MY NEW YEAR ORGANISATION PLANS - Keep Up With The Jones Family

Even if I don’t make resolutions, which is rare – with the exception of this year, as waiting to hear if Dad was okay on New Years’ Eve didn’t make room for much else in my brain – each January I swear to myself that this will be the year that I have everything in our house organised. I mean, like grown-up organised. My mom, when I was little, used to have Saturday as her cleaning day for the whole house and I remember she would start at the top of the house and work her way down. The kitchen was always the last room and by the time we were ready to go and collect my Granny for the afternoon, the house sparkled. Our house these days, not so much.

In my dreams I have a day for everything, a time for everything and being scheduled leaves me time for myself, time for work and time for quality time as a family. In reality, I’m chasing my tail following the boys’ tornado around the house and wondering just why they think it’s fine to leave snack wrappers and pants everywhere.

And so, after much, much research I’ve invested in two planners. One for me, and a big magnetic board for chores for the boys. I’m doing it. First, the boys’ planner…

I had a really good think about just what the boys could do that I actually would benefit from around the house, as opposed to doing things for the sake of it. Here’s what I came up with:

Hero

Putting shoes away
Taking plate out after meals
Putting snack wrappers into the bin
Putting bedtime books back in the bookcase

Lyoto

Putting shoes away, hanging up coat
Folding school uniform for next day/putting in laundry bag
Emptying lunchbox and putting in the sink
Taking plate out after meals
Putting snack wrappers into the bin
Putting bedtime books back in the bookcase
Tidying toys away at bedtime

Jensen

Putting shoes away, hanging up coat
Folding school uniform for next day/putting in laundry bag
Emptying lunchbox and putting in the sink
Taking plate out after meals
Putting snack wrappers into the bin
Putting bedtime books back in the bookcase
Tidying toys away at bedtime

Each person in our family has a creature column on the organiser and each day the jobs are going to be laid out on there. Hero is the easiest boy by far to get to help around the house, and the other two generally claim exhaustion and lie on the floor panting after more than two or three tidying movements. In any case, this is the best way that I can think of and having a magnetic planner attached to the fridge means that they can’t claim that they haven’t seen it – as they’re constantly in the freezer part, hunting for ice cream.

And for me, I bought what is probably the most fantastic planner I’ve bought to date. It’s called the Law of Attraction planner and it has everything inside that should help guide me to a happier, more organised lifestyle. I love that it has a monthly double spread, and a weekly double spread – and mine is undated too, which I love. I love everything about it. I love the rose gold cover, the quality of the paper and the binding on the book, and that it’s a really well thought out planner overall. The only fault I have is that for some reason it starts at 5am and ends at 10.30pm each day – my working day sometimes doesn’t start until 10pm – and I am never up before 7 unless one of the boys is poorly.

The areas of my life which need organising are those which I try and try again to get into a routine for. Meal planning, tidying and cleaning, blog work and budgeting. So pretty much every area.

I’ve started by just adding in this month’s bare bones to the month spread. Thankfully it’s not a busy month because of my balance issues, but there are two boy birthdays in there, and quite a few Beaver dates I need to add in still. It’s a great layout with plenty of room for jottings and ideas too.

I’ve decided to split the house into rooms and allocate each day to a room. Each room has larger chores and smaller chores that need to be taken care of and so sharing them out over the month means that everything will get done at least once a month – like the windows [I hate cleaning windows].

I had to think about my time realistically. In the morning I’m currently so out of it with my balance that I’m usually up at around 8am, and so after the boys have gone to school, I have 3 and a half hours with Hero until Pre-school, and then two hours to myself before school pickup time. The two hours whilst Hero is there is the only time that I can usually edit photographs as the light is still good enough for me to see the white balance and colour. However, it’s also the only time I can tidy or declutter without helpers and so I’m dividing my time between editing and decluttering then. As for other work, I write after the boys have all fallen asleep, which is usually around 9.30pm. This is the only other time when the house is quiet and I can concentrate.

Blocking these hours out in the planner as work hours has actually helped me to feel accountable for those times. Instead of being vague, I’m plotting in the exact jobs that I have to do – and having it down on paper frees up some of my brain cells to think of other things.

After the month page and week pages, there are a few jotting pages and a round-up to create an overview of the month’s achievements. I’m going to use the jotting pages to create my monthly budget – what we’ve actually spent this month and then see where we have any overspend. That will take care of the budgeting part – and then I can create a meal plan in there also based on the amounts that we *should* be spending on groceries instead of what we actually *are* spending.

I had a little helper today whilst I was working, which accounts for the Lego props in the photograph. The original photos had pink roses scattered around the planner, but Hero insisted that the Lego boards looked much better.