revamp our fireplace and completely redo our dining room. It’s been a lot of fun making it more of our style and having fun projects to do (says everyone in 2020 haha). We have a 5 bedroom house and one of those bedrooms is downstairs and we have turned that into our playroom. This has been a game changer for us. I know that having this designated room has helped tremendously with keeping my living space more clean and less cluttered. I understand that not everyone has an extra room for a playroom but I don’t think you need a full room to help you organize or keep toys all together. I do believe that having a little space though will help. My sister for example uses her downstairs closet for her toy/games storage area. She has three boys so they have a lot of stuff. My sister utilized her closet for all their things. They take them out during the day but then when it’s quiet time or bedtime they all help place all the toys back into the closet so their home doesn’t stay messy. For our home, thankfully I can use an entire bedroom for our boys. I also bought a Murphy bed that folds up into a nice looking cabinet and when we have guests we have a bed for them. I also put an old couch in the playroom and a television so I can be in there with the boys watching a show. After having our fourth boy, Nico, this has been so helpful. We have a baby gate going into the playroom (highly recommended) and I am able to lock it while we are all in the room and where I can feed the baby. But that way the other boys can’t run around the house like crazy animals haha. Now, in our living room we have a few cabinets and I do have a couple baskets hidden in the cabinets that I will pull out mostly for Luca to play with when we are in the living room or when I am cooking dinner or something. That way I can see him easier and know his older brothers aren’t trampling on him! Again, I like to hide things and I love organization. I don’t like clutter and I don’t like toys everywhere so I would say that my boys for the most part keep their toys in the playroom. We tell them right before nap/quiet time to pick their toys up and clean up for the most part that way they start to get used to it! A lot of people like to say, well why clean it up if it’s just going to get messy again and I like to reply with well if I did that then my house would look like a tornado came through and my boys would think it’s okay to just leave their things everywhere without helping to clean up. We do this right before bed too. Everything gets put away and cleaned up before they go upstairs.
I believe doing all these little things will help keep your home more tidy. Even doing smaller loads of laundry everyday vs huge loads once a week is beneficial. Or even running your dishwasher every night to avoid one a larger water bill, but it’s also easier to unload smaller loads of dishes vs bigger loads...and I don’t know about you but I have very limited time to empty the dishwasher before I hear a little crawler coming at me ready to “help.” You know what else has been helpful for us, a Dyson vacuum! Why it took me so long to purchase I don’t know but WOW I love it. After every meal we have or after snack time I bust that thing out real quick and vacuum up the food. Now, with the amount of food my boys already consume, our floors get a lot of traffic and spills so I can’t really go a night without moping a little. What I have learned is mop AFTER dinner. I used to mop after lunch and then felt like I needed to after dinner too. But now I vacuum after meals (we don’t want to walk on crumbs and carry that throughout the house) and then after dinner and once I get the boys settled in the living room I turn on a show for them and I quickly mop. It literally takes me about 5 minutes. There’s a saying, don’t go to bed with dirty dishes...that’s a saying right?! Well if it’s not then it should be...but that’s how I see cleaning or “tidying” up the house before I relax for the night. It’s worth it and then when you wake up it’s cleaned and you don’t feel too behind on housework. Include the kids too and make it fun. If you follow me on Instagram you’d know that my oldest son, Anthony, actually loves to clean. Vacuuming is his favorite thing to do and I let him; if he wants to help I let him do it. I sometimes have to help him but it teaches him too. I like to think that my sons’ wives will thank me one day!
One more thing I love to do and I think you will too, is after you get kiddos to bed, tidy up the house...get those diffusers going and get a nice comforting blend, like lavender to help relax you. There’s something about having the diffusers going, especially at night that’s relaxing. We also do this with the boys in their rooms. They love their “ouulllssss.” I’d suggest lighting a candle but we don’t light candles anymore after we did the “ditch and switch.” I wrote an entire blog post on this you can check out (here).
I know this is a longer post but I have had so many questions on how I keep my house clean and what I do to keep my cream color furniture CREAM haha. I’m honestly all about making things easier on all of us in our home and want to create a space where my boys love to be and one day where their friends want to be as well. For me personally, being clean and tidy helps make my house a home. There are so many days where the house is a mess and that’s okay, I am NOT saying everything needs to be perfect at ALL times. I just wanted to give my suggestions on how I try to keep a comfortable home.
It makes my heart happy when I see my kids running around the house and enjoying where they live. We love being outside in the summer and swimming and then having the fire going in the winter with warm blankets enjoying popcorn and a movie. I love being in the kitchen cooking for all my boys and listening to music. It’s like they say, home is where the heart is. I believe this, I also believe that we as wives and mothers have a God-given heart for the home. Proverbs 31:27 says a godly wife “watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.” It’s in our hearts as a wife and mother to take care of her home. I encourage you to do the same no matter where you are in life right now. If you’re single, enjoy your space you have, if you’re married, make your home a place you and your husband love being in and if you have babies, have a home where your kiddos love to be in, play, run around and bring their friends to.
But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. – Joshua 24:15
Well, I hope you enjoyed this post and feel free to leave a comment or question. Here are some links of some things I use around the house that help keep it tidy! Also I have a photo gallery of our home from our master bedroom to our newly renovated kitchen. Hope you enjoy it...
Pictured above is our living room area where we spend most of our time! I really like neutrals (as you can tell) and had fun adding a lot of wood elements to this space along with a touch of blue. I also love to have live plants throughout our home so you'll see a few here.
Here you'll see out entry & then dining room area which we just re-did. You can head over to my Instagram and see the before and after pictures under my Home sweet home highlight.
Here you'll see some of our bedrooms...mater bed, boys bed, laundry room and then the playroom with the murphy bed.
Here are some photos of our kitchen remodel. We had so much extra stone when we renovated our fireplace that we decided to bring it into the kitchen. We love how it turned out!
Now here are some of my favorite home things that I linked for you...
Dyson vacuum - best purchase ever!
Z gallerie Stella sectional couch - ours is the bella bone color and this is by far the most comfortable and kid friendly couch you'll ever own...promise!
Murphy bed in the play room...it's actually very comfortable and great for your guests!
Boys twin beds - love these beds because they are close to the ground and very affordable.
Our master bedroom sheets (I swear by these sheets...worth every penny and will last forever) we have the bone color.
Pottery Barn living room couch pillows.
All things oils, diffusers and non-toxic cleaners you can check out Young Living. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about getting started!
Dining room chairs - I scotch guard these and they do well with kids.
Dining room coffee table - love that it's round because of the kids (safety first, haha).
Dining room accent chair - it's pretty small so make sure you measure but I loved the size for the size of my dining room area.
Kitchen barstools - I love these and they are sturdy and great for the kids too!
Large faux olive tree - I bought this a few years ago from a local plant nursery.
If there is something else that you saw and wanted to know where it's from please feel free to ask.
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