Systems That Are Working In Our Home

0

Are things running smoothly in your home right now? Is there a routine that acts as a stumbling block for you or your kids that you would like to iron out? It can be tricky to diagnose the issue you’re having or try to change things when life is busy. If you can find a little time to brainstorm solutions to common problems in your home, it may pay off exponentially in time saved in the future. Here are some systems that are working in our home in our current season of life (four kids at home ages 3.5 – 7 years, Dad working night shift, Mom at home with kids).

Get Ready, Let’s Go! Poster

We’ve recently moved out of the baby and toddler stages where I had to physically get every child changed, dressed, and buckled in their car seat. However, I was still frustrated that I was having to give constant cues and reminders for each step of the getting ready to go process for 4 kids. I decided to make a visual flowchart that they could reference and allow me to save my breath and my sanity when it was time to leave the house. I made this simple chart for free on Canva and opted to have them print and ship it to me for a total of $6. I hung it on the wall next to the garage door, and explained all of the icons to the kids. Thirty minutes before we need to leave, I tell them to turn off the TV and tablets and get ready to go. They know where to start, and if they get stuck, I say, “Check your list.” They’ve gained a lot of independence and I’m less frazzled when it’s time to leave.

Laundry

Laundry is one of those necessary tasks that can get out of hand quickly if you don’t give it the attention it requires. I used to sort our laundry into mom, dad, and kids loads and every few days I would wash a load of each. That worked okay, but it was a bit arduous to wash, dry, fold, and put away three loads of clothes in one day. We just took a week-long trip and stayed at an Airbnb. While on the trip I washed all of our clothes together and realized it wasn’t really a big deal to have them all mixed up. I use the same soap and cycle to wash and dry them anyway, so the only difference is in having them pre-sorted to make it a bit faster to put away. Since we’ve been home, I was able to get caught up on all of our laundry, and have just been doing one load every morning which is sufficient to wash all of our clothes from the previous day. Once a week I’ll also need to wash towels and sheets. I think having the clothes caught up will help the laundry feel less daunting, and everyone will always have almost 100% of their wardrobe to choose from at any given time.

Meal Planning

Meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning up after meals and snacks are a huge part of my responsibilities, and my enthusiasm for these things ebbs and flows. Having part of the process automated helps during those times when I don’t want to think about it. Each week, we usually have a pasta meal, an entree with rice, a meatless meal, a breakfast meal, a sandwich night (such as burgers or BBQ), and a couple of quick meals like frozen pizza to give me a break. Using that format, I went back to Canva and used their calendar template to fill in 3 months of dinner plans using the meals we eat most often. I also enjoy trying new recipes and will continue to do that, but these meal calendars are a good starting place and can stand alone to get us through a difficult season if my energy and brainpower are needed elsewhere. I’ve been gradually copying our most-used recipes to Google Drive in an easy-to-read format; no more scrolling through long blog posts and dodging pop-ups or trying to remember which cookbook the recipe I need is in. My long-term goal is to have all of the recipes in the meal calendar readily available in Google Drive so that my husband could more easily take on the task of meal planning and prep if I’m unable to do it. As an extra step, I could create shopping lists to go with each week of the meal calendar.

What systems are working in your home right now? I’m always interested in learning new ways to make our lives run more efficiently!