How I created a weekly routine that works for our family

Things had gotten so hectic at our house that I was running on "Survival Mode" most days. The busy family schedule and lack of routine was killing me! When I created a Weekly Family Routine to plan out all the family logistics and meal/grocery plans for the whole week, my life was forever changed! Read on to see how I did it and how you can too!  Bonus: I'm sharing a FREE download of the Weekly Family Routine Checklist with y'all!

Want to see how i CREATED MY FAMILY ROUTINE?  kEEP READING...

Who's running the show at your house?

Chances are, if you are a Working Mom or a WAHM (Work at Home Mom), you are running the whole show in your house.  You set up most of the appointments, do the meal planning, shopping and errands, get the kids where they need to go, and everything else.  I'm not throwing shade at any of the spouses out there, but face it: Moms Run The Show. And if you're anything like me, you've found that like Kermit the Frog says, It Ain't Easy Being Green. 

I bet you're on "survival mode" a lot, Right?

I feel you: it's a lot. Our family is just like yours:

• My spouse works and he travels for work.  His travel isn't on a regular basis, so sometimes he is home and can help out, other times it is just me running the show.
• I'm transistioning from being a WAHM to becoming a new small business owner. I'm self-employed, so I create my own schedule.  But I now have all the resposnisiblities of being the WAHM, with the added bonus of trying to get a business off the ground.  Festive, right?!?
• We have one shorty who goes to school, after-school sports practice, tutoring, and everything that goes along with being a middle schooler. 
• Our whole famliy has a busy calendar of volunteering commitments, carpools,  as well as a full social calendar. 
• We are always on the run!  And we only have ONE shorty: I know that those of you with 2,3,4, and 5 have an exponentialy difficult schedule.  

This is how we were rolling

You know the feeling: things were falling through the cracks.  I'd get an appointment reminder call from the dentist that I had forgotten to write down and have to reschedule it. I'd spend a good portion of Sunday on the World's Longest Carpool Text Chain. Dinner many nights ended up being Publix fried chicken and a bag of Caesar salad. ( No disrespect to Publix: y'all rule.)  Flying by the seat of our pants had become a way of life.  And I was losing my dang mind.

Something had to give

I hit the point where I couldn't take it any more. There may have been tears, I'm not going to lie. 

​When I finally stopped blubbering, I knew I had to do something to fix  this mess.  If you know you need to change your life, you naturally consult Oprah, right?  That was my first instinct, too!  Unfortunatley, neither Oprah or Gayle were available to change my life for me, so I had to do the next best thing: I went to  Pinterest.

After lots of reading up on how to manage my family's time and thinking about how I wanted our schedules to look, I  decided to commit to A Weekly Family Routine. This means carving out 2 hours once a week (I do Sundays) to dedicate to planning out the whole week in advance.  

Related article:
3 Ways to Organize Your Life + Time with the Erin Condren Life Planner

Two hours? On a sunday? Good luck with that. 

I see your smirk and  I hear you screaming "Ain't Happening".  Simmer down.  I swear it can really be done. But first let's answer the obvious:
NO: it doesn't have to be on a Sunday.  If you have a couple hours of downtime on Tuesday morning, do your Family Routine then.  If you have time while the kids are at volleyball practice, do it then.  Just figure out when you have the time and do it. Sunday works for me. 
NO: it doesn't have to be 2 hours all at once.  I mentally split the project time into two portions: Logistics and Meal Planning. 
I often find that I have one hour free on Saturday (while waiting at sports practice), which is when I bang out the Meal and Grocery Plan.  Then on Sunday morning/early afternoon, I knock out all of the logisitical stuff. 
Remember: I am not the Boss of You.  YOU  DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU!!

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so you do...what exactly??

In my perfect world, I would sit down on my porch with a sweet Spotify playlist, a hot cuppa coffee (or a cold beer, if it's Saturday afternoon...don't judge me), my supplies and get to work. But sometimes I work on the logistics in the car while I'm waiting at tutoring. I've done my Meal Plan and Grocery Planning  while sitting on the cold floor in the hallway at a swim meet while waiting for my shorty's next event.   What it boils down to is I sit down and dedicate time and effort to planning it all out. You have to commit to it, or it's not going to work. 
​

What are these supplies you speak of?

My favorite part: a supply list! Gather these things up before you even start so you're not running around and wasting your precious time!  Here is what I make sure I have: 

• Iphone. We keep our work schedules, appointments, etc. digitally, so I need my phone to see what's on the plate for the week.
• My paper planner.  I'm old-school and still use a paper planner.  If you can survive with just digital planning, I applaud you, but that's not my jam.   I need to write it all down and see how it is going to play out. 
• Paper Family calendar, if that is how you roll.  I don't, but if you do, get it down off the wall and show it who is the Boss. 
• Pencils, pretty colored gel pens, post-its and binder clips.  That is just how I do. I keep a pencil case in my car with all these supplies so I can plan on the run, if needed. I just heard you say "Nerd Alert", by the way.  
• The Grocery List pad.  I have a custom one, which is gorgeous, but I also love the All Out Of grocery list from Knock Knock. OrganizeHer also makes a great product, and they are availble at Target.  Doesn't matter what you use, just have something you can write on.
• Meal Planner Notepad. Again, I'm old school.  I write out the Meal Plan on a piece of paper and it is posted in the kitchen for quick reference. I love the Knock Knock product. It can be on the prettiest paper or a sheet of notebook paper: who cares as long as you have a plan!

Supplies: check.  Now what?

This is where I created a cheat-sheet list of all the things that have to be organized each week.  In our famliy, the Logisitics Plan looks like this

• Work and travel schedules for parents. If your shorty has an afterschool job, add in that too. 
• Afterschool activities. Practices, tutors, whatever.
• Carpool.  Want to change your life? Start using the free carpool-kids.com/Carpool Kids app. It's a free app that lets you and other parents set up who is driving which kids to what activity, all within the app.  No more Sunday carpool text chains from Hell! 
• Social plans for everyone, including babysitter needs.
• Workouts
• Cleaning the house.  Whether it's scheduling your cleaning lady or figuring out who is going to scrub the toliets and when, make a plan to get your crib clean.  Don't be nasty.
• Date or Famliy Night.  Sometimes that just means frozen pizza and Netflix, but who cares. 
• Errands, including our big ones...Target and Groceries.  If you're a famliy of more than 3, I'll guess you have a Costco/Sams/BJ's run once a week or so, too. 

Then there is planning the Meal Plan

• What's for Dinner every day.  I rarely plan breakfasts, and lunch is usually leftovers. When planning dinners, I take into account practices, work schedules, etc.
• Grocery list
• Cookbooks, Magazines, and/or Pinterest Boards
• Grocery Store sales flyer (which I access digitally at our grocery store, Harris Teeter)

I'll be writing a future post on my exact Meal Plan Methodology. 

get your game face on: now you have to plan it all out

Alright, you're going to need full brain power for this part.  Take a giant gulp of your coffee, focus and get down to it.

Here is how I build-out our week:

1. Work schedule and appointments come first.  Those are the non-negotiables (aka make or cost me money), so they get priority. 
2. All after-school activites get scheduled next.  Those activities cost me money too, so I am making sure I take care of them. 
3. Carpool is next, closely followed by any babysitting needs. *Note: I usually try to book my sitter as soon as I put an event on the calendar, to ensure I don't forget until the last minute.  The Sunday Rountine has saved me many times from forgetting to book a sitter. 

Now that I've taken care of everything that makes or costs me money, I layer in the next things.

1. Errands and Cleaning.  My biggest tip is to schedule errands during downtimes.  For example, on the day I drive carpool to a 1.5 hour practice, I drop the kids, hit the post office, library, and Target (including Starbucks) and get back to practice in time.  The other way to roll is to just bite the bullet and do it all in one day. Again, do what works for you. 
2. Groceries fall in last. That is flexible, depending on our Meal Plan. I personally shop at two grocery stores: one I go in and the other I place my order ahead of time and drive through. The drive through service at Harris Teeter is the BEST time saver in the world.  I highly, highly recommend it.  The $5 it costs will be the best $5 you spend all day. 

Related article:
3 Ways to Organize Your Life + Time with the Erin Condren Life Planner

COngrats: you now have a plan of attack for the week. 

Now you gotta share the love!

Having a Sweet Plan is super, but you've gotta get that info out to your peeps. Make sure everything gets put into your Icalendar/family calendar. I personally input everything into our 3 shared calendars within ICal:

• My Work calendar: these are tasks specific to my business. For example, I might schedule  "Write blog post" on Tuesday from 2-4pm, but this isn't vital for my family to know. It's just to keep me on task. 
• C+C calendar: (the C's are my spouse and my initals). These are schedule items that my husband needs to see and/or be aware of.  So all household appointments, my off-site jobs (for safety), etc.  I do also add any household projects, like "shop for helath insurance" or "car in for service", so my spouse knows what household projects are in progress . 
• Family calendar: all three of us see this.  This includes all afterschool activites, carpools, social calendar and babysitter, and school dates.  My shorty's school sends out a newsletter with test dates, so I put those dates into the Family calendar. 

Get your fam on board, toot sweet.

This can also be called the Getting Buy-In stage.  If your family has always just played it fast and loose, then you suddenly have this gorgeous master plan, it's gonna take a while to get everyone on board. It'll probably be a love-hate relationship for the first couple of weeks. They will love that there is a plan for everything and things will go much more smoothly.  However, everyone in the family has to get used to being accountable to the schedule. Target run scheduled for Tuesday pm?  Then everyone better put their stuff on the list by Tuesday morning, or it ain't getting bought. 

How's that all working for you, you ask?  

After all this, it total Sunshine, Puppy Dogs and Rainbows, right? YES~!!  Life is now perfect.  It's so great, you're considering writing a Facebook post about your perfect family and your perfect life.  Right???

Ok: not 100%.  You're going to forget to schedule things. There will be push-back from the famliy about "the crazy schedule Mom made", and maybe more.  But trust me when I say: it's way better than it was before, and it will only get better as you keep doing it. The key is to not give up. Listen, we all know the Moms usually run the show at home, so if you have the job, OWN THE DANG JOB.

I own that weekly family routine. you CAN own your family routine, too. 

At the end of it all, I can say I'm proud of the way I run this house.  Our stuff gets done.  Our friends, family and clients know we are a dependable bunch. Our house is clean, our dinners are on the table, and we have the time to spend with each other and on the things that matter to us. 

You can do this too!  You already run the show...just make it easier on yourself!

Want help getting started with your weekly Family routine?

Are you ready to start?  Great!  To get you started I've created this FREE downloadable  Weekly Family Routine Checklist. I love my followers, so I'm spreading the love to y'all. 

Have questions?  Let's hear what you have!!  

Professional Disclaimer: The ideas, recommendations, and opinions on this website, blog, and made in person are for educational and entertainment purposes only, and should not be considered legal, financial, or medical advice. I am not an attorney, doctor, or licensed financial professional. Sage Organizing Co., LLC is not liable for any losses or damages related to actions or failure to act related to the content of this website, blog, or in-person discussions. If you need specific legal, financial, or medical advice, consult a professional in your area.

​Related article:
3 Ways to Organize Your Life + Time with the Erin Condren Life Planner