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.