Simple Living in Practice, Lesson #7
Today, let us talk a little bit about organizing a household.
Everybody who ever ran a household knows that there are a million things to it, a lot of things to do and to keep track of. This can get confusing, especially if the household grows bigger with the arrival of children and / or more wives, and if more than one person does the chores. There are a few little things that can be done to get all these things straight, so that everything is done in a timely fashion and nobody is overworked. I am talking about household chores managers.
Our chores manager consists of three different parts, basically.
Part 1 contains all the monthly chores, from bills that are to be paid monthly to cleaning and organizing chores that repeat every month. It also contains the chores that are done twice a month, or every second or third month, and those things that are only due once a year.
Part 2 details the days of the week, with every day being given an overall theme, like cleaning day, baking day, food for stock preparation day.
Part 3 is a weekly menu that details what will be cooked when, including side dish, salad, and desert.
Now, how do you compose such a manager ?
First of all, a manager is something that grows with the family, with time and with experience. To start out with it, sit down and write down everything you can think of that has to be done around the house, no matter how often or by whom. Just make a big list, and when you think you added everything, let it sit on your desk for a week and add to it what comes to your mind during that week.
Then your list needs sorted. You can find different templates on the internet that might help you with the sorting process, and even prompt your memory still on things you didn't think about so far. For us, it worked best to organize the whole manager along time - days, weeks, months, the year, as you can see above. Decide what needs to be done how often, and utilize a spreadsheet program or a self drawn grid to make a neat little plan that you can hang on the wall. If you don't use a computer for it, write it out in pencil, you will certainly use an eraser quite often in the beginning.
If more than one person is planned into the chores, it is important to include into the manager a field where the name of the person can be put, so that there are no confusions about who is responsible for what. If you change the responsibilities with any consistency, make sure that it is easy to change the name on the manager, either by using pencil or by using little name cards, if you want to get all fancy about it.
And one last advice: Make the chores manager as realistic as possible, and stick with it ! Make sure that you do what is due each day, week, month, otherwise you have just wasted a lot of the time God gave you, and will continue to do so until you finally learn how to get organized.
Technorati Tags: simple life, Christian ladies, household chores manager, God's creation, nature, homesteading, self sufficiency, separation, SAHM, plural marriage, polygamy, dominion covenant, multi-generational family, Joshuah's House
Everybody who ever ran a household knows that there are a million things to it, a lot of things to do and to keep track of. This can get confusing, especially if the household grows bigger with the arrival of children and / or more wives, and if more than one person does the chores. There are a few little things that can be done to get all these things straight, so that everything is done in a timely fashion and nobody is overworked. I am talking about household chores managers.
Our chores manager consists of three different parts, basically.
Part 1 contains all the monthly chores, from bills that are to be paid monthly to cleaning and organizing chores that repeat every month. It also contains the chores that are done twice a month, or every second or third month, and those things that are only due once a year.
Part 2 details the days of the week, with every day being given an overall theme, like cleaning day, baking day, food for stock preparation day.
Part 3 is a weekly menu that details what will be cooked when, including side dish, salad, and desert.
Now, how do you compose such a manager ?
First of all, a manager is something that grows with the family, with time and with experience. To start out with it, sit down and write down everything you can think of that has to be done around the house, no matter how often or by whom. Just make a big list, and when you think you added everything, let it sit on your desk for a week and add to it what comes to your mind during that week.
Then your list needs sorted. You can find different templates on the internet that might help you with the sorting process, and even prompt your memory still on things you didn't think about so far. For us, it worked best to organize the whole manager along time - days, weeks, months, the year, as you can see above. Decide what needs to be done how often, and utilize a spreadsheet program or a self drawn grid to make a neat little plan that you can hang on the wall. If you don't use a computer for it, write it out in pencil, you will certainly use an eraser quite often in the beginning.
If more than one person is planned into the chores, it is important to include into the manager a field where the name of the person can be put, so that there are no confusions about who is responsible for what. If you change the responsibilities with any consistency, make sure that it is easy to change the name on the manager, either by using pencil or by using little name cards, if you want to get all fancy about it.
And one last advice: Make the chores manager as realistic as possible, and stick with it ! Make sure that you do what is due each day, week, month, otherwise you have just wasted a lot of the time God gave you, and will continue to do so until you finally learn how to get organized.
Technorati Tags: simple life, Christian ladies, household chores manager, God's creation, nature, homesteading, self sufficiency, separation, SAHM, plural marriage, polygamy, dominion covenant, multi-generational family, Joshuah's House
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