Where did the Clean Home Challenge go?!

From the very beginning, I've wanted this blog to be a real picture of real life. REAL. R-E-A-L. 

I write about things that I am working on or things that I'm learning. And I want to do that honestly. 

And honestly, I'm still struggling with organization. 

Life has been crazy busy lately. 

You may have read here about what all God has been doing in our life...

About me going back to work and not having but a weeks notice to get ready. 

Hubby is starting Graduate School, the kids are enjoying the last few good weeks of summer. 

We've been vacationing, helping watch children of our friends, learning to eat healthier...

we've been busy! 

As I'm sure all of you have, too. 

One day this week I realized that I hadn't posted a challenge in a while. 

And it was either work on a challenge, or do my quiet time that I hadn't gotten done yet that day. 

And I chose to spend some time with the Lord. 

It won't matter one bit if my sink was shiny and my floors clean if I'm not focusing on the condition of my heart. 

And as much as I desire a clean, neat, organized home, it's still a struggle for me. 

Here's a picture of my kitchen at lunchtime today. 

Not so great, huh? I clean it up each night, but obviously my organizational systems throughout the day could use some work. 

Today I want you to tackle an area every house has, although it may be in different places. FLY Lady calls it your Hot Spot or Hot Zone. It's the place that you dump all the stuff you don't want to deal with right away. 

Ours is our dining room table. 

Mail, newspapers, diaper bags, purses, shoes, socks...

everything gets dropped there.

Today I decided to tackle ours. 

Here's the before picture:

It's not usually quite this bad, but today I dropped everything from my car onto the table. 

Here's the after:

I still have a few things on my table because this is where I do several things that help keep our home organized. The first you may have read about here: These are our organizational bins, and I love them!

As you can see, they fill up quickly. I didn't empty ours last night, so this is how full they have gotten in a day and a half. 

The other items are for my couponing. I use the dining room table to keep all of them because we don't have a designated office space currently, and I need them high enough that Mack can't get into them. 

A 15 month old and several hundred slips of paper= chaos!

When we have company over, I put these items away, but for me it makes more sense to leave them out during the week. 

What about you? Where is your HOT SPOT? 

FLY Lady recommends that we spend a few minutes each evening working on clearing off our hotspot. I need to commit to doing this. 

Love y'all!

Any of you still with me? I've loved the pictures you've shared on our facebook page. Thanks!