Saving time and mommy's sanity with a little color

If you have read my blog for any moment in time, you will know that I am a mom to one little boy, a wife to my hs sweetheart, full time employee with a 15 hour weekly commute, now recently a student and I am an active member of the PTA for my son's school all the while keeping up with my home. I am busy in a nutshell.

I know what life is like to leave your house at 6:30 in the morning only to return after 6:30 at night, cook dinner, laundry and usual tasks that come with adulthood, owning a home and raising a family. Now, with all of that said, I wanted to give you a tip of something I do that helps save me a little time and a lot of sanity. But the thing is, is that you have already heard this same trick, but I want to show you how I use this in my home.

We've heard it all before but I will say it to you now....color code your family. Yep, it's pretty basic, very generic tip that is in every "get organize" book and homemaking articles. But let me show you how I go about using the "color code" method.

You know about color coding on calendars and folders for each family member etc., and I most certainly do that for sure.

In my family, I have the color pink, Caleb has green, Brad has blue, Scooby has orange, as you can see in my calendar below.

But, one thing I color code that has been so beneficial in my home are our bath towels and rags.

We have 3 bathrooms. Brad uses the one in our master bedroom, Caleb has his in his bedroom and my sanctuary is in the hall way. Now, with 3 bathrooms, comes three sets of wash rags, hand towel and bath towels. Each time I'd wash towels and rags I'd go to each bathroom putting some away only to find out that one bathroom had none because I put all the towels in the other two bathrooms. So I'd have to go back and move bath towels, hand towels and wash rags. While it's not some sort of monumental problem in life, it was one of those little irritants. And quite frankly, life is too short to be bothered with little finicky things, especially when they can be resolved very quickly and easily. So that's what I did.

I took about 30 minutes, sat down and took some fabric ribbon and fabric glue to adhere a little strip to each towel and rag. I used close pins to hold the strips down overnight while the glue dried and then that was it.

Now, I am not going from one side of the house to put washrags in Brad's bathroom to find out that his basket if full, but it's Caleb's bathroom that needs the rags, but he's got too many hand towels. We all have the same amount of towels so everyone always has the same amount for their own bathroom.

Now, one question I get is "why don't you just use colored towels instead of gluing strips of ribbon?" If you want to use colored towels that is a fantastic idea. I like to use white towels because I like being able to bleach them whenever they get too dingy. I have yet to have the ribbons come off, nor have they changed colors in the bleach and I have been using these towels for about 5 years now. Now, if you don't want to use ribbon, you can use the little tag on each towel and make a large dot, X or something like that using a sharpie in the color of your choice.

One last thing I enjoy, is that Caleb and Brad can both help me when it comes to putting them away. They both know what color goes where and can put them up without any effort or badgering from mom. Which we all know makes for a very happy home. :)

Well, that's all I have for today. I hope it was helpful or insightful. Now tell me about you? Do you color code things in your home? Let me know in the comment section below.

Thanks for stopping by, until next time, take care!!

-Kim