Organize Your Home&#58 Weekly

With the many responsibilities that go along with caring for your family, it can be hard to stay organized. But varying schedules and activities make this a must in order for your home to be as chaos and clutter-free as possible.

Staying organized, however, is not as difficult as you may think. The following are some things you can do weekly to stay organized when you have a family.

Organizing Time

One of the hardest things to do with a family is organize your time. It may seem like there’s too much to do and not enough hours in the day, but the following tips will help you better manage your time and schedules.

Use a calendar. Your calendar will be your best friend. Instead of using a paper calendar and trying to squeeze everything into the little boxes, use a large dry erase calendar. As one of your weekly tasks, sit down every Sunday and fill in the calendar with the week’s upcoming activities – practices, appointments, meetings, and so forth. Make it a point to update it each week.

Get a planner. For your personal organizing, get a planner or PDA and use it. Do the same as you would with your family calendar; each week, fill in the upcoming week’s activities, then check it each day.

Make lists. Make lists of what need to be done that week and then post them on the fridge. By doing it weekly, you can better organize what might take more than a day to complete.

Organizing your House

When you have a family, it can be easy to let tidying go by the wayside with so much else to get done. These weekly tips will help you keep your home organized:

Once a week, clean out your fridge. This will help you to throw out food that won’t be used before it goes bad, so there will be room in there for your weekly grocery trips.

Rotate your kids’ toys. With a family, a big part of clutter comes from toys. Instead of letting your kids keep a ton of toys in the living or family room, box them up in four different containers. Once a week, rotate the containers. Your kids won’t get bored with the same toys, and you will have less mess.

Assign new chores. If your kids are old enough to have chores, consider rotating them each week. Make a chore chart every week, rotating the jobs your kids are going to do each week. For example, one week one child could be in charge of taking out the garbage, the next week taking care of the dog. Doing this helps keep kids from getting bored with the same chores and gives them a chance to learn a variety of household skills.

Schedule certain tasks once a week. You can stay on a schedule and keep organized by scheduling certain tasks on particular days of the week in order to get and stay organized. For example, one day of the week you can focus on organizing the front closet, and the next you can work on organizing your pantry.

You can better manage your time and keep your home organized by doing these weekly tips.