I’m no math genius, but if I had to guess, I make somewhere between 356,712 and 554,925 decisions per day as a mom. And when it comes to school mornings, let’s just say I’m in need of any simplifying tips I can get.

I am one of those people who, when the mood strikes to do something, must do it. Like NOW. This goes for many things–writing; eating leftover Publix birthday cake straight out of the fridge; and apparently decluttering and organizing. So a couple weeks ago I did what everyone else in America is doing right now–I went straight up Marie Kondo on my closet.

When you have young kids, you learn to work as a team. One partner usually ends up being better at, say, getting the kids to bed; and the other ends up being better at, say, getting up at the crack of dawn with them. I fall into the former category.

If there is one guaranteed way to make my kids stop in their tracks–whatever they’re doing, however far from me, in whatever location in the entire Milky Way–and find their way to me to demand my immediate attention, it is to have me sit down and attempt to work. So when one has to be productive in short, intense bursts, you’ve got to make your workspace just right.

It’s hard for me to be too deliberate about New Years’s resolutions and all, what with the general and total lack of control I feel in my life (JOKE! …Kind of.), but when I get down to brass tacks I start to realize that I am in dire need of improvement in certain areas of my life–namely organization–and what better time to start pretending I’m someone else than at the start of the new year… amiright?!

No time for ten things, so let’s cut that crap in halfsies and go! Here are 5 Things I’m loving or otherwise up to…

Quick: What’s the one thing you should do when you feel like your plate is so full that it’s actually spilling over to the edge, sort of smeared and smashed onto the countertop, and piling up in little bits onto the floor below?

That’s the thing about traveling as a mom; you can’t wait to get time away, but when you get back you pay the price in exhaustion.

When you spend a substantial amount of time running errands in the car or in school pickup lines, you get to either know your friends very well or get to know a podcast or ten. I do both.

Let me start off by saying, my kitchen has only looked this clean once, and that was for the half hour it took to take these pictures.