Streamline: Planner Problems

                  

For some reason once the holiday season was over I expected myself to be back on top of everything. I blamed the business of our schedule on Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the social events that accompany them. I felt like my current calendar system might just not be working because there was just too much. Last week I told myself that it was all the appointments and meetings that were put off until after the school break was over that made me feel like I wasn't on top of things.

This week is forcing me to look at the real issue though. I can't keep blaming this feeling on there being  too much to do, because frankly, this is my life. It's busy. Appointments and meetings are going to keep happening. My children will keep getting homework projects and paperwork that I need to send back to school. This is what life looks like with young children and the commitments my husband and I take on outside work/home. For the most part these are things we want to do or have to do (There's no skipping hair color appointments anymore-hello gray roots!) 

Cooking has taught me that if something isn't working the recipe needs to adjusted. Add a little more seasoning, adjust the ratio of milk to flour. It's time to start adjusting how I organize myself/stay sane. If the system works, I'll keep it up and then stay sane. If it doesn't fit my life at the moment, I fall off the wagon and end up stress eating brownies out of our freezer because, well…chocolate! 

I'm going to try to re-integrate my meal planning and family scheduling a little better. It kind of fits with my plans to streamline things this year. Bear with me over the next month because I'm going to figure out how to make things run more smoothly and document it a little here. Consider it a mini-blog series! 

So here are the scheduling things that need work (at this moment):

Meal Planning

Family Calendar

Blog Calendar

Paperwork

Normally we meal plan once a week and I try to match up what events we have in the evening with the meals. We post the meals on the chalkboard in our kitchen so that I don't forget (yes, I know) what I planned to make. Now that pretty much every evening has an event for somebody in the house I've been trying to cook in the middle of the late afternoon homework rush and that gets complicated fast.

Our family schedule gets input into both the Cozi app on my phone and a white board calendar on the wall. This system was working great until both kids ended up in evening activities and now there really isn't enough space on the board to fit everything and still read it.  

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The last paper planner I had was The Busy Body Book which I adored, but they went out of business. Each week had a two page spread. The left page was set up for notes and to-do lists, and the right page had the days in a vertical column. Then there were 5 other columns to label with whatever you needed-one for each family member, work vs home, meal plans, etc. It was FABULOUS. 

So the first order of business is to find a new planner. Do you have one you love? Please comment if you do! I'm going to do some research this weekend and I'll post a roundup of possibilities next week. Over the next few weeks I'll share what's worked and what hasn't in terms of meal planning and handling the paperwork craziness. It's always nice to be accountable to someone and I'm betting that I am not the only one having problems getting back into a groove this year so maybe it will help one of you too!

Feel free to share your favorite planner/calendar/general organizing tips in the comments! The more ideas the better!