Guest post by Jennifer from I Heart Organizing
1. Invest in a Great Daily Planner
My daily planner is my lifeline. It goes with me everywhere I go.
Planners have been around forever, but they are really the most genius way to keep it all together. Every paper that comes home from school with a date on it, instantly gets written in the planner.
What's for lunch on Wednesday? It's in the planner. What should I blog about on Monday? Oh yes, also in the planner. What night is garbage night? Family night? It's all written down in the planner, and color-coded by category (i.e. blog post, meal plan, school event, etc.) When the planner is not physically attached to me in some way, it's sitting on our counter to be viewed by anyone in the family.
If budgets are tight, with a little creative thinking, a spiral notebook could be transformed for anyone looking to adopt this idea.
2. Make Family Night a Priority
Family Night gets scheduled in each week at our house, just like an appointment.
Family comes first and with the hustle and bustle of all things entertainment, family functions, school activities and sporting events, important family bonding can quickly become obsolete. Making sure to pen it in each week and learning to say, "No" to other obligations that may come up on the same night, is extremely important to us spending quality time together on a weekly basis.
3. Solve the Schedule Equation
On top of tossing all of our important schedules and appointments into the planner, we quickly found that it was still easy for us to get lost in our nightly routine. A quick video game or blog post writeup could simply turn into hours of lost time.
Trying to juggle homework, making dinner, baths, one-on-one time, story time and blogging was definitely a lot to manage without any type of direction. I knew I had to figure it all out, in order to completely maximize our evenings together (not to mention our super speedy wake-up-and-get-on-the-bus mornings!)
Something I found incredibly easy to do, was to break out the day in half-hour increments and plan out a "typical"
day in our life.
Just looking at all the times slots paired up with all the things that I was dreaming of accomplishing in any given day was great for ensuring we get time to do all the things that matter, from time with our little ones to personal time on our hobbies or interests. I popped my visual breakdown right on the side of the fridge, because it's great to have a time management reference point if I ever feel like we are getting a little lost.
I was beyond surprised that when the day was broken out there was so much time in the day that I then instantly wondered how I had been wasting it away in the past! Of course not every day is laid out perfectly as there is such a thing called
life, but having a plan for our days has definitely proven to keep our daily goals in check and ease in our time management prioritization.
4. Create a Meal Plan
A very obvious time saver for us is
meal planning. We have a meal plan/shopping list that hangs inside our pantry door, ensuring that when something runs out, we can it right to the list. Using the coupons that we have clipped along with trying at least one new recipe each week, we plan out our weekly meals before we head off to the grocery store.
Only spending time shopping for what we need, saving some money not buying what we don't need and then doing as much of the preparation ahead of time means all we need to do is peek at the planner each day and make whatever is on the list!
5. Set Up a Dump Zone
We use a memo station to stash kid's papers that we get home throughout the week, along with all of our mail.
Each Sunday I take a quick 10-15 minutes and recycle or file all the papers in each slot. We also have a dump basket with the same philosophy.
Since piles can form so quickly, and as much as I believe in the "return things right where you found them" idea, it's not always practical. Keeping one basket or bin dedicated to dumping our "stuff" each week, is easy to stash away when company comes, and is gone through at least once a week to return items to their home. This is also a great task for little ones looking for ways to become more helpful around the abode!
Jennifer is currently a stay at home mom, that not only cares for her own children {three uber beautiful little boys}, but also has the opportunity to spend her days with a couple other little ones as well, as a daycare mom. She is also currently working to start up an in-home organizing business, manage an organizing blog {where she talks about things like managing cleaning schedules and creating easy ways for kids to get organized} and working on expanding an Etsy shop as well.
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