Real life

Usually my husband and I try to keep a pretty consistent routine to keep our household running (somewhat) smoothly. The last couple of weeks we fell out of our routine which led us to having baskets of unfinished laundry and empty cupboards.

“Where are my socks?” “What can I pack in my lunch?” …these are the types of things that all of a sudden pop up when things have gotten a bit topsy turvy!

After scrounging around to make dinner tonight, I sat down to do s proper meal plan and found myself grocery shopping at 9 pm. There was actually something peaceful about shopping alone without the kids (every mom’s dream!) and a mostly empty store.

This was a good reminder to me about what routines we typically have and how important they are for our busy household. Here are some tips that have worked well for us when we actually stick to them:

1. Meal plan once a week and make a grocery list. This saves us multiple trips to the store and eliminates wasting food that goes bad before we use it. (Plus it is much easier to stay on a budget).

2. Do basic chores such as dishes, taking out garbage, and a quick tidy during the week. We try to spend as much of our evenings with our girls and often leave bigger chores to the weekend.

3. Do a rotation of “big chores” on the weekend (our house is never magazine perfect but stays more manageable this way.)

4. Share the load. Try to include kids in small tasks  so it’s not all on one person. They are expected to hang up their coat, put laundry in hamper, etc. My husband and I try to both do chores though I notice messes more than he does so I am much more likely to just start to clean. He can fix pretty much anything though so he definitely pulls his weight!

5. Don’t let little things pile up. Simple things like throwing the junk mail directly into recycling add up quickly when they aren’t dealt with right away.

I am far from an organizing guru but am learning so much about how beneficial having daily, weekly, and monthly tasks and routines can make our family’s daily lives run so much more smoothly!

What does your family do to keep things running smoothly? I’d love to hear your ideas, please share in the comments below!