Time Management System- Part Two, the Homeschool Chart

I have tried about a million systems of organizing my homeschool lessons and until I came up with this, nothing actually stuck. I am not really a big fan of rigid schedules. I have babies and toddlers and I have never been functional at 2:00PM of any afternoon in my 34 years of life. My life has a lot of variables to work around. Still, I don't want school to fall through the cracks, so something had to be done to keep us more or less on track. This little baby has been helping a lot.

 Each school kid has their own column of pockets, divided up by subject; Badge Work, Math, Grammar and Spelling (both of which include writing assignments) with a pocket at the bottom for completed work. James just has one pocket for preschool activites. The pockets are made out of envelopes I cut in half and stapled to the board. At the beginning of the week I put all of the week's assignments in their envelopes and they work on them during school time. If they want to keep working, and sometimes they do, and get it all done in a few days, good for them. They are done with school for the week. On the right side of the chart I have extra curricular activites, group activites, field trips and fun outings so they can see at a glance what our week looks like. It's not shown in this picture, but I have a simple dry erase calendar above this chart that shows us our month at a glance. It's simple, it's easy and it helps them work independently.

Tote Bag Organization

I have an addiction to tote bags. I love them. Up until now I've been very haphazard about their use, grabbing one when I want to go somewhere, filling it with what I need and then forgetting to empty it and leaving it on the hooks in the entry way. No more. I have decided to organize and pre-stock my tote bags.

I started by making two lists of things we like to do, one for winter and one for summer. Then I listed all of the things we usually take with us on a given activity and packed those in the bags. Here are a couple of examples.

Pool/Beach:
Pool Toys
Goggles
Floaties for Bella
Sunblock

Coffee Shop:
Card games
Small Board Games
Crayons
Colouring Book

Church:
Colouring Book
Crayons
Picture Book
Small toy

Letterboxing:
Sunblock
Bug Spray
Stamp
Ink
Letterboxing Notebook
Pen
Mini first-aid kit
Water bottle

There is some overlap here, for example there are several bags with sunblock in them, but I think the duplication is worth it. I'd rather have three sunblocks than get where I am going and realize I've forgotten it. With three fair skinned people in this family the sunblock will be used one way or another.

Finally, to more easily tell the bags apart I labeled each one with one of these round tags I had laying around.

This system has really made getting ready to go someplace easier. No more hunting around for the goggles or the bug spray. We just grab the bag and go.

Spring Cleaning- Laundry

Photo courtesy of playingwithbrushes

Laundry has been my arch nemesis ever since I had kids. I just can't seem to tackle it with anything resembling competency and it ends up piled in heaps in closets until at last we run out of clean clothes. In different homes there have been different challenges. At our apartment in Pasadena there was the coin laundry, which we never had enough quarters for and required lugging two babies, a pile of clothes and some detergent outside and around the building. Here the problem is stairs. I live in a house that is split into six levels and in the 23 years since my family bought this house I can count on my fingers the number of times the laundry has made it up the stairs to my bedroom.

For a long time I tried to solve the problem with self discipline. You just have to get better at doing these kinds of things, Stephanie. Stop being so lazy and haul the laundry up the stairs, will you? It's taken 30 years, but I have finally come to the realization that organization isn't so much about self discipline as it is about putting things where you actually use them. Since family members have been getting dressed in the basement since the 1980s I decided it was time to build a dressing area there.

Two days ago we went to IKEA and bought some of their Antonius mix-and-match shelving units to build a laundry storage system. The system consists of a mix of shelving, baskets and clothes hanging bars. Each family member gets three baskets, one for shirts, one for pants and one for underwear and accessories. There is also a basket for kids socks and a basket for adult socks. The kids' baskets will be on the lower shelves so they can get their own clothes. In addition to that, each person gets a small clothes-hanging bar, the kids hung at their height and the adults hung at ours. I want to encourage the kids to be independent with dressing.

On an adjoining wall there will be a laundry hamper for each member of the family, a chair and a full-length mirror. Each person's clothes will be washed individually with cold water to prevent running, folded immediately and put back in their baskets. Because the laundry won't be piling up this should take very little time. Once a week Cheyenne, my five-year-old will be responsible for bringing linens downstairs for me to wash and carrying them back up. Each person is responsible for making their own bed, with help, of course, for the little ones.

If all goes as planned this will revolutionize my daily life. No more hunting around in baskets for outfits for the kids and me. No more mountain of laundry to tackle on a Saturday, and best of all, no more guilt.