Without a little direction, a family (especially with children!) can quickly make a mess in the house. From toys and school projects to cooking and work papers, there are so many things coming into and out of your home, it can be hard to keep up with it all.

House cleaning systems take the clutter and create a flow for it in your house. Some examples include mail sorting and how laundry works in your house. If you want more systems for organization but need a few ideas to get some them in place, here are some suggestions:

Believe it or not, laundry is one of the biggest cleaning systems you have in your house. Even if it's unintentional, you have a place (or places!) where dirty clothes start and a place where the clean clothes end up. Streamlining this system can make laundry day a much more pleasant experience!

Where does your family most often leave their clothes? If your children tend to throw their clothes on the floor in the bathroom, then that's where you should put a hamper. Help them get the hang of putting dirty clothes in the hamper. If you have older kids, you might want to get a separate hamper for each room.

Have a particular place for clothes before they're folded and set up a system for putting them away: will you put all the clothes away, or do family members need to come pick up their clothes? Delegating is a great way to speed up tasks!

Setting up a place for your family to store things they need most when walking out the door will help with clutter going in and out. Give each person a basket or a drawer near the door to store keys, sunglasses, and gloves. You can also use this spot to sort mail: give each person their mail in their basket or keep a sorter to separate personal mail from urgent mail and bills.

Dishes is probably the easiest system to set up, but might be the hardest to get everyone to comply! Whether you assign different people to wash dishes every night or encourage everyone to rinse of their plates and put them in the dishwasher after dinner, setting up a system to handle dirty dishes will keep your sink from overflowing and kitchen clean-up from being a disaster.

The important thing is to design systems that work for your family, so stick to what's best for you!