Time Management for 2015

Home management involves a lot of things, not the least of which is time management. Now that my precious kids are all in school, I find that my need for organization and time management is at an all-time high. It's true that I do have more free time in the sense that I don't have anyone at home demanding my attention from 8am to 3pm. However, I have a lot of things on my to-do list that still will not get done if I'm not organized about it. Time is so very easily wasted. {And we can't always blame it on the kids.} I am learning that having a list to follow everyday of the things I need to accomplish is the best way for me to get it all done. I love checking things off of a list. There's a big sense of accomplishment from that. The older I get the more I need a list to follow because I cannot do it all from memory.
Do this little exercise in time management to see if you are using your valuable time wisely.

• Journal your day starting from when you wake up until you go to bed.
• Write down what you did that day in 15 minute increments. You may want to stop every hour for a second to write it down otherwise you may forget. We do SO MUCH everyday!
• At the end of the day, look over it and analyze how your time was spent.
• Did you find you had several sections of time that were not productive? I know that I do have some that I could be using to do those small things on my list. I'll give you some ideas below.
• Do you have too much on your to do list? It's possible you need to rethink your list and determine what things you need to remove or move to another day/time.

Now, if you have slots of time that are not productive, here are some things you can do in small amounts of time:

• Clean out a drawer.
• Fold a basket of clothes.
• Distribute clothes to a room.
• Wash windows in one room.
• Dust one room.
• Vacuum one room.
• Sweep the porch.
• Clean a half bath.
• Refill paper products - toilet paper, napkins, paper towels.
• Clean mirrors.
• Hang up clothes.
• Write a thank you note.
• Send a card or email or text to someone you need to connect with.
• Write a grocery list
• Pick up everything in one room that doesn't belong and put it away.
• Throw in a load of laundry.
• Switch clothes to dryer.
• Wipe down counters
• Wipe down kitchen sink.
• Clean out refrigerator.
• Empty dishwasher
• Load dishwasher
• ETC.

During this time, you can also make a phone call to return a call, make an appt., pay a bill, etc.

The goal is to multitask when you can and use every slot of time in the best possible way. Schedule some down time if you need it, by all means, but make sure you're not just wasting time when there are a million things to be done.

If there are things on your list that never get done, ask yourself:

• Is this item absolutely necessary?
• Does it benefit my family or cause me to neglect my family?
• Is doing this item causing frustration in me or in my family members? {Maybe from lack of planning, feeling rushed, doing too much...}

Sometimes we place unneeded stress on ourselves by taking on too many committments. I mean, school is demanding, family obligations can be demanding, ministry can be very demanding, sports, etc. We don't have to do it all or be involved in everything that is available to us. In fact, it's impossible to do it all and maintain a balanced family life. Sometimes, we just have to say no. Sometimes, we can say 'later' and even fewer times we can readily commit where the whole family benefits and doesn't suffer. You just have to take these things one at a time as they come because some seasons of life are busier than others and one month we may feel like taking on the world, but the next month be completely maxed out. Balance is the key. Life is a balancing act.

• Determine your priorities ahead of time. {Family, Church, Work, School, etc.}
• What are you willing to sacrifice and not sacrifice from time to time?
• What kind of demands fall into each of those categories?

Plan ahead and when opportunities/demands present themselves, you will already have a plan in place to determine whether or not you should commit.

How do you manage your time? Do you use a daily to-do list? Do you plan each item for a specific time? Or does it work for you to just fly by the seat of your pants? I'd love to hear your tips!

Here are some great day planners for 2015 you can get for a good deal!

The Inner Guide 2015 Planner - 5 Star Reviews! From Amazon...

• OTHER PLANNERS HELP YOU PLAN YOUR DAY; WE HELP YOU PLAN YOUR LIFE!
• 8"x9" light-weight and convenient carrying size, 204 pages
• 2-page spread per week for appointments including a structure for developing awareness, accountability and reflection
• 2-page spread BEFORE each month to help you plan ahead and a 2-page spread AFTER each month to help you assess the quality of your month. Plus, a BONUS 2-page Mid-Year section
• Unique goal-setting chart featuring nine important areas of life to help you brainstorm your yearly and monthly goals

At a Glance Monthly Planner 2015 - Perfect for looking at your whole month. I like to use monthly planners for doing bills, keeping track of family appointments, events, etc.

2015 Mom Do-it-All Weekly Planner - Great reviews and perfect for all the busy moms running from this place to that with a van full of kids or teens.

This is part of my 31 Days of Home Economics series. You can find the full list at the tab above {Home Economics}.

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The Easiest Way to Clean a Ceiling Fan

When I first discovered this idea, it was one of those Ah-HA! moments. I'd been straining and stretching and fighting the vacuum hose for years and when I saw this idea I knew my life would change - and my ceiling fans would get cleaned more often! No more furry fan blades for me!

Maybe you clean yours this way? I seem to always find things way after they're already widely used.

{Source}

Take a pillow case from your linen closet.

{Source}

Open it up. Slide it onto one of the fan blades. Kind of secure the open end around the blade and putting one hand on top and one on bottom, slide the pillowcase off the the blade. While doing this, you're wiping the dust of the blade and catching it in the pillowcase at the same time, preventing dust from falling all over the place.

How do you clean your fans? How often do you clean them?

This is part of my 31 Days of Home Economics series. You can view the whole series at the tab above {Home Economics}.

Thank you for stopping by!

The Well-Managed Home: The Kitchen

You're reading Day 16 of my 31 Days of Home Economics series! I've touched on a few topics already and currently we're on the topic of a well-managed home. The past two days we talked about time management in general and then started on some of the busiest and/or messiest rooms of the house - The Laundry Room and now the Kitchen. I hope that by going through some of the rooms in our house we can learn better ways to manage our homes and find helpful tips along the way. I hope you'll join in the comments and share your tips with us, too!
The Kitchen
Is this the busiest place in your house? It's pretty much Grand Central in my house. Everything gets dumped in the kitchen for some reason. It also has the most traffic of any room in the house and has to be cleaned more often than any other room in the house. I guess you could say it's high maintenance. I have organized and reorganized my kitchen many times over and I am starting to feel the urge to do it again.
Here's my thought process for my kitchen organization. I'm sure this is one area we are all very different and could benefit from each other's ideas.

• Have a place for all the 'stuff' the family brings in and dumps. I don't have a mudroom in my house so I've had to improvise. Several years ago, I found a great idea of a shelf being hung at counter height in an entry and I saved it in my idea file. Then, about 7 years later, we moved into our current house and I found the perfect place for it. Only the idea evolved to meet even more of a need.

We found this entry shelf at an outlet on clearance. It is clearly suppose to be hung in an entry about head height, but we decided to hang it at counter height. This gave us an extra counter space + baskets to hold all the 'stuff' we bring in and dump in the kitchen + hooks for hanging backpacks, purses, small jackets, etc. It works so well for us on a wall in our kitchen. I think it's my favorite DIY in the kitchen.

You can read about my chalkboard here. Another favorite in my kitchen.

• Think through your kitchen layout and see if you're wasting steps. Are your coffee mugs near your coffee & coffee maker, as well as, all the supplies for your coffee? {filters, sugar, coffee, grinder} What about pots/pans? Are they close to your stove/oven? Where do you stand to do your mixing and food prep? Are your utensils and cutting boards in that area?
• If not, then, you might consider reorganizing your kitchen so that it saves you steps. You don't need to be running circles around the kitchen while preparing meals, etc. That's a waste of energy and a waste of time. Keep like things together. I can think of a couple things in my kitchen right now that need to be moved. {My husband will be so confused again!} There is always room for improvement no matter how many times you've rearranged.

{excuse the Christmas decorations - I took this pic last year!}

This is our butler's pantry that my husband built for us so that we could have a little more counter space. This butler's pantry houses the coffee maker, electric kettle, mugs, tea bags, coffee & all the necessary items to make hot drinks. The upper section displays pieces we don't use every day. It's good storage, but also a nice way to display and dress up the area.
A few more tips:

• Keep the plastic containers for leftovers near the area you're going to load them up. Mine are in two drawers next to my refrigerator.
• Keep mixing bowls/baking pans/pie plates/measuring cups in the same general area.
• Utensils used most often while cooking on the stovetop should be kept right beside the stove in the top drawer. Also, keep hot mitts near this area.
• My refrigerator has the water/ice in the door, so I keep all glasses and cups in the cabinet next to the fridge. One step further - keep kid friendly cups on the first shelf so that the kids can get their own cup without knocking down glass ones in the process.
• Dinner plates/bowls/salad plates are all kept in the cabinet above my dishwasher. I like this because it's quick and easy to put them away when unloading the dishwasher. I don't have to move from my spot in order to put those away.

Do you organize your kitchen in this way? What time-saving and step-saving tips can you give us? I'm always looking to improve on this area. In fact, now I can't wait to get busy reorganizing my kitchen!

Thanks for stopping by! I'm sharing this with a few of these friends.

The Well Managed Home: Time Management

Home management involves a lot of things, not the least of which is time management. Now that my precious kids are all in school, I find that my need for organization and time management is at an all-time high. It's true that I do have more free time in the sense that I don't have anyone at home demanding my attention from 8am to 3pm. However, I have a lot of things on my to-do list that still will not get done if I'm not organized about it. Time is so very easily wasted. {And we can't always blame it on the kids.} I am learning that having a list to follow everyday of the things I need to accomplish is the best way for me to get it all done. I love checking things off of a list. There's a big sense of accomplishment from that. The older I get the more I need a list to follow because I cannot do it all from memory.
Do this little exercise in time management to see if you are using your valuable time wisely.

• Journal your day starting from when you wake up until you go to bed.
• Write down what you did that day in 15 minute increments. You may want to stop every hour for a second to write it down otherwise you may forget. We do SO MUCH everyday!
• At the end of the day, look over it and analyze how your time was spent.
• Did you find you had several sections of time that were not productive? I know that I do have some that I could be using to do those small things on my list. I'll give you some ideas below.
• Do you have too much on your to do list? It's possible you need to rethink your list and determine what things you need to remove or move to another day/time.

Now, if you have slots of time that are not productive, here are some things you can do in small amounts of time:

• Clean out a drawer.
• Fold a basket of clothes.
• Distribute clothes to a room.
• Wash windows in one room.
• Dust one room.
• Vacuum one room.
• Sweep the porch.
• Clean a half bath.
• Refill paper products - toilet paper, napkins, paper towels.
• Clean mirrors.
• Hang up clothes.
• Write a thank you note.
• Send a card or email or text to someone you need to connect with.
• Write a grocery list
• Pick up everything in one room that doesn't belong and put it away.
• Throw in a load of laundry.
• Switch clothes to dryer.
• Wipe down counters
• Wipe down kitchen sink.
• Clean out refrigerator.
• Empty dishwasher
• Load dishwasher
• ETC.

During this time, you can also make a phone call to return a call, make an appt., pay a bill, etc.

The goal is to multitask when you can and use every slot of time in the best possible way. Schedule some down time if you need it, by all means, but make sure you're not just wasting time when there are a million things to be done.

If there are things on your list that never get done, ask yourself:

• Is this item absolutely necessary?
• Does it benefit my family or cause me to neglect my family?
• Is doing this item causing frustration in me or in my family members? {Maybe from lack of planning, feeling rushed, doing too much...}

Sometimes we place unneeded stress on ourselves by taking on too many committments. I mean, school is demanding, family obligations can be demanding, ministry can be very demanding, sports, etc. We don't have to do it all or be involved in everything that is available to us. In fact, it's impossible to do it all and maintain a balanced family life. Sometimes, we just have to say no. Sometimes, we can say 'later' and even fewer times we can readily commit where the whole family benefits and doesn't suffer. You just have to take these things one at a time as they come because some seasons of life are busier than others and one month we may feel like taking on the world, but the next month be completely maxed out. Balance is the key. Life is a balancing act.

• Determine your priorities ahead of time. {Family, Church, Work, School, etc.}
• What are you willing to sacrifice and not sacrifice from time to time?
• What kind of demands fall into each of those categories?

Plan ahead and when opportunities/demands present themselves, you will already have a plan in place to determine whether or not you should commit.

How do you manage your time? Do you use a daily to-do list? Do you plan each item for a specific time? Or does it work for you to just fly by the seat of your pants? I'd love to hear your tips!

Here are some great day planners you can get for a good deal!
Plan Ahead Mom's 18 Months Planner, July 2013 - December 2014, Assorted Designs, Design May Vary, 1 Planner (85097)

Personal Organizer Notepad Jotter Planner w File Divider Cell Phone Pocket and Calculator

Plan Ahead Medium Home/Office 18 Months Planner, July 2013 - December 2014, Assorted Colors, Color May Vary, 1 Planner (85095)

This is part of my 31 Days of Home Economics series. You can find the full list at the tab above {Home Economics}.

Like this post? Will you please share it with your friends on your social media? You can also follow me on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and Twitter. Click the social media icon of your choice in the right sidebar.

I'm sharing this with a few of these friends! Thanks for stopping by!

Home Management Binder Roundup {Free Printables}

In my quest to bring you relevant and practical posts on my 31 Days of Home Economics journey, I decided to post about something that I need to redo in my home. I did this a few years ago, but since then there have been lots of changes in my household routine and in our schedule I'm going to be updating my home management binder. I wanted to bring you free printables and great sources for this project, but realized there are so many out there already that are great and I don't need to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Therefore, I'm going to give you the links for the great ones I have found that I'll be using. I hope these will be helpful to you, too!
{Stop by these blogs and say hey! These people put in a lot of time to make these free printables available for us. I'm very appreciative!}

While looking around I found that Organizing HomeLife did a 31 Days series last year on this very thing - free home management binder printables! I'm very excited to look through all of these and print the ones that apply to me.

Stacy's Savings & Other Stuff has a great selection of free printables that she created. You can also check out her whole series of organizing your life with binders. I can't wait to see all that she has to offer. I plan to look at each one in detail to see what I can use!

Newbee Homeschooler has some colorful home management binder printables that I love. I think the colors make managing my home a little more fun and happy! Check out her stuff!

If you'd like to see the other great ones I've found, check out my Home Management Pinterest board here. I'll be adding more soon! You can follow all of my boards here.

Do you use a home management binder? If so, what are you top pages or sections you can't live without?

This is part of my 31 Days of Home Economics series. You can find the whole series at the tab above called {Home Economics}.

Like this post? Will you please share it with your friends on your social media? You can also follow me on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and Twitter. Click the social media icon of your choice in the right sidebar.

Thanks for stopping by! I'm sharing this with a few of these friends!

The Well Managed Home: How to Delegate

This is a topic Hubs and I have been discussing a lot lately. It's a great idea and even a very welcomed idea, but why is it so hard to do? Just this morning, as we were heading out the door for school and work, Hubs and I noticed a few cheerios on the kitchen floor {clear evidence that the girls had poured their own cereal this morning}. He sighed and said, "Ugh, cheerios on the floor again!" {You can tell this is a common occurrence in our house.} So, I said, "Don't worry about it. I'll get it later." Then, he said to me, "Why you? Why not leave it and let them get it when they get home?" On any other day, there's no way I could leave that. It would be bothering me all day, but today I was leaving and wouldn't be here to look at it. So, that's what I did. And guess what is awaiting them when they get home from school? Cheerios on the kitchen floor.
I don't know what stage of life your kids are in, but mine are very capable of doing some big chores and taking care of their own messes. I just have a hard time letting them do it when I know I can do it faster and without whining {well, most of the time}.
So, in my quest to continue learning ways to delegate to my children and become more of a home manager {and not just the housekeeper, cook, seamstress, kisser of boo boos, homework enforcer, taxi driver}, here are a few things I am going to start around here in addition to Family Dinner responsibilites.
The Daily Work Planner Chart. I got this idea from one of my all-time favorite books ever, More Hours in My Day by Emilie Barnes. My copy is an old one, but she has made revisions recently.
The DWPC is perfect for letting each member of the family know what his/her responsibility of the day is. I love this concept and have tried it with other charts and print outs, etc. But I lack consistency. So, here I am clinging to the end of my rope and tired of doing it all myself and I'm starting this today! Well, I'll make my chart today and start it fresh in the morning. My sweet little minions girls are now going to be team players! {They are usually willing to help, it's just their mom who can't get her act together.}
An example chart {from the book} would be like this:

You could just assign the chores from the week to each person and rotate them OR you can make it fun by writing all the chores for the week on a slip of paper and letting each child pick from the jar. Whatever they pick is the job they get. They can't complain, either, because they picked it - it's their own fault. And they get to live with it for a week. {evil laugh} But doing this is teaching them teamwork. They are part of a family unit and we all work together to accomplish the goals of the family. At the end of the week, if everyone has done their job well, reward the family with a trip for ice cream or a picnic or movie night or something. This builds unity and lets them see there is something worth working for.
Some examples of chores to delegate depending on age of children:

• setting the table
• separating laundry
• folding laundry
• vacuuming
• mopping {mine all fight over this one}
• cleaning bathrooms {or even splitting it up and having one do the sink all week, one do the toilet, one do the bathtub.
• dusting
• water plants
• empty trash cans
• wash windows

I know sometimes the weekdays can be crazy {or Cra-Cray, as my 10 yr old says}, but one chore per day seems very doable. If not, make Saturday your big cleaning day. I personally don't prefer that. The house gets messy during the week. I mean, we LIVE here. So, my house needs rescued just about every day. And boy, am I glad you can't see it right now!

Here are some other helpful chore charts/cleaning schedules I found that you might like. Click the link below each one to print.
Daily Cleaning Checklist - I love this one from Real Simple. It's not a deep cleaning list, but one to help you keep your house surface clean. It gives you a plan instead of being overwhelmed by it all.
Fall Cleaning Checklist - Deep clean this Fall with this great checklist! You'll have it done in no time!
Print these free printables to help you keep that cleaning on track.

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Do you clean once a week? Do you delegate or do it all yourself? Have any great tips for me? I could use them!!

This is part of my 31 Days of Home Economics series.  You can find links to the rest of the series here or at the top of this page titled {Home Economics}.

Thanks for stopping by! I'm sharing this with a few of these friends.