I used to be an extremely organized person. Then I had kids. All that organization went out the window for a while. I was truly flying by the seat of my pants for years.
I never really felt comfortable without a good organizational system, especially as my family got bigger and busier. See, I work full-time remote at a fairly time-intensive and demanding job. My husband’s work schedule changes daily and includes nights, weekends, and holidays. The kids are getting older and having more activities on the weeknights and weekends. And we all have doctor’s appointments and haircuts occasionally.
As time ticked by, I took baby steps toward getting my busy family organized. But I didn’t rip off the band-aid and get down to business until we had a snafu that resulted in trauma for mom and the 4-year-old.
The trigger
As is typical in pre-school classrooms, my son occasionally has show and share opportunities to bring in a favorite toy or item from home to share with his friends at school. Show and share days are the best pre-school days.
When I picked my son up from school one Wednesday, his teacher had a sign on the classroom door announcing that the next day would be a show and share day. We talked about what my son would bring for show and share the whole ride home, and he excitedly decided that he would bring his brand-new t-ball glove in his backpack the next day for show and share. Later that night, I wrote his name on his glove and placed it on the shoe bench in the mudroom, ready to go.
The following morning was a rare morning that my husband could drop the kids off at school and the kids both had a rough morning. In all the hubbub of big emotions and a change to the normal routine, the glove did not make it into my son’s backpack. I didn’t realize that the glove had been left at home until several hours later when I happened to walk downstairs between two of the 12 calls I had scheduled that day. My first thought was to get in the car and drive the glove straight to school, but I had a call in 12 minutes and there was no way I could pull it off.
I was devastated, completely overcome with mom guilt. It ate at me all day, and only got worse when I picked my kids up from school that afternoon and was met with my son’s disappointed “we forgot show and share” pronouncement. It was a bad day for both of us.
It was also the kick in the pants that I needed to get my life in order and come up with a way to organize my busy family. I put the kids to bed that night and spent my evening researching organizational systems, figuring out how to make what little organization I had work better and buying items to supplement what I had where we needed more help.
This is the plan I came up with that emotion-charged night. I haven’t used it for very long yet, but so far it’s been working very well. I want to share what I’ve found to work to organize my busy family so that you can better organize your busy family (and hopefully avoid traumatic situations).
The plan
Master calendar
My paper calendar/planner is my lifeline. It holds every piece of information that we need as a family. My calendar holds the following information:
My husband’s work schedule (it changes daily)
Appointments for any family member (including my father-in-law’s appointments that my husband coordinates)
My son’s sport schedule (it’s currently t-ball)
Trash/recycling days (these are frustratingly not consistent)
The dog’s pill schedule
Bill due dates
Birthdays
Anniversaries
Holidays
A running to-do list
Nightly dinner
Date nights
Family fun plans
My blog schedule
A gratitude list
My daily movement (my New Year’s resolution)
Books I read/listen to
My period
Needless to say, I would be lost without my master calendar. It took a few years to find the exact calendar format that works for me, but I finally found my perfect calendar. My Happy Planner Dashboard Layout calendar is everything I ever dreamed a calendar could be. It gives me a block for each day of the week, a dedicated area for meal planning, a weekly to-do list, and 3 areas to use for whatever categories that work for me each week (they change each week, but one section is always reserved for my blog).
This is totally optional, but I have recently fallen down the rabbit hole of decorating my weekly calendar spreads to make it more enticing for me to use the calendar to its fullest potential. My husband makes fun of me for it, but it’s 5 minutes of fun each week to make my calendar look pretty and it really helps me stay on track and organized. Whatever you need to do to find a master calendar that works for you, do it. Try a few different formats, play with stickers, buy all the pens until you find just the right one. A functional master calendar is a must for keeping your busy family organized.
Meal planner
As I noted in my 6 Steps to Streamline Your Weekly Meal Plan post, meal planning is key to keeping my family on track. Although I dedicate a section of my master calendar to our dinner plans for the week, I also use a separate meal planning pad that lives on the fridge so everyone who can read knows what’s for dinner each night. It’s a simple 52-page pad with daily blocks on one side and a perforated grocery list on the other side.
As I make my meal plan for the following week, I jot down the groceries I will need to pull off each meal on the list side of the page. When it’s time to head to the store, I simply tear the list off the pad and hop in the car. It could not be easier. Make this $9/year investment. It’s so worth it.
Digital calendar
I keep most of my organization on paper, with one big exception: work. My work schedule is entirely digital. Although it’s not directly relevant to organizing a busy family, if you work, you need to have a snapshot of your workday readily accessible to complete your big picture. I can’t clog up my master calendar with my hectic work schedule (I can have 10 separate calls some days), but I need to be able to access it quickly when I’m trying to keep my busy family organized.
For example, if I’m calling the pediatrician to schedule my daughter’s 2-year-old check-up, I need to know my work schedule for the days close to her birthday, my husband’s work schedule for those same days, and any appointments or sports practices that have the potential to conflict with a time slot offered to me by the receptionist. We are threading needles here!
Command center
The newest component of my busy family’s organizational system is a command center that hangs on the wall in the mudroom where we exit the house each day. It is a simple dry erase board with a block for each day of the week, colored dry erase markers that magnetize to the board, and a magnetic eraser.
We don’t clutter the command center with every nuance of every day – it is reserved only for the highlights. The highlights in my family include my husband’s work schedule, my son’s sports schedule, family fun plans, date nights, and school reminders. That’s it. Each category gets a color so it’s easy to digest at a glance. I update it every Sunday so it’s ready to assist us for the week. So far, it has really helped things run smoothly, and I can see it becoming even more important as the kids get older and my daughter gets involved in extra-curricular activities.
This organizational system is just what works for my busy family in this season of life. I’m constantly looking for things to add, take away, or change to make our organization work for us. Take what you think might work for you, leave the rest and build your own system to organize your busy family. Good luck!