Tag Archive for: Family Manager

ADD and Routines

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ADD and ADHD

 

For some of us, creating routines is natural and comfortable.  We love repetition and the sameness of routine.  However, some of us like spontaneity and the excitement of new and fresh!  Can there be a balance or a way to merge these two ideas?  With the challenges of ADHD, often there is a big void of routines.  It is unnatural and uncomfortable.   However, a few important small routines can make a difference.

  • Start with an awareness of how routines can make a difference for you. If you have ADD or ADHD,  think about how whether having one day established for a certain task might be helpful?  The time does not have to be rigid, but it should be compelling.   I suggest having one hour of administrative time once a week to catch up with tedious, required tasks.  Having a routine set for admin time, such as Sunday afternoon between nap and dinner, make certain that paper is acted on. A routine might be something that happens daily or weekly.  Laundry days can be every day in the morning or every Monday and Thursday.
  • Add on one simple, small step to an existing routine.  If you are already successful at a task, add on a related task as the next step in your routine.   It can be simply empty the trash in your car each time you get gas.  Toss the junk mail right after you put the kids to bed.
  • Add a partner to get a task finished.  You and your kids, spouse, or friend can fold and put away clothes, clean up the kitchen, or file and chat.
  • Give yourself permission and time to do a routine well.  If bill paying is the priority, that is all you need to accomplish in one day.   It is okay to accomplish one big job in a day.
  • Use a checklist to successfully begin a new routine.  Your checklist will prompt you visually with the steps in  your routine and you won’t have to rely on working memory. Your checklist will ensure completion too!  A checklist can be used at the beginning or end of the day and placed in a spot where you will see it regularly.
  • Don’t give up a routine easily.  It takes at least 3 weeks and up to 6 weeks to get a routine established.  Have tenacity and a compelling reason to keep your routine going.

What are routines that work well for you?  What is your “secret?”

Getting Dinner Done

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organizing your dinner plan

 

One of my personal priorities is getting dinner done.  It is a great time for communication, cooperation and role modeling for our families.  It all starts with setting a time for your family to gather and getting dinner on the table.  There are several short cuts that can help.

Planning dinner

Having  a plan is the biggest part of getting dinner done.   The success factor for dinner means you have a plan that works for you.   Gather your family together for your family meeting and brainstorm 10 meals everyone will eat.  These can be very simple, including dinner for breakfast, sandwiches or simple assembly with pre-cooked ingredients.   Moms sometimes like to throw in “surprise night” so that you have the opportunity once a week to be creative.

My colleague Susan Heid recently added her own cookbook for sale. With the discount code of CP20, you can purchase it online at her website.   Susan includes making your lists and conversation starters too!

http://www.theconfidentmom.com/mom-resources/got-dinner-quick-easy-recipes-from-the-confident-mom/

Susan enthusiastically wears the hat of mom, step-mom and foster mom to 4 awesome kids – ages 18, 14, 10 and 14 months; is married to her very own prince charming, loves coffee, cloudy days, and does think the bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle. You can find her at her other day job, The Confident Mom and get a FREE copy of her popular eBook “Getting Kids to Cooperate and Become Team Players.”

Online resources for creativity include www.e-mealz.com and www.thescramble.com.  All of these boost your meal planning organization in different ways.  Choose what works for you to get the plan going!

One amazing way to make your family and husband VERY happy is to post the meals of the week! You will receive not only amazing compliments, lots of hugs too!

Planning shopping

One of the trickiest shopping is for groceries.  Everyone’s ideal is different, but most agree that have a way to capture the list, and getting to the store regularly, make for the easiest organization. You can google your store and print out the list of groceries by aisle and keep this on a clipboard near the pantry.  Having two days that are the “regular” shopping days make sure there is always milk in your home.

Planning cooking

At 4:30 your kids become aliens who were raised by wolves! Having a plan on when to cook is the last step in dinner planning.  You can set aside time on Sunday to double batch, you can start your dinner early in the crock pot before you leave for work, or  you can entertain your kids in the kitchen with you while cooking dinner.  You can mix it up with partnering, where you and one child cook one night, and your partner and another child do the dishes that night.  Delegating and cooperating are fun parts to cooking dinner and everyone can have a job.   All of these are great ways to have preparation time.  Know what works for you and set up your time accordingly.   For me, even without kids at my feet, I love to cook on Sundays and adore my crock pot!  My husband and I share the clean up responsibilities too.

What are your best ways to get dinner done?

Family Calendar for Family Communication

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family calendar and family organizing

 

It’s 5 pm and you are headed home from work! Who will be there when you get there? Where did they go if not?  What’s going on this weekend for you and your kids?

 

Its time for your family calendar.

Why use a family calendar?

We all know we live in a busy world. Being busy sometimes means we are not able to communicate as consistently or effectively as we need. Here comes the concept behind the family calendar.  It is the one spot where everyone’s activities are recorded and the connections created.  Having a family calendar posted where everyone can see it means that there is subliminal information being shared!  It works best when the family holds a weekly gathering to add information.  Don’t be deterred by trying to find a day and time to meet.  Set a time on the weekend, when there is a little more flexibility, and just be sure to hold your meeting each week.  If you are using a technology calendar, no problem! Simply print out the week or month at a glance and post it.  Now you have the best of all, an on the go calendar and one for everyone to see!

Great family calendars come in many forms

 

No matter how much or how little your family does, a calendar gives you a spot to see it all.  It’s easy to know goes where and when.

 

Tips for organizing families here!

Kitchen Organizing: The Heart of the Home

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kitchen organizing

 

Our kitchens are the heart of the home!  We want to nurture and communicate with our families, have dinner together, and make this hub of activity more efficient and less cluttered.   Take a simple, step by step approach to making this space more effective. Kitchen organizing makes family life more cohesive, less stressful and more fun!

  • Pare down to what you need by assessing what is in each drawer and in each cabinet.  Keep the multi-function tools and donate the single use tools.  Do this in baby steps, just drawer by drawer.
  •  Arrange your kitchen tools by use.  Keep food preparation items near the sink, food storage items near the refrigerator, cooking items near the stove, and plates and glasses near the dishwasher for easy retrieval and storage.
  • Be brutal about your food storage containers. Keep all the rectangular containers nested together with the lids nested in a separate container and then the circular containers nested together with the lids nested in their own container.
  • Group small appliances together for easy access and improved storage.  Assess when was the last time you used your bread maker or waffle iron  and donate these if it is a while ago.
  • Establish work zones for frequent tasks.  A lunch zone is great for getting your kids’ lunches together, including sacks, Ziplocs, and snacks that go into the bag.  A coffee zone for the morning java might include coffee pot, coffee filters, mugs, and sweetener.
  • Your “command center” for paper keeps piles from forming.  Use a desk top sorter with hanging files for categories such as Action, Pay, File, and then one slot for each of your kids and husband or wife. Drop paper in when it arrives and then take an hour once a week for administrative tasks.
  •  Add a calendar space for your family calendar.  Be sure to hang this where everyone sees it regularly and add information during your family meeting to keep it up to date.
  • Review the expiration date of food in your pantry.  Set up the “grocery store” on the shelves and put a label where food goes.    Remember to keep a section for healthy snacks for your kids to easily grab and go.

Paper Triage

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paper management

 

We hear that philosophy, Only Handle It Once, OHIO, for paper all the time. But what if we thought of a new mantra for our paper strategy, paper triage.

 

What is paper triage?

Paper triage is when we sort the important from the trash. We make the first brutal decision of what to keep and what to eliminate. In this one step, we are taking paper from overwhelming to in control. We are making decisions about what is a priority or not.  Just like triage in the medical field, we are getting to what is most important first.  To be most effective with triage, we need to be honest about what we keep and why we keep it.  Empower yourself to make bold decisions and keep less.  Except for bills, many papers will come around again, such as electric rates, credit card offers, and information in general.

 

Resources for what to keep and what to toss.

If in doubt there are two great resources for what to keep.  On www.oprah.com, look at the ABCs of Important Papers by Julie Morgenstern (http://www.oprah.com/home/The-ABCs-of-Important-Papers).  This is a lengthy list of what to keep and for how long.  Also you can review on www.realsimple.com the five steps to simpler record keeping is a quick reference (http://www.realsimple.com/home-organizing/5-steps-to-simpler-record-keeping-10000000688976/index.html.)

 

Paper triage routines

Do you already do some sort of triage?  I hear from clients “I sorted my paper in the kitchen, but now what?  There are still piles!”   This is when we add admininstrative time to a weekly slot.  We commit to a time we can now really work on the paper, again by prioritizing.  Make a list of the tasks associated with each paper, then review and prioritize.  Establishing your command center with these slots, Action, Pay, Pending,  and File, give you another visual reminder of what your tasks will be during admin time.  If you need additional categories, Receipts, School and Church may help you too.

Best time to triage? Its really up to you! Can you do it right when you get the paper and work at your command center? Do you need time without distraction?  Set aside this time daily to prevent being overwhelmed.

When will you do your triage and get your paper under control?

 

Need new ideas for paper management?  Check out my pinterest board Paper, Paper, Everywhere.

Time for a Picker Upper from the Houston Chronicle

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Most of us have too much stuff.

It’s tough to resist the latest gadget in a consumer-oriented society. Sentimental attachments are difficult to break. And often, we’re simply too overwhelmed to declutter. Life transitions and work overload get in the way.  The situation has fueled a growing demand for professional organizers to help sort through the forests of paper, boxes of junk stuffed in the garage and the dark cave of half-used cleaning products lurking beneath the kitchen sink.  Fall’s an opportunity to get the house in order so you can show off seasonal decorations, have spices in easy reach for holiday baking and welcome company to a guest room without outdated computers shoved into the corner.  “Start with the end in mind,” says Ellen Delap, owner of www.Professional-Organizer.com.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/main/7185854.html

Clutter Free Holiday Gifts

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clutter free holiday gifts

 

Celebrate the season with new  meaning!  There is something powerful about the holiday season and gift giving.  View this site the advent conspiracy and see if you agree!  Clutter free holiday gifts are a great way to share experiences, not stuff.

www.adventconspiracy.org

 

At this time of year we can teach our children about sharing by how we give gifts. We can unburden others by sharing in a new way.  Clutter free gifts can include savings bonds,  gift cards for gas or groceries, spa and pampering gifts, museum membership, entertainment tickets to local symphony or Broadway show, movie and a dinner, cooking, fishing or painting lessons, itunes or Starbucks gift cards, or any item that is consumable.

 

Non-profit gift giving is an alternative too!   Give the gift your friend is passionate about by supporting a worthy cause. Consider a cash donation to a charity in honor of the recipient such as cancer research, green living, or supporting underprivileged families.  You can find these by reviewing www.charitynavigator.org.

 

A gift always means more when you give the gift of yourself.  Join a friend at an art class, yoga session, book club, or a scrapbooking class.  Babysit for friends, nieces, nephews and grandchildren.  Take a child to lunch, on a day trip, to the museum/zoo, or to a sports event.  You can also make coupon book for those special and every day treats with things you know your partner would enjoy from the practical to the whimsical, such as a back rub, doing the dishes for a week, making a candlelight dinner, grocery shopping or packing a picnic.

 

Other ideas for sharing the fun include a pirate swap or  “Secret Santa”.   The pirate swap is passing out numbers from 1 to whatever for the number of people at the event.  Number 1 picks a wrapped gift, number 2 can pick a gift or steal the unwrapped one from Number 1.  With the Secret Santa you pick a name from a hat with all the adults in your family establishing a limit for the gift’s expense.   Gifts can be goofy, practical, or holiday themed.  One client hosts her swap just like Oprah’s Favorite Things show.   Guests bring their “favorite” beauty item including lip gloss, face cream or other product and have a swap.

 

Virtual gifts are easy to make too! Create a family cookbook and give it on a flash drive to family members.  Our family created a family cookbook last year to share within our family and with family friends.  We use it constantly during the year to find frequently made foods.   There are also many online scrapbooks to create with family photos as well.  Check out  http://www.smilebox.com/scrapbooks.html.  Family photos can be shared and cherished in a new way this way.

 

Keep the meaning in your holiday this year.  It is not about the perfect gift, it is about connecting with those  who are dear.   Where are you on the clutter free continuum?  Start something new this holiday with clutter free gifts.

 

Join the holiday fun on my Facebook page.

Holiday time line

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It here already! The holiday fun has started!  With a myriad of activities, events, and tasks, the best way to approach the holidays is with a holiday time line.  Start with a family meeting to talk about all the special parts of the holiday season.  What makes the holiday special for each family member? Make a list of the most important part of the the holidays for each person.  Now you know what your goals are for the season. 

Using a big month at a glance calendar, pencil in all the dates from your family meeting.  These are the items to work around as you create your holiday time line. 

Add the tasks and times to get the “other stuff” complete. 

Gift giving: dates for purchases completed,  wrapping, mailing.   With a list, this can be completed before December 15. 

Tree trimming: dates for setting up the tree, outdoor lights,  indoor decor.  With organization and help, this can be completed by December 8.

Holiday events: dates for cookie exchange, parties, family gatherings.  Review your calendar each day to be sure what you need for each event.  Work back two days to prepare for each event.

All of this together means a less stressed holiday!  You enjoy what is most important by pacing the actvities.    How does your holiday time line work?

5 Organizing Projects You Can Complete in 5 Minutes

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Don’t have hours to get organized? Here are 5 things you can do for 5 minutes to get your home in order.


1.  Recycle junk mail.  Stand over your recycle bin or a paper sack and toss old newspapers, extra catalogs or clippings you no longer need.

2.  Sort through a kitchen drawer. Set a timer for 5 minutes, grab a shopping bag, open the drawer, pick through anything no longer needed and donate it. 

3. Make a clothing donation bag. Go through your clothes closet and choose 5 articles of clothing you never wear. Put them in a donation bag to be given to your favorite charity.  Stop at Goodwill on the way to get these out the door. 

4. Five minute toy pick up.  Enlist your kids to help.  Put on energizing music and have a pick up party.

5. Delete email.  Take 5 minutes to delete email from your sent box, especially if it is older than a month.

Feel accomplished?  Organizing is not about finding the perfect time or creating the perfect system.  It is about the baby steps to create a level of order in your world that works!  Share with me your 5 minute organizing project!

Organizing for the Busy Mom Teleclass

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Take a fresh perspective to improve your and your family’s quality of life! 

The Family Manager™system transfers management skills and strategies from the business arena to running your homeand personal life.  Teambuilding, delegation, standard operating procedures, and other sound

business practices will help you reduce daily stress, create a smoothly running home, and have time for self care and recreation.  The teleclass is offered by Ellen and Marla Regan. 

In this teleclass series, Ellen and Marla will focus on 4 departments in the Family Manager™ series.

4-Part Teleclass featuring:

  1. Learning how to have a Family Team creating House Rules to guide your family’s interactions and form Standard Operating Procedures for the running of your home.
  2. Organizing tips for your home.  Learn how to declutter your home and use your Standard Operating Procedures to ease the stress of daily life.
  3. Techniques for time and schedule.  Learn how to manage the family calendar and daily schedule.
  4. How to have “you” time. Learn to care for your body, mind and nurturing your spirit.

Classes are every Wednesday in October, October 6, 13, 20 and 27.   Cost for all 4 classes  is $49.  Call in to the bridge line (long distance charges apply) and be a part of the class.  Register today as class size is limited!