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Household Notebook


I love lists, and schedules and 3 x 5" note cards, numbers, magazine ideas and all sorts of other ocd crazy things. This past year has been a challenge to stick with the type of schedule that my life showcased before. My dear friend Adelia, recently shared with a ladies group her control journal and I thought I would update what we are doing. Since I have taken on the office for our business, life doesn't always fit into nice neat little boxes that I can carve out and say, "from 10-noon is my work time" because when the phone rings, that is my work time. I often have to forward the phones to my cell phone when I leave the house. Which doesn't always make for the best play dates. And then if I forget to take care of something when I get home it makes it harder to fix. If I leave and transfer phones to Allen, then he has appointments and work orders started that I don't know about and we can get double booked or loose information. Our whole system needs tweaking. So I don't get to come and go freely or have the casual time with friends or even the kids as I would like because the office is always looming in the background.

We have went to block scheduling and a lot more flexibility than what we've known in years past.

6:30-7:30 - Pray, coffee, print off invoices for the day, check calendar, emails, shower, start breakfast
7:30-8:00 - Wake kids and have breakfast, clean up table, start 1st load of laundry
8:00-11:30 - School
11:30-1:00 - lunch, clean up, switch out laundry - free time
1:00-3:30 - Core work, projects etc.
3:30-4:00 - Snacks, clean up, switch out laundry
4:00-5:00 - House Blessing-
5:00-6:00 - Make supper with kid of the day
6:00-7:00 - supper, clean up, switch out laundry, after supper chores
7:00-9:00 - Family Time/movie/games/dates/baths
9:00- Kids tucked in, ,mom reads, prayers
9:30-10:30 paperwork, time with Allen, misc tasks, time for me
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This is all flexible. Sometimes, school gets finished from 7-9pm because we've had errands or lots of phone calls during the day.
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Here is a link to Makensie's chore chart, I print off one for each kid and the girls love it.

One of my many areas of failure is my housework. I am not a naturally skilled at this. I tried the Flylady and Large Family Logistics and have taken away things from both. I like their systems, but could never get everything done on specific days and then by Wednesday I'd be stressed because Monday and Tuesday's cleaning tasks weren't completed.

I then found this card file system that I loved the idea. My house keeping still leaves much to be desired and honestly if we had the money this would be the 1st thing I would hire out. Not that I mind doing it, it is just a big chunk of time that I feel could be better spent with family and friends. Anyhow, what I like about the card system is that I broke my chores down into Daily, Weekly by room, Monthly by room and extras. I did not assign a specific day, week or Month. Then I'm not behind. Well, at least not on paper and for someone with the OCD list obsessions I seem to have, this is very freeing. The goal is to make it thru all the daily and one room of weekly tasks a day, but if I don't make it thru them all I just pick up where I left off and then move that card to the back of the section when I'm done. Saves me the thought process of what do I do? And where do I start? I wish I could view the house and just run thru and just do, but for some frustrating reason my brain does not work like that.

Comments

Soaring High said…
I loved your notebook cover. After Adelia's talk I finally pulled mine together after having started it 2-3 times in the last 2 years. I am really liking having all the important info in one spot. My chore and cleaning chart (which gets neglected most often), our medication and allergy and Dr. info and even all utilities info is in the one notebook. It's my brain and I'd be lost without it.
Full of Grace said…
I wish I was better organized- I have to keep daycare paperwork, and even that isn't very organized. I love the cover of your notebook too! I just started using a dry erase board on my fridge to write a checklist of things I need to get done daily, but of COURSE the dry erase marker kicked the bucket already, so hopefully I can get another one soon :)
I so understand. I have the hardest time keeping up with it all and cleaning and organizing just takes so much more of my time than I wish it would. Hopefully once the kids get older they can help me out a bit and it won't be as frustrating. Lilla reminded me the other day that if I wasn't there nothing would ever get cleaned. Ain't that the truth! LOL

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