Family Celebrations

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family organizing

 

Your kids will remember all your family celebrations and traditions.  Birthdays, confirmations, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day  are events that bring your family a special joy of celebrating a person. Holidays like July 4th celebrate family values like patriotism.   Holiday traditions like Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa celebrate spirituality.  Precious family memories are formed this way.

 

 

Planning ahead

All family events require planning and execution.   Keeping your plans simple and including the family team in the execution make family celebrations joyful.  Brainstorm with your family which events to celebrate including birthdays.  Mark your calendar for these events on both your personal and family meeting calendar.  Create a list for the event including invitations and purchases. Develop a time line for invitations, purchases, and preparing your home and food.  Can you delegate to your team members according to their strengths? Can you kids address invitations? Can your spouse do the food shopping?

 

Make family time more manageable.

As the event comes closer, break the jobs into small chunks. Manageable pieces, like setting the table, decorating, and cleaning one room at a time, can make the event less overwhelming.  Get a good nights rest the evening before the event.  All families require energy to be flexible and enthusiastic. 

 

Fun is the focus

Welcome the fun of a family celebration, regardless of what goes awry! Sharing in family events is about the time together! Don’t worry about it being perfect. Focus on the happy times.

 

 

 

 

 

Keep It Simple Sweetie

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Simplicity makes a difference in all our lives.  Creating a simple plan, working on a simplified project, and communicating simply are all important aspects of simplying our lives.  I love the mantra of Keep It Simple Sweetie because it reminds us in a fun way to keep things as simple as possible.   Often complexity makes a task overwhelming and paralyzing. The details become the project instead of the outcome.   Think of the tasks to accomplish, whether for home or work, and see what the most direct path to accomplish that can be.
  • Start with the end in mind. What do you want to accomplish and what is the deadline? What is the path to accomplish the goal?
  • Ask for help from your team, whether it is your family or co-workers.   A team effort makes the work more fun, gets the job done quickly and lessens your work load.
  • Stay on task for completion.   Keep off those bunny trails.  If you are easily distracted, create reminders to keep going and get it done.
  • Remember that done is perfect! Balance your perfectionism with the time allotted to get the job done.

Simple steps for your work at home or elsewhere create effectiveness and efficiency.  Your benefit is your great sense of productivity for accomplishments! And you get to do the really fun stuff now!

Team approach for your family

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dscn3190

 

Creating your family team takes consistent systems and routines.  Team building includes the family meeting where the assignments of “who is doing what” become reality.   Today a client shared with me what works for her familiy. It is a system called “I did my chores.”  My client assigns chores with points for each of her 4 children.  Two kids working together each earn points too! Full instructions include various rewards for points earned, such as staying up 30 minutes late,  dessert and more.  Why does it work? The kids love it and the parents consistently reinforce this. 

What works for your family routines? Email me so we can share it!