4 Tips for Family Organizing

Each fall families get back to the business of running their families.  School and activities start, family’s get back into routines and there’s lots of information to keep together.  It can be overwhelming with lots of information in different formats and different locations.  There are many ways to pull this information together for communication and cohesiveness.  Check out these 4 tips for family organizing.

Family meetings and Family calendar

The Family meeting, with everyone sitting together with their calendars and the monthly family calendar, makes for great communication.  It’s a once a week get together where everyone shares.

• One of my family clients has two extra large dry erase peel and stick boards on a big wall adjacent to the kitchen.  Everyone adds information all the time. Each person has a different color.  It’s the one thing this family consistently keeps up to date. These calendars make up one piece of a command center.
• Another family client has a very large paper calendar and all dates are written in pencil.
• Google calendar is a great option for families on the go! It helps you color code, consolidate and keep everyone up to date all the time.

Family dinner

I recently saw a parody of the family dinner.  It had been so long since the family ate together at the dinner table that there was no seat for the third child!  If that’s true at your home, you might be interested in The Family Dinner project. Family dinner is an important time for laughter, chatter and fun.  Spending time together this way nurtures us all.  We know time can be a troubling challenge for dinner prep.  It can be a little bumpy getting everyone on the same time line.  But even if dinner together is just once a week, that is a great first step.

• Plan on big breakfast, big lunch or early dinner on a Sunday to get everyone together. There may be fewer activities going on.
• Create a dinner grid with your family. It’s easy meals that family member’s can partner to prepare.   No one should be left in the kitchen alone. Everyone shares getting dishes done and lunches ready in the evening.
• Share the responsibility of grocery shopping. Write the list on a pad on the refrigerator, snap a picture with your smart phone and text it to whoever is driving home from work.

Family homework and activity grid

It’s hard to consolidate all the information about your kids’ homework and activities.  A client shared her solution with me ~ the family homework and activity grid.  She visited all the online sites for her kids’ teachers and activities and created a grid with kids’ and parents’ names on top and days of the week on the side.  In each square are listed school and after school related activities. Ongoing homework, such as daily reading, weekly vocabulary and online quizzes, is listed in the appropriate day.  Posting this chart will help her family keep up on all that teacher’s require.  

Family technology

There’s are so many new tech ideas that help us as families!

• Cozi  helps you manage the chaos of family life with a shared calendar, shopping lists, to do lists and more. Cozi keeps track of everything from school schedules and sports activities to grocery lists, meals and chores — all in one place the whole family can access anytime, anywhere.
• Google calendar and Google docs are great online ways to keep up to date in real time. Google docs is a shareable document space.
• 30Boxes has a family calendar and interactive to do list.
• Fircle allows you to share an online calendar with your spouse at work, print shopping lists that will remind you when you’re running low on specific groceries, manage your children’s allowance and household chores and much more.
• HomeZada is a home management software.  It doesn’t have a family calendar component, but it does have home management, home maintenance, home finances and a home inventory.

Have a strategy that works well for your family organizing? Share it here and help us all get better organized!

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