Home Management Binder - Schedule, Chore Charts

I managed to get my new and improved schedule finished, as well as my new chore charts. It is officially Monday since it's 12:05 right now and I just finished, but I've decided to cut myself a little slack on that. (It was a crazy weekend! We had company over until 12:30am Saturday night, and Sunday after church we went to see a house we may be purchasing if this one sells this week.)

Overall I am happy with the schedule for now. We may need to work into it slowly for the first few days, but it really isn't too different from our "unscheduled" days, so the transition shouldn't be too difficult. I can tell I'm still not convinced it's officially Spring as I didn't schedule any outside play time. There is a good deal of time that is unscheduled though so I will be able to fit it in at various times and once we see what works best I can officially add it to the schedule. You can see the new schedule here. I also managed to fit in the things that were important to me to have scheduled throughout the day. I can already feel the way this will reduce stress for me.

One thing I toyed with was getting up earlier myself. However, because of Eric's schedule, I stay up late with him every night. That is just more important to me than being up earlier. If I find that I can function on less sleep without any problems, maybe I'll switch to that at some point. But for now, time with my husband is my number one priority.

I also created chore charts for myself and for each one of the oldest 3 children. You can see those here. Isabelle is old enough now that getting dressed and making her bed every morning are just second nature for her, so that is why they are not on her chart. Alex and Olivia's charts have pictures representing their chores, but for some reason the pictures did not transfer from Word. Their daily chores are: make bed, get dressed, brush teeth, dust, laundry help, dishwasher help, and toy pick up (twice a day). Their charts will be printed out every week and taped to the kitchen wall to be filled in with a smiley face or stickers as a motivator. We will keep the smiley/sticker as the only reward for now. This will be a novelty for everyone, so they will be quite happy with just that. We may change it as they get older to a special treat once a month for so many stickers, but we'll wait and see on that.

I know my chore charts will be especially helpful for me. They will keep me on track and focused without feeling overwhelmed. And not to mention I'll know that these things will actually get done so I won't have to worry about it from one week to the next. That's my goal; more structure equals less stress, not more busyness! I'm excited for the morning.