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How to Keep Your Family Organized
School is looking different for everyone this year. Some are in person, some are online, some have a hybrid, and some are homeschooling. Most of us are doing things a bit differently than we would normally, but no matter what things look like right now, it’s super important to keep your family organized to keep everything running more smoothly.
With 5 kids, you can guess that things get pretty crazy around here. And as the kids get older, their schedules get more busy and they’re also capable of doing more around the house (which is one of my favorite parts of the kids growing up). So I wanted to take a few moments to share some of the things our family does to stay organized.
Family Economy
This is a system we learned about from Ralphie Jacobs on the Simply on Purpose website. I’ll give you a brief run down.
Each child has a list of chores they are responsible for each day. They receive an allowance each week determined by how old they are and they only get the full amount if they do all their chores. These are chores that you need to be ok with if your kids choose not to do them so you aren’t nagging, you’re allowing them to choose.
We have charts posted by the kids rooms. We are no where near perfect. Ralphie signs off on her kids’ chores every night and we aren’t quite there yet. But I like the concept and it allows my kids to have some spending money that they earn. We also have Saturday chores that are mandatory before screen time or friend time that are not connected to their allowance. Make sure you check out her instagram account for more info and I’m pretty sure she has a free document that gives you all the details. I love this because it helps keep the house clean, homework is more likely to get done, and it helps keep our home and family organized.
Write it Down
I love paper planners, much to my husband’s dismay. He’s definitely a digital calendar guy. I totally understand that, but I just can’t seem to get myself to do it. I need to be able to see it.
I just put up a big calendar for the whole family that has all our activities. I figure as the kids get older, there’s going to be more going on, so this will help them get used to checking it. My kids look at it all the time. Even Jack, our 4 year old, likes to see when he has preschool.
Command Center
My calendar is apart of a command center that I just created. Make sure to check it our on my instagram account along with other ways we keep our family organized. Our command center is a wall in our dining area that also has a file holder and cork boards to keep all the school and kid paperwork together. Whenever I need to reference something, I know right where it is. A good file system is a must!
If you’re interested in these items, the circle shelf, file holder, and chalk I use on the calendar are from Amazon (affiliate links). The chalkboard calendar and cork boards are from Target.
Limit extracurriculars
Right now we have each of our two oldest girls doing an instrument and one other extracurricular. I have them on different days so I’m not racing around to multiple events. Our son just asked to do karate so I need to look into that too. Things are starting to get a but tricky as the kids get older and will continue to do so, but I enjoy spreading out the activities a bit and limiting my kids to 2 activities each.
Meal Plan
My last tip is to meal plan. This makes the dinner time craziness so much easier. I actually just came up with a simpler way for my meal planning that I’m going to talk about soon, but this just takes the decision fatigue out of already busy days. And you know you already have all the ingredients because you just bought them. If you need ideas, there are tons of great websites that will create meal plans for you depending on your family size and how you want to eat.
We tried the 6 Sisters Healthy Meal Plan and lots of people I know love the Clean Simple Eats Meal Plan if you need help coming up with meals to feed your family.
I hope those 5 tips help you in some way. Make sure you head to my instagram account @alexistannerlane to see my command center and to also let me know what you’re doing to keep your family organized. Make sure you catch our next episode where Alan and I talk about our experience with our new puppy. 🙂