I would like to share a few tips I have, but look forward to your tips!

Outside toys stay in a rubbermaid tub outside. It has a lid so that keeps the rain/snow out. Just keep it out of the sun so it doesn’t get brittle. The real trick to this is reminding the kiddos to put their toys back in the tub! But this keeps them outside and not in my house, but they aren’t all over the yard.

We have lots of wind here, so trash can be a real problem in our yard. So I pay my son (or daughter) to go collect it. Sometimes they will use the wheelbarrow and think it’s great fun.

For homeschool, I found 3 plastic magazine racks at the dollor store. Since they are skinny, they fit perfect on the school table across the back. Each child has their own. This has been a great way to keep up with school papers that uses a space otherwise never used.

In the kids bathroom, I also found 3 cute plastic baskets for their individual stuff. They fit on the shelf above the toilet. This gives them each a place to store their personal soaps, deodorant, hair clips, etc.

I’m anticipating all your ideas!

To begin you will need at least a 1″ binder (I prefer a 2″ binder). Then a word processor and printer will be your next necessary ingredients. With that set, you can do almost anything!

Get creative. Make a cover for your notebook that expresses your personality.

For ideas on what to add to your notebook, think about how your day goes. Do you need a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar? I prefer a monthly calendar for me since I don’t have a lot of appointments per day and I like to look over my month at one time. Do you plan your meals? Do you need a sheet to jot down all meals or just dinners? If you homeschool, do you need a lesson planning section? Do you have (or wish you had) a cleaning schedule? Jot down which days you mop and which days you wash sheets. After you have written down all your thoughts and ideas, now its time to actually create and print out these sheets.

For those of us who just don’t want to or don’t have time to make these pages there are many places to find them online. But if you want something specific to your life, you may want to create your own.

Organized Home

Heart at Home

My friend, Courtney, has done a fabulous job on her notebook. Check it out at The Crosland Family.

There are so many options out there. I will be created mine next weekend and posting pictures soon! I can’t wait to feel organized.

Since this week I am focusing on Mommy-hood, scheduling always seems to bubble up when mommy’s get together and I am especially focusing on such a topic this week. First I would like to start off with my experience, then I will flood you with some great resources.

Schedules change! And will always change! As your children get older and new children arrive, the needs of your family will change and so will your schedule. Once you accept this fact, scheduling becomes a more fluid project than a rigid one. I loved Terri Maxwell’s Manager’s of their Homes, but setting such a rigid schedule was not for our family. But her book is chock full of ideas for making a schedule, like what tasks need to be done and how long should they take. I still use her idea of making a list of what each person’s duties should be to get me started with a schedule.

I break my day up into sections and then decide what tasks should be done during each section. This works for us. Here is our basic schedule for this year:

Our morning block starts at 6:00am and ends at 9:30am. Here are the things we set out to accomplish during that time:

Send oldest to school.

Breakfast for everyone else.

Care for the animals.

Bible Quiet Time and Prayer.

Morning Chores.

Snack.

Middle of the day starts at 10:00 and goes until 3:00pm.

School: Math, Cursive, and Bible.

Lunch.

Quiet Reading Time and Nap for the Baby.

School: History, Grammar, and Science. We also finish anything else we need to catch up on.

Snack.

Afternoon starts at 3:30 and ends at 6:30.

Afternoon chores.

Oldest gets home from school and does homework.

Dinner.

Evening:

Care for animals.

Hang out with Dad.

Bedtime by 8:00!

That is how I schedule! Simple. That leaves plenty of room for flexibility. If I have a specific project that I want to get done, then I will schedule it separately within those limits. My biggest tip today is not to get stressed over your schedule! I do believe you need one, well I most definitely do! But I would get stressed out because I didn’t finish the dishes at 9:00am and it would ruin the remainder of the day. So now I have a guideline I follow and its amazing the amount of things I can get done in one day!

Here are some great resources as you try to plan your day:

Managers of their Home

Stories of Time Unit Study

Go Mom!

Mommy Tracked – printable calendars!

There is this really great book that I read years ago that really boosted my motivation, but now I can’t find it. I will update this post with it when I find it!

Hope that was enough to get you started. Please share your ideas with me!