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If you have kids at home, you may wonder how you’ll ever get organized. Maybe you’ve resigned yourself to a future of stepping on toy cars and tripping over soccer balls, or perhaps you’ve stopped trying to file your important documents because there are more important things demanding your attention. Don’t give up yet! There are many cost-effective and easy ways to organize your documents, effectively juggle schedules, and reclaim your time with your family. Here are a few ways to get started.
1. Plan Meals for the Week
Do you rely too much on takeout to fill the gaps in your meal schedule? Or, do you feel like you don’t have any time to cook? Meal planning can help. First, use a note on your phone, create a spreadsheet, or simply jot down a list of meals and snacks for the week on a piece of paper. Next, create your grocery list from this document.
If it’s impractical or too expensive to buy groceries for an entire week, focus on planning for three-day cycles instead. Consider cooking large batches of food and freezing the rest to be eaten as leftovers as well.
2. Assign Chores and Clean on One Day
According to child psychiatrists, unless your kids are babies, they’re probably old enough to have their own chores. Assign age-appropriate chores to everyone in the household and designate the time and day when these tasks should be accomplished. All of these chores don’t have to be completed on the same day. Break up tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks throughout the week.
3. Get a Family Calendar
Whether you choose to use a digital app that contains every family member’s schedule or a whiteboard calendar that sticks to the fridge, it’s important to have a centralized scheduling portal that everyone can access. Try color-coding each family member’s obligations if that helps.
If you’re using a digital calendar, you should be able to set alerts to remind family members of their appointments and obligations. Additionally, you could go over the calendar during a family meeting every weekend before the beginning of the work (or school) week to ensure that everyone is on the same page and understands their individual responsibilities.
If you’re currently separated or divorced and sharing custody, the Our Days Calendar can help with co-parenting schedule. This automated custody calendar can track visitation dates so you can get the family time you need.
4. Get Your Finances Organized
Handling finances is a difficult task for anyone, but it is particularly challenging for parents. In addition to managing their own finances, they must also ensure that their children are financially secure. One of the best ways to do this is to keep their finances organized. This includes maintaining a budget, tracking expenses, and paying bills on time. It is also important to regularly check credit reports for accuracy; this way, you can report any mistakes. By taking these steps, parents can help to ensure that their family remains financially stable.
Going digital with our financial records helps us manage documents more securely—everything from sensitive invoices to bank accounts information can be kept safe and organized on a secure digital platform. With access to cloud-based storage, we can also easily keep track of our financial data from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. If you need to make edits to financial documents that are PDFs, there’s a tool to help with this. Simply drag and drop your file into a PDF editor, make the necessary changes, and save your new file.
5. Address Your Mental Health
Finally, take a good look at your daily habits and determine whether you’re struggling with your mental health. Are you letting clutter pile up because you don’t see the point in cleaning? Are you having trouble getting through the day? Procrastination and disorganization may be hidden symptoms of depression, anxiety, or undiagnosed ADHD.
You’ll never be able to return to your child-free life and schedule, and more chaos is sure to pop up if you let the present disorganization take over your home. Begin collecting tips like these that work for you, and, above all, give yourself a much-needed mental break once in a while by scheduling some time for yourself.
Author: Lacey Connor