Do you wish you had more time? What if I told you there was a way of stream-lining some of your responsibilities and creating more time in your week? Your work as a Household Manager (which sometimes feels like a secretarial position) can feel all-consuming.
~~~Where do the kids go and when? Has that bill been paid? Did we send Grandma a birthday card? When is the last time we changed the filters? How can I find anything in my wallet/purse when it is so messy? Did we save any money this week? What should we do for Izzy’s birthday party? What preparations do I need to make to get ready for family pictures? Are the kids up to date on everything? Have we returned the library books? Did I pay that bill? What is coming up at school? At church? And more? And more? And other stuff???~~~
My life is very full. I really cannot imagine functioning if I was doing all that I do while trying to keep these thoughts circulating in my head. Why don’t I have to stress about it or worry about it constantly?
Five Words: My Weekly Home Management Session.
Once a week, I make an appointment with myself (Wednesdays for me), and I work through a checklist that helps me take care of things that need to happen. And if I can’t do something right then, I assign it a time to get done. Since I keep this appointment with myself on a weekly basis, the amount to do is not overwhelming. I imagine it would get overwhelming if I skipped a whole bunch of weeks and tried to cram it all into an hour. Or if I tried to do a little bit here and a little bit there, I’m pretty sure that would make my brain feel everywhere.
My Weekly H.M. Session Checklist:
- Inbox: You MUST read more about this in my post Taming the Paper Trail of Clutter (or How to Effectively Use an Inbox)!!!!! This is the crux of the H.M. Session system working. Your brain cannot fully relax with piles of paper all over the place.
- Household Checklist: This post is coming, but for now I’ll summarize. The household checklist is full of home-maintenance things like when I last changed the filters, reminders to unplug all the hoses before winter, reminders to clean lots of random places in our homes, and other things that need to happen for home maintenance, but I don’t feel like carrying any of it around in my brain. Every week I look over the list to see if anything needs to happen within the next week or if I need to plan ahead for anything else. I don’t usually do these things right that second (unless I can), but add them to my to do list for that week.
- Birthday, Holiday, & Event Planning: Any holidays or birthdays coming up? I check my calendar looking ahead and make plans and send birthday cards. (I have a printable coming up about birthday party planning too! So much useful stuff in the works!)
- Clean Out Wallet & Purse: Pretty self-explanatory. This is pretty easy when done often. My mom has always done this every single night. so sometimes I feel rebellious only doing it once a week.
- Set $ Aside: We operate on a cash-ish budget, so this is the day I’ll set money aside for things coming up.
- Plan Menu & Grocery List: I’ll do my shopping over the next few days, but I like having that list ready to go. (Of course I have a simplified way of doing this, better subscribe and stick around to find out!)
That’s it. Pretty easy. I think it takes longer to write about some of these things than it actually takes to do them. But Whoa!! What a difference an hour (or less) a week can make on the whole rest of the week! This is what organizing is about: streamlining and efficiency with the *boring parts of life so that we can use the bulk of our time on what really matters. (*Boring to most people, but not to me!)
Happy Living!
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~~In other news, if I ever had a shop on this site, I’d sell cute little pads of paper with this checklist on each page. Maybe I’ll think more about that next Wednesday. ~~
