Fold the Damn Laundry- Early Postpartum Home Upkeep

This article is all about what really helped me keep my home not overly cluttered and keep things accessible for myself when I was early postpartum and when I went back to work. It's keeping a just do it attitude. If there's baby blues, depression or postpartum anger (yes, it's a thing) let yourself sit and don't worry about the messiness. At times cleaning a little helped me feel accomplished and helped take away some of those postpartum feelings, so read on and see what works for you in your home.

First off is to make sure you take care of yourself. I can't tell you how often I switched from feeling secondary or unimportant to annoyed because I'd be "nap trapped" and had to pee or was thirsty. I had my spot on the couch for feeding and there was a water bottle next to it, a couple clean burp cloths, milk catching Haakaas (and perhaps a snack if my dogs weren't vultures). I suggest a feeding cart for any mom. It contained all my necessities plus my pump. Even if I was bottle feeding, having my needs right there was so handy. When she got bigger and had neck strength, around month 6, I started carrying her on my boob like a football while I got my water or my phone from another room. Moms just do what they have to! 

I had 3 diaper stations in our one story 1400 sq ft home.. seems excessive, I know. But I needed set spaces to keep everything so it wouldn't look like a Huggies box of 2000 diapers exploded in my house. I kept my main station in the living room, it was just a Graco pack n play with the top attachment for a changer. I LOVED the multi use of it! It had diapers, wipes, a couple distracting toys for baby (my favorite was eye catching cards simply taped to the sides), diaper cream and a burp cloth or thin receiving blanket.

Great for rooms with no space for a big changer.                                                

The receiving blankets were EVERYWHERE; draped over the couch, a couple in my room, a couple in the office.. you never know when baby's about to hurl. I found myself making "rounds" like walking circles in the house replacing old items with clean ones and restocking several times a day. This helped keep me mentally happy and pleased knowing I was "set up for success" for that afternoon or the next morning. I thanked my past self each time I reached for something and there it was! Honestly, that mental reward to myself was healthy. I needed to feel like I had some control over this tornado of needs my baby came with that I was completely unprepared to be at beck and call for, along with all the stuff that has flooded into our home to care for her.

Her nursery ended up being the least used room in the house. She spent nights in our room, sometimes in a bedside bassinet, sometimes in bed with me. I used some old cubby organizers to keep her things.

What worked best for me may not be every mom's story and that's the beauty of having YOUR baby in YOUR space. You do what works best. For example, I kept all her pj's in my room in a cubby because she takes baths in my bathroom. It just didn't make sense to use her bathroom and room to change into her sleeping clothes. I didn't keep a diaper cream in her room, it took me a year to go through one tube so I sure don't need three! All her lotions and ointments were in my room, that just made sense for me.

I also didn't have space for a changer in my room, but the bed was fine. There was a couple times everyday that I would be changing her outside of a designated station. If it was convenient to changed her on the couch or in her floor playpen, of course that's fine because despite wanting the tornado to be mellowed I also wasn't going to drive myself mad with achieving impossible perfection.

What I did do to help myself keep tidy was return anything I used outside of a designated spot back to where they belonged. If I didn't, I'd be so frustrated later when I went to change her at her changing table and there would be no wipes, but the diaper was off and the poop was out. Again, to keep my sanity, I made my mommy circle about the house resetting things just for me. When I went back to work and as baby got older quite a bit changed, but for the first maybe 5 months the circling worked wonderfully.

If you have a larger house, I suggest using baskets or a fabric storage box to toss your wipes, some burp cloths and diapers into. Put one in each room if you want.

As she gets bigger, my rounds still happen, but new household chores have taken the place of old ones. The habit of keeping up on the little things has helped with upkeep immensely. It's helped make a revolving system that is ever changing as she gets older. Now my daughter is about two years old. The Graco changer is in her closet in what I call "the forbidden pile of crap that I'm keeping for the next baby" and just the playpen part is in my room. There's no station in the living room, I just move her to my room and change her on the bed. That's really the only changing station now aside from her room. Her room is more used, for a while we had a changing pad there, but now I just change her clothes half standing up on the floor or chasing her.

And now we come to my title "fold the damn laundry". Laundry seems to be the most daunting task, after dishes, for most households.

I hate starting the laundry. I get annoyed that it seems I just did it and here it is again. However, I don't have to do much and that's motivating. I just toss it in a hole, wait, toss it in another hole, wait, fold and put the damn things away. Surprisingly, it takes maybe 10 minutes to fold. Once I started doing it right out of the dryer I never went back to letting it sit. Having it balled in a basket is like seeing my mental mess in the corner everyday, my procrastination sleeping on the floor next to me. Trust me, just fold it and put it away same day, you'll never go back.

The tasks like clearing off the tables where we set random things or taking down the Christmas decorations. Those things that take a little more time and thought, just start and it will slowly but surely get done. I know with kids and babies it's a stop and go process, there's no way I can clean for a whole hour without stopping, even with my husband home watching our daughter, she requests my attention often. But if I start and don't overwhelm myself with too big of a goal, I will feel much better at the end of the day knowing I did that one small thing. I still thank my past self for those little things and I tell my current self that my future self will thank me later and it's all very mentally healthy because the tornado literally doesn't stop.