With the kids making their way back to school / kinder, I have been revisiting the organisation of different elements of our household. I find that the organisational processes we use need to develop with us as our family develops. They are pretty much a constant work in progress.
I am currently taking stock, to see what is working, what needs tweaking and what needs to be completely overhauled.
What is working
Let’s start with the positives shall we! The arrangement we have for school bags, hats and library bags is working well for us. You can see more about how we organise the school gear in this post Getting The School Gear Organised.
Our night time routine works really well, setting us up for a clean slate each morning. You can see what we do in this post 10 Things To Do Before You Go To Bed. Simple things like setting the table for breakfast makes such a difference to the start of our day.
The kids routine charts work really well and feedback from readers is that they have worked for them too, which is great to hear.
What needs tweaking
9 year old | 7 year old | 4 year old | 2 year old |
|---|---|---|---|
| Take own breakfast dishes to sink. | Take own breakfast dishes to sink. | Take own breakfast dishes to sink. | Take own breakfast dishes to sink. |
| Stack dishwasher. | Put milk and juice in fridge. | Put cereal back in pantry. | Help 4 year old with cereal. |
| Make bed. | Make bed. | Make bed. | "Help" mum make bed. |
| Tidy bedroom. | Tidy bedroom. | Tidy bedroom. | "Help" mum tidy bedroom. |
| Put away clean clothes (if any to do). | Put away clean clothes (if any to do). | Put away clean clothes (if any to do). | "Help" mum put away clean clothes (if any to do). |
I also need to make a better visual representation of this for the kids. It probably needs to be split into two charts one for the older kids and one for the younger kids.
The homework area we have still works very well, but the way we do homework now with four in school needs tweaking. Who can work where, where am I spending my time when, are things we are now working out. It will be a few weeks I think before we really find our feet here and tweak it, so everyone is okay with the way it is working.
What needs to be completely overhauled
We changed last year from this system to a sort of hybrid, but it needs to be overhauled again. Each year it seems that there is more technology to deal with. As kids get older I realise there are different needs to take into account than when they are young.
We are trying a few things out at the moment, again to see if we can come up with something that we are all okay with. But with this area, I will certainly be making sure there are firm boundaries around homework completion, sharing of technology etc.
We have just recently overhauled our drop zone as well. If you have signed up to the Planning With Kids newsletter (you can see the latest edition here), you would have seen this already today!
We have made a dedicated area, were the kids need to bring their technology before they go to bed – kindle, iPods, mobile phone all those types of things. For some of the kids it is not a temptation to have them in the room, but for others – they might never sleep!
How is the organisation in your house – are there areas that need tweaking or a complete overhaul?