Prim and Proper Method

Go through all paperwork and decide what is trash, and what needs to be filed, and what needs to be dealt with right away! Create space for your new piles. We have a few different systems in our office- I have a "need to get to" tray with 3 slots one for each business and then a home one. The for Billy's Business we have wall organizers and each month is a different folder! This makes it so easy to file the papers quickly and they stay organized until tax time! And the third is we turned 2 drawers into small filing cabinets and one hold all of Billys past tax papers, and the other one is for all of our household papers. One drawer is in our office, the other is in our TV stand in our living room! Sometimes you have to get creative!! Wall organizers Filing drawer in our T.V. stand If you have an actual office do you need it to be more than just an office? Ours serves many purposes- It's a craft room, game room and an office. We don...

So today's challenge is working on your Drop Zone! I love drop zones, the space can also be called a command center, mud room, or if you want to be fancy the owners suit. Usually is in a place that everyone can see and uses! I call it the drop zone because everyone in my family, including me, comes in and drops everything we are bringing into the house in this spot.If you don't have a spot for all of this yet, then you might be using your kitchen table, or kitchen island as your drop zone, which might be driving you crazy when its time to eat dinner!  Our drop zone is right when we come in from the garage. It's not a large space, but it is in the perfect spot of the house, and I added things that we needed to allow it to have a home for all of the things I wanted to keep in this area! First thing you need to do after you have cleaned everything out and decided what you are keeping, you need to make a home for everything you want in this room. Then you will n...

 Start with one cabinet and drawer at a time.  To give everything a home, I like to use tools that help me give things a home and keep things together and organized. I also only have 1 of most things in my kitchen. Most of the time you only need one of each thing at any given time, so why clutter your space with things you will not use often? When organizing, follow the steps and keep only what you want and have room for. I like to use this organizer ( I found it at TJ Maxx) and use it to hold the 2 cookie sheets I have, and my cast-iron pan. It holds them up right so that they are easy to take out of the cabinet and also easy to put back.  I also use this rack to hold my lids. I have recently discovered that you can get 1 lid that will fit all of your pans, and I am really thinking about getting one. I'm not sure why I haven't done it yet. Maybe because I have the space for the lids now... but the idea of having to reach just one lid for any pot I am using...

As important as it is to have a schedule and how most of us thrive when we know what is coming up and what is expected of us and our day, flexibility is equally as important. Things happen, things we can't predict or imagine would happen, do happen. We need to be able to move with those things. We need to teach our kids that when our lives change we are still in control of us and we can make the choice to move with it. Fighting it just makes us more frustrated and feeling out of control and helpless. When you teach flexibility you teach them to be more balanced and able to continue to get tasks done.

Today is all about preparing for the week ahead. My family sits down with our planners and any important things coming up during the week. Now is the time to get into the habit, and even though we are home and not going out, we still have plenty of going on. Make your list of what you want to get done and what the kids need to be doing. When life is back to being mostly out of our homes, this can make the days easier because you will know what kind of time you have in the ev enings and how to make dinners easy and in the time you have! Then ask everyone in your family to pick meals for dinner, what snacks, breakfast and lunch meals they want for the week. Then log into your grocery store app that you like best, and order your food. Choose a pick up time that works best- I choose Monday-  I will write down what dinners everyone wants in my planner- however, I do not always stick to that day. As much as I like consistence I am not really a creature of habit. Same reason I...

Day 5!!! Chores... Many of us don't enjoy doing chores, and our kids really don't like doing them. I have yet to figure out how to keep one of my kids from complaining about doing them- but he does them, just not quietly! And then there is my toddler, who will sing "It's a hard-knock life, for me. It's a hard-knock Instead of treated we get tricked, instead of kisses we get kicked." Every time I ask him to pick up toys or wipe something down.  We do a little bit of chores eve ryday- I have broken our house down by days. Monday- Kitchen, and Seth Laundry day. Tuesday- Bathrooms. Wednesday- my laundry day, Dust, windows. Thursday- Upstairs, bedrooms and vacuuming, Mikayla laundry day. Friday-Anything we didn't get to, or can organize areas! Weekends are free of chores outside of our daily habits. You can pick one day, and do all of your chores, you can do a load of laundry everyday. It's up to you, biggest thing is to be consistent. A way to he...

Day 4!!! Family time. I didn't know this would flow so nicely with what is going on in the world- today is our first day of being allowed to leave our house for essential reasons ONLY, here in Colorado! My husband is still considered essential because he works on cars. He is working, but not all day. Because he owns his own business, it is essential to our family that he works. Luckily, he works alone and doesn't come into contact with a lot of people at one time. He is being  safe! When I first made our schedule I put family time in the afternoon, for this reason. As long as he can work he will work, but I didn't want him missing out on family time! And it is easy to keep it when things are back to "normal"  I challenge you to organize your games. I use one of my linen closets for all of our board games. I also created a system for our card games, that you can do at home! I got the little boxes from Michale's. https://www.michaels.com/recollec...

Today is all about "Alone time", "Me time", "Quiet Time"- whatever you want to call it! It is time that EVERYONE needs right now. I know a lot of you have kids at home and are thinking- when do I have time for me?- It is so important that you make the time. Even if it is only 10 minutes. Me time can look like many different things. As long as it is time that YOU get to think to yourself about what you want to think about, or doing something t hat YOU want to be doing, and you are alone. Some ideas are: Journal Read a book Text a friend Organize Go for a walk Find a yoga/workout video Meditate Listen to a podcast Listen to music Also give your kids and spouse Alone time. I know, they usually get a lot more then moms tend to get. Now that you are all home together you can have them help you. Remember you don't always have to be doing everything together, just because you haves to stay in place. In my house my alone ...

I still use a paper planner and a journal. I use my phone for a lot of schedule things- but I just function with paper better! I also think it helps me remember some of the things I need to keep track of, if I write it down! And sometimes I am writing the same thing down 2-3 times because it goes in more than one place, and that really helps me remember! Did you add time for work and school into your schedule ? My kids have added a couple of hours, plus they can read or journal during their "alone time" We are waiting to see what the teachers are asking of them before we get too crazy! I had my kids email their teachers before remote learning started to check in and start communication again. Most wrote back which was nice for the kids to get. Our district is giving everyone some grace time to figure this out and we will start next week. Until then we will be  reading, writing notes to our neighbors, and playing games! I also need to rearrange our office to make roo...

Here is a free example of the   Google Docs schedule  that I use. You can change anything in it to reflect your family and schedules. I love to use color to help me see what should be happening. Try it a few different ways and see what works for you!