home/kids/life/work -- do you schedule?

I am so organized no I didn't use a schedule.

I'm curious as well. I just started working full time, and come the fall I will be going back to school as well as still take care of my 8 year old, get him off to school, and activities, dinner, homework, laundry, house cleaning, etc...it's going to be interesting to see how it all pans out. I try to be organized but it doesn't always work out that way. Some days seem better than others.

I have to be organized. I work full time outside the home. Have a part time job from home. Take care of DH who's sick. Have a son with autism. I help with my Dad who is 79. I live/die by my planner. As far as working out, that gets done at 4am or not at all. I hate getting up early but there just isn't any other time available. DS is going in to 6th grade this year and I'm hearing there's a TON of homework. So I'll have to jiggle things around at night to free up time to help him with it. Cleaning, my house isn't the cleanest but it isn't the dirtiest. I try to knock off something every night. Mondays are bathrooms, Tuesday is dusting/vacuuming, Wednesdays is laundry, etc. It makes it a little more manageable. My weekends are working, grocery shopping, cooking, the rest of my cleaning. My schedule will take a hit until we get in to a rhythm of the new school year.

I don't work outside the home right now, but when I did I was all about the schedule.  Definitely not born organized here.

Flylady has some great tips.  When you get a chance, browse her site.  You don't have to do everything she says, obviously, but she does have some great tips.  A few that I still use are using a timer & breaking everything into 15 min. segments.  You'd be surprised how much you can accomplish in that amount of time.

I also schedule certain tasks for certain days: one day a week is all paperwork (paying bills, grocery lists, correspondence, etc.), one day is for blessing (not cleaning   ) my house, one day is for all errands.  This really helped me keep things in line.  

I run my dishwasher at nite (I know, I know, a lot of people worry about the flooding) and unload it in the morning while the kids eat breakfast.  

I put a load of laundry in at nite, too (I know, I know . . .), moved it to the dryer in the morning and folded it when I got home.  Of course, this only works for clothes that you don't have to worry about wrinkles with.

And get as much ready as you can the nite before.  The less stress in the morning, the better.

Give Flylady a perusal.  She's really helpful.

It's a lot easier for me now that the kids are old enough to keep track of their own activities and arranging their own transportation. Back in the days of carpools and having kids in three different schools, I had to keep everything written down or I'd forget it. Now we keep a big family calendar in the kitchen and each of the kids is responsible for updating his own schedule.

I don't write things down on my need-to-do list that are part of my regular routine, like laundry or grocery shopping. The to do list is for the things I would forget otherwise because they aren't part of my normal schedule. If I tried to write down every specific thing I plan to do I would feel overwhelmed and unable to get motivated to do it.

I block out sections of time for specific things I do every week. I'm in the office certain days; work from home other days; and usually have the same days off every week. The only big variation is the weekend I have on call once a month - I don't plan anything for that weekend because it invariably gets disrupted.

I normally have Tuesdays off, so I plan personal things like hair appointments, dentist appointments, etc. for that day. That's also the day I normally do most of my shopping, and kitchen prep for the upcoming week.

From the time the kids were little, we got them into a routine of making their beds, tidying their own rooms, and helping with mealtime prep and cleanup, so those things are just an automatic part of our morning routine now. They are responsible for getting their own clothes ready for school, packing a lunch if they want it, and making sure all their books and papers are ready to go every morning. Getting them into the habit of prepping for school the night before will save you headaches in the long run. Once they are old enough to use an alarm clock, mine are responsible for getting themselves up and ready for school.

Well, I don't have children but I do have a job, a husband, pets, a life, friends and family. The best way for me to get a work out in is to do it early in the morning. I have a dog who needs to be walked at least a mile a day so that helps right off the bat. I don't go to the gym, I make my daily life a part of my work out.

Emptying groceries? I will do a few bicep curls with a gallon of milk. Starting some laundry? I will do lunges across the garage floor while I wait for the dryer to finish. Waiting for the shower to warm up? I will do squats or jumping jacks while I wait. Little things like that make me feel like I'm burning calories and staying active without going to a traditional gym.

I have 3 kids (1 grown up, 1 that just graduated and one that is only 10), kids activities, a job where I do swing shifts, my DH does shift work and we are caring for my elderly mom and my elderly uncle. 
I make sure I connect with my friends as often as I can and schedule time for me like pedicures or a work out or a date night with my DH. Sometimes we do not have the same night off work together for 4 or more weeks so we have to schedule the times we do have off together. 
I think that is how we stay happy even around our crazy, busy lives. 
I have a daytimer and schedule everything. If not I just want to stay under the blankets and cry it gets so over-whelming to keep up with somedays.
I love my family and am very grateful for the job I have but somedays I could use 2 of me. 

I live by my calendar. I put everything important on it.

I delegate everything I can.

I set reasonable expectations, especially for myself (Pintrest is the enemy here).

I eliminate things that don't add value to my life in the big picture and replace them with things that do (eyeliner doesn't matter, eating breakfast with my son does).

It's still a constant struggle.

This is our thinking too

We do not expect or need to have a perfectly tidy house. We have a lot of give and take in our expectations. We are lucky that we only have one child living at home. Due to her ADHD we used to limit her activities to one at a time. And even now in high school she doesn't do more than two activities at a time. So we try really hard to not over schedule.

We did just get a new to us RV so that has gotten us busier this year than last. But we also know we will be cutting back on other activities so we can do more RVing next year. We put things on the family calendar in the kitchen so every one can see it.

I don't keep a schedule, per se. But I have "nights" for activities. Nothing else gets scheduled on activity nights. The fun in my life and my kid's lives comes first. Always. The housework gets done when I have empty bits of time. Everyone helps out (mostly) and it all manages to get done. No, my house is not perfect and the yard could use a tidy, but that's just my way.

I work full-time during the school year and I'm off in the summer. In a crazy way, I find I'm able to stay more on-top of things when I am working then when I am not. The routine helps me tremendously. Though it is a hassle when something needs to be taken care of during the day and I have to find a way to schedule around working hours.

When I'm home in the summer, I have a ton of lists of things that have to be accomplished. I try to sit down each night and review my next day, and try to see what I can reasonably do. It does help to try to stay on somewhat of a regular schedule (get up, exercise, pick up around the house, shower, start laundry, etc.). 

With all that said, it hasn't worked for me as much this summer. I don't know what it is, exactly. My two children are both teenagers and I'm not running them around or caring for them in the way that I did when they were smaller. I think I'm just getting lazier, to tell the truth. I've had the sense lately that I'm just not getting anything accomplished at all. 

We keep a family calendar app (Cozi) so the kids & my husband can see everyone's schedule.

It also has a grocery list so they can add to it & I can pick stuff up when I am out.

I do a load of laundry every day in the morning.

I try to plan a weeks worth of meals on Sunday & grocery shop once a week. I use my crock pot several times a week.

My kids are in charge of their rooms & my daughter does her laundry on Saturdays.

We have 1 main item to clean a day. Mon sweep/mop
Tues dust
Wed vacuum
Thurs bathrooms

My son is in charge of emptying all trash cans on Sunday in prep for garbage day.

I put all school papers/bills in a pile & look at them when the kids go to bed. Bills get paid immediately online and then put on the shredder. Kids stuff gets updated on the calendar/filled out & put in their backpacks. Art/stuff I want to save gets scanned and put away or trashed.

Everyone picks up after themselves so the house is usually clean.

It was pretty hectic for the years they were in elementary school. Both working parents, our kids were attending a parent-participation charter school(so I had to work 4 hrs/week per child x2), one child in tutoring 3x week, both in sports 4x/week  at two different locations. Add both dh's and both my parents ill and dying, one after another another.

We had all activities on our monthly calendar in the kitchen but right under that we had a white-board erasable one week S-Sat calendar. I bought it at Staples in the Martha Stewart section. I would fill it in every Sunday, including which parent had to pick up or take which kid, also what I was making for dinner.

If someone was not going to be home for dinner they had to write it on that day. I shopped every Sunday and both dh and I knew exactly who was doing what on each day. It's the only thing that kept my sanity.