I’m not a naturally organised person (at all), but you wouldn’t think that if you spent a day with me. If we spent a day together (and wouldn’t that be nice) you would probably think I’m one of the most organised people you’ve ever met. So what’s that all about?
Well, to me there is a big difference between being an organised person and being a person who is organised. I could never be the former because my nature is quite messy, chaotic and ‘seat o’ my pants’ish, BUT I can be the latter. I can be a messy, chaotic, SOMPish person who uses systems and tools to keep on top of things. So that’s what I do.
The benefits of being organised are quite simple and wonderful. Being organised provides a solid scaffolding around every kind of family. Rather than reinvent the wheel each day, organisation takes care of all the little routine things, freeing you up to concentrate on the bigger, more important things. The wheels may still fall off from time to time, but not often. How nice that is!
Here are 10 ways I use fairly rigid organisation to free up my days for play.
1. Have a rhythm if not a routine
I am not one for routines (I’m chaotic, remember?) but I am a huge believer in finding a rhythm and sticking with it. A daily rhythm basically acknowledges that set things happen in about the same order every day. Easy ones are ‘start with a cuppa’, but consider how outdoor time, quiet time, play time, homework time, eating time, cleaning time, hygiene time and sleep time fits together at your place. Develop a rhythm so that all the things that need to happen can happen in roughly the same order each day, if not at the same time. Kids thrive on a rhythm and it will give you a gentle beat to work to each and every day.
2. Write things down
Don’t force yourself to remember anything you don’t need to: write it down instead. We have lists on the kitchen door for who wears what uniform on what day; who goes where and when; what needs to be packed in school bags; school timetables and after school activities; and a giant calendar with the lot. Writing things down gives the kids access to the lists too (you can use pictures for non-readers) allowing you to put the kids in charge of their own daily rhythm.
3. Make sure everything has a home
There’s no point cleaning up if there is no place to put anything. Kids struggle to keep tidy at the best of times, but excess clutter spread throughout the home gives them permission to add to it. If you can’t find a home for all the bits and bobs, ask yourself whether Bits and Bob need to be shown the door. To rid yourself of excess clutter, try the one bag technique. Once you’re confident you’ve given away all you can, find somewhere to put every single thing left in your home and expect that that’s where it will be returned time and time again. Spend 10 minutes after dinner re-homing the day’s mess and don’t be afraid to use labels to make the job as easy as possible for the kids.
4. Just meal plan already!
I thought about meal planning for a very long time, but something always made me resist it. These days I’m such a huge convert that I honestly can’t even tell you what that thing was anymore, but it was something like “What if I don’t feel like making the meal I chose for any given day?” Say what?
Just meal plan already!
- You always know what’s for dinner
- You tend to be healthier because you plan your menu better
- You can plan for busier days
- You shop once for the week (or fortnight if you’re tricky) and that’s that
- You can make meals in bulk and freeze for another day
- You can streamline your shopping by having shopping lists that match weekly meal plans (I am close to making this nirvana a reality and will share!)
- You no longer waste food so you save money and the planet
- You can swap meals around if you really don’t feel like cooking the thing you said you’d cook (this has actually never happened, but I thought I’d better bring it up)
Have I convinced you? I do hope so. On Sunday nights (or sometimes Monday mornings, I’m no robot) I plan all three meals for the week, allocated to each day – this includes what’s going in the kids’ lunch boxes. I have six weekly menus and I just rotate them week on week, swapping things out some weeks if we are having guests, a night out or simply if I want to. I shop online for pantry and fridge items, getting the groceries delivered on Tuesday nights. For fruit and veggies and meat, I visit my local produce market and butchers with my shopping list in hand.
5. Use go bags
I’ve written about my fabulous everyday go bags before, but I can’t write a list like this and not mention them. Without our bags, my life would be far more stressful than it is. The trick is to refill the bags as soon as you get back home. A little bit of discipline then gives you back so much time on a daily basis.
6. Stick to a cleaning regime
This isn’t about being the perfect Fifties housewife, far from it. I looooooathe cleaning the house and can think of 100 things I’d rather be doing, but I hate living in a dirty/messy/disorganised house even more. A house like that makes my brain hurt. So we clean.
There was a lot of skepticism over my 1 hour cleaning routine, but let me tell you, if I can exercise and do my cleaning at the same time, I’m there. To support a whizzy cleaning regime like that, I do a 10 minute ‘after dinner clean’ with the kids and I do a 15 minute ‘proper scrub’ in the mornings.
In the morning after drop off and before I get stuck into my work for the day, I pick one room and I give it a good going-over. Skirting boards, top shelf dusting, rug beating thorough cleaning for 15 minutes.
After dinner we put three songs on that have a good groove and we all pack the day away. The kids take their things upstairs to their bedrooms (and generally throw them on the floor – I’m working on it!), my husband cleans the kitchen and I sweep the floors, wipe the tables and plump the cushions. (I don’t really plump the cushions. I don’t even know what that is.)
Doing my 1 hour speedy clean at least once a week and these two things at least four times a week keeps the house spick and span and me happy.
7. Get the kids involved
You can probably tell already that my kids play a big roll in caring for their things. They might be a bit older than your kids right now, but let me tell you that they have always played a role in family life. Little kids can set the table, sweep the floors, wipe the benches… little kids can do lots of things. These days my kids help us set the table, make the beds (theoretically), take the bins out, sweep the floors, feed the pets, pack the lunch boxes, wipe down the tables, dust, fold the clothes… lots of things. Their help is a big part of keeping our family life running smoothly on any given day.
One thing I have always struggled with is getting the kids to keep their rooms clean. I made the mistake of giving them ‘free rein’ in their own bedrooms, honouring our basic human need to have a ‘room on one’s own’ and assuming that they would naturally want to keep a tidy space like the rest of our home. Big mistake. My kids do not want to keep a tidy space, no way, not at all. I have had moments where I have cried fat tears of frustration while helping them clean up the mess they have made in those bedrooms. We’ve had some big wins lately (and I will share them with you very soon), but I just wanted to point out here that if, like me, you can’t handle the mess in a child’s bedroom, well, don’t allow them to make the mess in the first place. That is all.
8. Ditch the screens
It’s my ‘thing’ I know, but since finding freedom from weekday screens, you can bet that our family has had a whole lot more time for planning and being purposeful. Screen time eats into a lot of time that could be spent on other things and getting organised is one of them. Even ditching one show a night can give you back a full hour to get on top of things.
I’ve written before about how finding a meditative kind of purpose in boring things has helped me reduce my stress levels and settle into my life more readily. Well, just like I’d rather clean my house for a frenzied hour than do a gym class, I think I’d rather veg out packing the school lunches than in front of the television. Sounds a bit weird, I know, but if you find you’re using television or the internet to ‘relax’ in the evenings, try relaxing with your daily chores instead and see how you go. It worked for our grandmas and their grandma too.
9. Plan ahead
Our years have their own kind of rhythm, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. There are the changing seasons combined with annual events that we can anticipate and plan for. Believe me, you want to get ahead in this area because both the seasons and events like birthdays, Easter and Christmas can all add a huge ‘extra’ workload to any family. If we don’t plan, we can’t distribute the workload across a greater part of the year and we end up enduring frantic, unenjoyable weeks leading up to any ‘fun’ event. Not fun.
Make a list of all of the events in your life and have a think about when and how you need to plan for them. A change of season requires a wardrobe change at minimum. For some of us, an impending winter means we need to stack wood, close up the pool, rack over the garden… and don’t get me started on upcoming spring. What are the seasonal changes at your place? Do you acknowledge them or do you just battle them on an add-hock kind of basis?
10. Schedule in some quiet time
Whatever rhythm you end up finding for your family, make sure you allocate lots and lots of pauses into your beat. One of the biggest mistakes we make is not allowing enough time for dreaming, gazing, lazing, pondering and dancing. A family needs space to breathe both literally and figuratively. Make sure there is ample opportunity for your children to get thoroughly bored. Because being bored is probably one of life’s greatest luxuries of all.
Would you consider yours to be an organised family? Have you found your rhythm?
Erin says
Brilliant list!! totally concur, all learnt the hard way;)
We’re an organised family now, but hard learnt, I remember when I had baby no 5 I was drowning and knew I had to get a handle on it, which we have. Though certainly more rhythm than routine people.
I was actually thinking about organising this week and the definition. To illustrate, I’d consider myself organised these days but was thinking this week perhaps I wasn’t because…. I don’t like to plan holidays/big events too far out. We have a sibling wedding coming up next year, one sibling immediately booked accommodation the day ‘save the dates’ arrived, was imperative for her mental happiness to do so. Me, I would have moseyed on for months not attending to this detail. So because I’m different in a major way from my sibling I’ve always imagined I’m not so organised, but really it’s been slowly dawning on me it’s a matter of definitions, and my husband would also add it’s all relative;)
Maxabella says
It’s definitely all relative! There’s ‘organised’ and there’s ‘anally retentive’ and I think an immediate booking for something happening over a year away may fall into the later category! I think there is no way you could have the large family that you have and home school to boot if you weren’t an organised person. Just no way. x
Simone @greatfun4kids says
Man, you’re awesome. x
Maxabella says
Why thank you, Simone. Right back at you! I will show this to the kids this afternoon when I make them clean their rooms… x
Reannon @shewhorambles says
I love this post Bron.
I already do a few & have managed to stick to a meal plan these last two weeks & I feel much better for it!
Maxabella says
It makes such a difference, doesn’t it? Meal planning just takes so much stress away. x
Laney@thelaneyfiles says
Yes yes yes! I am aspiring to all these things! I think I am a lot like you Bron, not a naturally organised person but one who needs to adopt some ways to be organised to stay on top of my busy lot. Would love to share this post please!! Thanks for your wisdom x
Maxabella says
It’s all just training for a lot of us, Laney. We realise the reward of a less stressful life is worth the angst of routine. Thanks so much for sharing. x
Vanessa says
I try to have a place for everything… I really do try. But it has never, ever happened in my life haha.
Maxabella says
I was talking to a friend about this today, Vanessa. As I said to her, “eventually you’ve gotta decide whether it’s cos you’ve got too small a house or too big a life…” x
Gail Virgona says
This is the BEST post. So often you click through to an article on the ‘top 10 tips’ for something and it turns out to be light weight crap. This post actually feels quite life changing. I speaks to me BIG TIME. I have printed it out. Emailed it to my husband and we are having a family meeting to discuss it tonight. Thank you so much. I have three young kids and this is how I want to live my life but the reality is often quite different as my husband is creative and spontaneous and completely disorganised and a terrible planner.
Maxabella says
You’ve completely made my day. I hope I’ve made yours too: good luck with the meeting!!! x
Emily @ Have A Laugh On Me says
I’m actually more organised than I give myself credit for, I’m not INSANELY organised and you couldn’t tell from my house because it’s no show home, but I meal plan, have a plan for everything, ban screens in morning before school, make notes of things to do – I could do better with some things but I feel as the kids grow it’ll get easier! xx
Maxabella says
Oh I reckon you’re pretty organised, Em. There’s no way a WFHM could do what she does and not be… x
Helen K says
This is a good list (I love a list!) I’ve had the devastating (to me), diagnosis after a lot of medical and psychological testing that, contrary to what I had always believed about myself, I am not an organised person – and I could no longer maintain the pressure I was putting on myself, all my life, to keep track of things. And so for the last couple of years I’ve kind of fallen apart with how to structure things – I have struggled with an alternative. It hasn’t helped that my husband is a ‘fly by the seat’ person and hates to forward plan beyond a day or two (but strangely, is never late – I think he has an inbuilt rhythm). To get things done, I have to schedule within an inch of my life to achieve. Exhausting. I need to find my own rhythm that works for the family – still working on it).
We do have a ‘place for everything, the bags packed the day before, the list of jobs for everyone, etc’, and we are progressively adding more responsibilities to this list – not that it is being received well, but, we keep going. I would love, love, love a meal plan (but I don’t do most of the meals, and my husband prefers spontaneity. So this is a work in progress too – mostly to ensure the things I have bought ahead of time don’t get used up before I cook my meals) – as is the longer term planning (about to pull myself together and take over with this, as it is fundamental to me, to give me purpose). Hey, I think I might have a post in this too – or at least, the basis for a good discussion at home 🙂
Maxabella says
I think there’s a big difference between being organised and wanting to control things. The former is completely achievable for all of us, the latter for none. When people feel they are “out of control” even though they have some great structure in place, it’s time to regroup. Helen, I reckon that’s exactly where you are right now? Maybe? x
Zoe Meunier says
God, I’m still in the ‘resisting meal planning’ phase and I soooo want to be out of it. If I spent the time I spend wishing I was meal planning, actually meal planning, I would be meal planning right now. But I love these tips. I aspire to be you, an organised, seat of the pants kinda girl. I’m getting there, sloooowly.
Maxabella says
Stop resisting!! Your cooking is coming along so beautifully, Zoe. A good MP will help even further. Do it!!!!! x
Charlene says
Best “LIST” I have seen online in a long time! Thanks Bron – I love it….I love organisation, in fact I thrive when my life is organised – when everything in my home has a place or if I know what we are having for dinner tonight…Meal planning was life-changing for me and my family – it just MAKES SENSE! I am working on more ‘screen free time’ – we spent our first two nights in our new home with no tv and it was just nice to sit on the couch and enjoy our new home! It gave us all warm fuzzies!
I am pinning and sharing this post Bron, because like you, it is brilliant! Have a great week.
Maxabella says
Kind words and a cool comment to boot. Thanks Charlene. x
shannon @my2morrows says
Wow. This is uber impressive. Were on our way with most of these. But yes… struggle with the kids rooms and meal planning. I’m in fly by the seat of my pants mode when it comes to meal planning but you’ve inspired me! Xx
Maxabella says
It’s a game changer, Shannon! x
Jen @ Love Wednesday says
This is such a good post. Your comment about being an organised person and being organised is going to come out of my mouth forever now! My husband will call me un-organised but I think I am sooo organised! There’s no way I could be on time with my 4 kids all the time if I wasn’t! This is my new ammo! Thanks! Oh and I still don’t really meal plan… but you’re really talking me in!
Maxabella says
Do the meal plan, Jen. You won’t regret it. The great news is you don’t have to do it EVERY week, just the weeks you want to chill about dinner. 🙂
Jenni says
OMG so many good ideas.
You have given me permission to go and buy a new bag!! I’ve had my eye on this particular bag for a while but couldn’t justify yet another bag, but now I have decided it will become the ‘go to bag’ for family outings! Great!! Thanks heaps!
Maxabella says
Yes to the new bag! You’ll love having an activity bag ready to go, Jenni. It makes a huge difference for us. And new bag!!!! x