First off: Meal Planning
Does anyone actually like meal planning? I don't! But my days go much smoother when I do, so I try to do it. I bought a pad with these sheets at our local grocery store. It cost me about $2 and it has magnets on the back so I can stick it on the fridge. I write out breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday, though sometimes we switch things up if it works better to do so. Here's a picture of this week:
Second: Kids' Chores
I feel like I am always telling my kids to do something. I finally made this chart to see if I could get them doing some of these things without having to tell them. Today was our first day and I woke up to hear Jordan unloading the dishwasher. Yay! No complaining! I am hoping that by seeing everything on a chart they will whine less.
Third: Homeschool planning
Here's our daily schedule. Do we follow it daily? No! But it's a place to start and something to strive for.
Here's what we actually do for school. No matter what my teacher's book says or my daily sheet looks like, what actually gets done is written down in my notebook. I can look back and see what was done on what days. As you can see, it's absolutely nothing fancy. It's a 10 cent spiral notebook that probably only I can read. ;)
So those are my organizational secrets. I'll admit, it's nothing that's going to make me wealthy, but it does keep me a little more sane than not. I do my cleaning and laundry on the weekends. I shop on the weekends too. I'd rather do it during the week but with homeschooling and activities, it's hard to get to it then. I think I might try to do some grocery shopping when my girls are in gymnastics on Wednesdays. Their gym is right next to a grocery store.
