So for anyone that knows me, they know I would honestly forget my head if it wasn’t attached. For years I have tried a trillion different things to help myself get organized and stay on top of my tasks. Unfortunately, very little has helped in my plight and each year gets busier and busier and I am further and further from being able to juggle all the balls that are thrown my way. It’s very common for me to end a week feeling like I have not accomplished everything I had intended to do. I think at times my children are lucky they get fed 3 times a day!
The beginning of the school year is usually when I tend to throw myself into panic mode and start searching for an answer to my never ending quest of organization. Last year I conquered keeping the kids organized in their daily routines. A week before school began I tore apart my kitchen and formed the ever popular COMMAND CENTER. Pinterest was a God-send for ideas on organizing this and making sure I didn’t miss anything.
Here’s what the command center entails:
I have 2 Rubbermaid drawer organizers that hold lunch boxes, water bottles, all of the non-refrigerated lunch items (crackers, pudding cups, fruit snacks, cookies, ect.), as well as plastic silverware and napkins. This afforded me the space needed in the kitchen to pack the main items in the lunch boxes and then leave it to the kids to pick their extras. Having all of this in one spot also meant I didn’t have open boxes of crackers left on the counter and cupboard doors sprawled open as the kids ran to the bus stop in the mornings.
I also have a large corkboard hanging on the wall. This is where we keep the calendar, school lunch calendar, classroom schedules and rules, permission slips, and other essential reminders brought home from school. This is the main hub of the command center. I work on the calendar at the end of the month to have it filled out for the next month. It contains practice dates for football, plays, gymnastics, and dance. It also has info on field trips, special days at school, doctor appointments, no school days, game days, lunch dates for me, and birthdays/holidays. I swear if the house were to burn down, I would run back into the flames to grab that calendar! It looks really nice right now, but it only takes about 2 weeks for the bulletin board to go from nice and tidy to tidal waves of paper, but its controlled chaos that I can handle.
Another very handy item that I added to the command center was a 3 pocket file holder. With 3 kids running through the house, dinner to be made, animals to be fed, homework to be done, extracurricular activities to get to, this is where the kids deposit their homework, permission slips, teacher’s notes, notes from the school, and graded papers, for me to check. Too many times in this craziness the kids would leave their homework on the kitchen table or counter only to have someone “accidentally” spill a large glass of red Kool-Aid on it. Or a permission slip would be left on a pile of junk mail that got tossed in the trash, or a note from the teacher that needed my signature just magically disappeared…. Doesn’t happen in your house?? Really?? Anyway, back to my reality…. Once things have calmed for me in the evening I sit down, check homework and the kids have settled enough that they will sit back down and do any corrections necessary. It also allows them to focus on the task at hand because we have quieted for the evening and they have the attention span to actually get organized themselves and make sure everything goes in the right place so nothing is left behind the next morning. This has saved me many, many trips to the school with forgotten permission slips and homework.
The final pieces of our Command Center are the 2 white boards. One is a calendar, one is just a small plain board that was meant for notes but has turned into my weekly grocery list. I don’t use the calendar as much as I first did because the corkboard is proving to be more useful. I think I may replace the white board calendar with a new corkboard for extra space…. Hmmmm….. I just considered that idea while writing this….. guess I have a new thing to write on my small white board! The small whiteboard is used constantly in our house. If I am cooking and notice we are running low or out of something I am able to jot it on the white board just across the kitchen. My old grocery shopping system consisted of either buying everything that looked good in the store and hoping we didn’t already have 2 of them at home, or using a flurry of Post-It notes and hoping I gathered them all before I walked out of the house. Now, my grocery list is conveniently placed right next to the door so I snap a pic with my phone on the way out and I have it with me without having to deal with any paper.
Now with the kids’ school organization out of the way, this years goal is to get their extracurricular schedules organized and get myself organized for keeping up with my home-based business, the farm, as well as bills, housekeeping and carpooling. Last year, I actually PAID some website for a chore list to keep me on task. Seriously, who pays for someone to give them chores to do? But, it worked! My house was spotless, meals were always on the table at a decent hour and bills were always paid on time. After my year was up on my chore list, I decided I would not spend that kind of money again, I could just keep consistent with my routine. NOPE. Things got crazier, I got busier, and the messes seemed to get bigger. So now, I am searching furiously for ideas to help me get back into the game. I’ve been doing lots of research and have a few things I would like to try. I am having minor surgery next week so that will give me a few down days to get going on some of my ideas and as they progress I will be sure to post!
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