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When my kids were little, I actually had the opposite problem. I had to learn to let go of some of my (almost) OCD tendencies. For example, I liked the children's books to be organized by size on the bookshelves. My daughter went through a phase at about age 2 (when my son was an infant) where she took every book off the shelf and left them on the floor. Every single night, exhausted, I painstakingly put them back, in order by size. One night, I came to an epiphany that this was a fruitless effort and I was making myself nuts. I decided at that point that as long as the books were on the shelf, it didn't matter if they were in order by size (and some alphabetized because she had a book series about animals.. A is for Annabelle the Anteater or something like that).
However... what I did find was that it only took about 15 minutes each night, after the kids were in bed, to get everything back to where it should be. As long as I kept up with it each night, it didn't get overwhelming.
It would help to know exactly what feels out of control. Piles of papers/bills? Go green and use online billing to slow down the amount of paper coming in. Junk mail? I get the mail every day and go through it, standing next to the trash can. Junk, junk, junk.. in the trash. Important stuff goes into a ledger (my bill book) until paid or acted on, then shredded, thrown out or filed.
When a friend of mine went back to work after being a single mom, she asked how I ever keep the house clean. I shared this one: I clean each major room very thoroughly once a month. Each week, I dust and vacuum in each room but the other cleaning.. wiping out the fridge, using glass cleaner/furniture polish, etc. only gets done once a month. So I'm only focusing on one room each week: Bathroom, kitchen, family room, living room. It is never all clean at once then, but each room gets a thorough cleaning monthly.
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