Briefcase on the Kitchen Table

The musings of a millenial midwestern lawyer and mom.

How we “make it all work”

Organization systems for a large and busy family

One of the things I get asked about frequently is how on earth do we “make it all work”. I will admit to being a rather particular person. I am also a person who enjoys categorizing and organizing- just ask my mom how I would have to separate my M’n’Ms by color when I was little. It scratches something in my brain when things are easy to find or easy to clean up. As we have added more children and the schedule has gotten increasingly busy I have found the need to add more systems to off load things from my mental load in order to try to make sure our house is a well stocked, well oiled machine. We want our time together to be as easy as possible, not filled with trying to track down a tablet cord or remember what the dinner plan was that night. Avery and I both work out of the home full time. We have four children, one of whom is in formal school and the other three who are in daycare/preschool. We do not have a cleaning service or subscription shopping; we both work jobs that we are very passionate about but also don’t provide an income that allows for these luxuries so we have to make it work with just us.

The most important caveat I want to put on this post is that none of this should be taken to mean this is how your home should run. Every family is different and what works for every family is different. We also have plenty of days where it feels like it’s all getting held together with string and duct tape. But I figured after enough questions and requests, people who have been in our home and asked how we set something up, it feels like it’s time to share what works for us in the hopes that maybe it will help someone else’s mental load who doesn’t know where to start. This is a LONG post because I have no intention of this becoming a home organizing blog. I tried to include everything I could think of that is a “system” in our home. Most of these were born from not being able to keep track of all the pieces every day so we needed to find some low-cost, low-tech way to do it ourselves. And here is what we came up with.

Family Command Center

The heart of our “house brain” is our family command center. It is installed right next to our most used door in the house. It has taken a few different forms and this has been one of my big takeaways in setting up our home systems- there is no requirement that one system works forever and when it doesn’t work any more, find a new one.

Our first “family command center” had no tech at all. It was a series of dry erase calendars and white boards. I like having two calendars because it is helpful to be able to look ahead. I made them easily removable so I could leapfrog each month and always have a 60 day spread in front of me. There were small white boards for “Dinner Menu”, “To Do”, and “To Buy”- this way my brain didn’t have to just hold on to all of this. We meal plan and grocery shop every Sunday so when we came up with the dinner menu plan for the week it would go on the menu board. There were also wall pockets to catch mail and school papers.

Recently we determined we have gotten busy enough the wall calendars weren’t cutting it anymore. We wanted a digitized calendar however we didn’t like any of the plug-and-play options (like Skylight) and needed some different functionality. We found an online service called DAK Board. For $5 a month we are able to use their platform and plug in nearly anything we would like; we have multiple Google and Outlook calendars feeding into it, the time, a three day forecast, and it even automated the elementary school Lunch Menu so we can determine at a glance whether a packed lunch is needed. We purchased a very inexpensive small television, a flush mount, and a “Raspberry Pi” which is a super simple computer for basic functions. Avery plugged the Raspberry into his computer to connect it to the internet and the DAK Board account and then he used adhesive to stick it behind the TV Monitor. This has provided a large, custom made digital calendar and weather station (and anything else we want to add) for less than $200 to set up and a $5 month subscription cost. I ordered a new whiteboard that stands away from the wall a bit to be more in line with the monitor and added some labels and separation with my Cricut Joy. Lastly, the wall pockets were becoming a catch all that we didn’t regularly touch (another tip: get rid of “landing zones” that you never get around to emptying). We still wanted some space to hang things like library book receipts and birthday invitations so we got a small magnetic strip with some fun magnets. We added a magnetic pocket for dry erase markers and our external brain has been a great addition to our home.

Chores and Room Clean Up

We handle chores a few different ways. First, for full room cleans we have a binder. These are for deep, full room cleans. There are some rooms that need a full clean every three weeks (bathrooms and high traffic areas) and some that can go four weeks (bedrooms, office, etc.). It is nearly impossible to keep track of when each space was cleaned last so the first page is a spreadsheet where the person cleaning can write down when it was completed. Two things to note. First, this is a full, deep clean. Spot cleaning- wiping down a counter, cleaning a toilet, mopping a particularly dirty floor- may need to be done in between. Second, this is to help not hurt. By that I mean, if you get behind on your household cleaning it can get overwhelming and be hard to start because you don’t know where to start. We have had that happen especially around busy times like holidays and travel or if illness hits and we are just trying to keep our heads above water. This system helps immensely with the “where do I start” feeling because your brain doesn’t have to decide- just see which space was cleaned the longest ago, start there, and move forward chronologically until you are caught up. The binder also includes a list of what should be cleaned in each room so we can make sure, no matter who is cleaning, that it is consistent.

The other thing we use for chores is something our kids call “Sticks”. These can be tasks that are small but unique (wiping down trashcans, washing all of the living room blankets) or seasonal (wiping down patio furniture). We have a “To Do” cup and an “All Done” cup and the kids have to pick a stick every night. Every task is intended to take 15 minutes or less. The kid sticks are blue and the adult sticks are white (adult sticks include things like wiping down upper cabinets, dusting bathroom light fixtures, etc.). For these we separated between kids and adults purely based on ability and accessibility. Once we have worked through all of the sticks we move them all back over to “To do” and start again. We tried to think of every small weird task that needs touched but isn’t necessarily part of normal room clean (wipe down switch plates, wipe down doors, wipe down car seats) so that theoretically even the little tasks that we don’t think of day-to-day are eventually touched. Again, the goal being to get it out of our brains where we may forget about it for weeks or months and into a system that out of design will have to be completed.

Toy Storage

The only other regular task the kids know they have to do is Sunday night room clean ups. Every Sunday their rooms have to be picked up. This way they don’t have to do it every day but they also don’t pit it out by going weeks without touching them. This happens pretty much without complaint at this point- we have been doing it for so many years it is just part of their Sunday night routine.

For regular room organization this is such a cliche but it really does help if you have a place for everything. We semi-regularly do big toy clean outs. The kids get to decide what stays and what goes but if our “stay” pile doesn’t have a good home that is where we will invest a little bit of cash. I have had wonderful luck with finding toy storage on clearance at places like Kohls and Bed, Bath, and Beyond (which still exists online for the time being!). For instance, in the last year Hazel has started to get toys like Barbies and Dolls that have lots of little pieces. The cube bin system we had in her room wasn’t great for these new toys. I found a pink drawer tower on clearance and added some labels and now on Sunday nights she knows exactly where things should land. Tablets were another big issue- it felt like they were always floating around and I didn’t like any of the counter-top organizers made for tablets. So I purchased a wall-mounted file folder organizer, a small power strip, and 3 very short USB-C cords. I zip-tied the power strip to the file organizer, hung some command hooks for headphones, and there is even an empty spot if we add another tablet in the future. We also keep a spray screen cleaner here so that everything we could possibly need for tablets is in one place. The kids know exactly where to park their devices and can plug them in themselves. If we are doing a clean out or a clean up and there is something that doesn’t have a good home that is something we fix quickly otherwise it will never be put away. I have linked a few of our favorite toy organizers down below.

Meal Planning

Another thing I hated doing every week was sitting down to meal plan and feeling like my brain couldn’t come up with 6 new and interesting meals (we always do leftovers or a restaurant meal for one dinner each week). I love to cook and have collected lots of recipes over the years but trying to come up with them weekly had me struggling. So this became another thing that we took off of the mental load. We purchased a two-section recipe box. The front has menu items we haven’t made recently and each card says where to locate the recipe (what recipe book and page number) so there is an easy reference for grocery list assembly. Some cards are just a listed food (like Pancakes and Bacon) no recipe needed. Once we use the item for the menu it goes to the back section of the box which greatly prevents repeats. Once we have gone through them all we just move them back to the front and start again and it is easy to add to the box when we find a new recipe that our family loves.

Other Random things that work for us

Trip Memories

I, like most people, enjoy collecting photos and mementos when we go on trips. I have tried and failed at scrap booking- I just do not enjoy it. But I wanted some way with a lower creativity barrier to keep not just photos but small mementos from trips. So I started making “trip boxes”. When we return from a trip I buy an inexpensive wooden box from a craft store (think $8 or less), grab some craft paint and include the location and year of the trip, and then I throw in any photos or mementos I want. I did a “baby box” for each of our kids as well. They sit on a shelf in our family room and occasionally the kids will “go on a trip” by taking out a box and going through its contents. I also have photo catalogue boxes that are long and narrow and are labeled by time period with dividers inside by year. Each year around New Years I go through our iCloud images and print off the favorites from that year. I enjoy having photos to thumb through, not just scroll through.

Laundry

Laundry is another thing that, to me, is very easy to feel like you can’t ever get on top of. We have a laundry schedule we follow to try and avoid this feeling. This way if I realize four days have gone by without touching laundry I don’t get that overwhelming feeling that I suddenly have to clean every article of clothing in the house. I just look at the schedule and start at the last missed day and once I get to the current day I am all caught up. It provides structure and guidance to avoid that in-over-my-head feeling.

When someone else is watching our kids

There are occasions when other people care for our children outside of normal daycare hours. As neurotic as this sounds we have a binder that has all of their care information. It sets my mind at ease to know the adult in charge will have all of the information they need and (hopefully) the feeling is one of empowerment. What is in the binder depends on the event. For instance, when my kids stayed with my parents this summer to attend day camp the binder included the camp information page for each child, a care page for each child, and a copy of our health insurance cards and drivers licenses. If it is Avery and I who are traveling away from the kids the binder always includes our hotel and flight information, care instructions for the dog, etc. None of this is ever intended to make the carer feel like we don’t trust them; we have four young children and they are changing constantly in eating habits, toilet habits, sleep habits, etc. We hope by providing this information it allows the person caring for the kids to worry less about what we will think about Samuel eating chicken nuggets three days in a row (we don’t care- hence the note that he is picky) and focus more on having fun with them. Anything we feel strongly about is noted in there so they know it is free reign on everything else. We have assembled one of these for any overnight away from our kids including before we headed to the hospital to have our babies and it truly lets us not worry. We know the person taking care of our kids has everything from the code to use at the daycare door to the name and number of their pediatrician if they get an ear ache. It prevents texts and calls back and forth about foreseeable things.

So that’s what works for us…

for now. It could all change in the next week or month or year. We will continue to work coming up with systems for activity equipment, school paper organization, birthday party planning, and so on but I hope, if you are feeling overwhelmed in any of the areas mentioned above, that one of these tips or tricks or solutions listed can help take some weight off of the mental load.

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