I really like simple. I also like easy. Simple makes life easy. To make life easy, I thrive on simple home systems that improve the flow of our routines.
Our son’s school starts just after Labor Day. While school is going to be virtual this fall, we are planning to provide similar routines to what we were doing last school year. The start of fall semester is a great opportunity to reset and refine your home systems and routines. If something wasn’t working great for you last year, change it now!
Small tweaks to your routines can significantly impact your day. As an example, prior to last year, we kept our son’s backpack in a bin in our entryway closet. This made a ton of sense for us. Since we would need to place his lunch box into his backpack right before we left the house, it seemed logical to have everything by the door. For the most part, this worked just fine, but over the course of the year, we added ice packs and a lunch bag (for the ice packs, obviously - if you give a mouse a cookie, am I right?) and forgot to pack his water bottle on more than a handful of instances. We found that we were running back and forth from the front door to the kitchen two or three additional times to grab the extra things or dropping things because it was just more than we could easily handle in one trip.
The extra trips to the kitchen added maybe two to three minutes and 30 to 40 additional steps, but it was annoying and would leave us just a tad more frazzled than we wanted to be.
We needed to make a small tweak.
Around the holidays (another great time to reset routines and systems), we decided to clear the contents of one of the drawers directly across from our refrigerator and move all of the things we needed each morning to one central location: backpack, enrichment backpack, lunchbox, and lunch bag. Food and ice packs naturally lived in the refrigerator.
In doing so, we created one central location where we can pack his lunch, fill up his water, and place them in the fridge until we are ready to head out the door. Then right before we need to leave, we open the drawer, grab his lunch bag, backpack, and as needed enrichment backpack. We spin around, grab his lunchbox, water, and ice packs out of the fridge, put them in his backpack, and send him out the door. This really doesn’t save us a ton of time or steps, but it makes life so much easier - and we have eliminated all chances of forgetting his lunch and water bottle because we have to grab his backpack, which is next to his lunch bag.
As I mentioned above, life can be hard. We should make what we can control as easy as possible. What can you do to make your life easier?
Coming next week! Designing temporary school work stations for your kids!
With many families partaking in virtual learning this fall, setting up a temporary work station for your kids will help you provide boundaries on “school vs home” time as well as making your days run a bit smoother. We will share what we are doing for our son along with some free resources!