Working From Home and staying organized

Ideas to Keep the Family Organized

— and Busy

Trying to keep yourself focused on your work/business, and your kids busy? Or let’s just say it – Out of the WAY!!! (love you kiddos 💕). Working from home can be more of a challenge than a busy office.

If the kids are going to be home all day and you have ‘shit’ to get done – setting up expectations with the household is a must. You need to be clear what the game plan is for the day, for you, for them, and for your business.

Kick off your day with a Family meeting.

Set it up in-advance ➡️ announced it – schedule it. Send out an agenda – if you need to, and provide food (aka Breakfast).

Agenda:

Purpose of the Meeting: Setting expectations of Families goals for the day – Work/Business and Family.
Review Schedule of all family members – what is everyone expectations of the day. Who is where and why?
- Map out schedule of the day if necessary – set expectations
Schedule Activities out of the house.
Brainstorming Busy – Activities to do if no plans are set/made.
Dinner Plans – What is Dinner, and assigned duties for prep.

** FREE Worksheet Below **

Sounds pretty obvious to do this – but seriously we don’t do it enough. If we have our families engaged in a PLAN we all can be on the same page – and hopefully respect our time and focus on what we need to do. There are also a wack of studies that out there that ‘claim’ that if you plan / pre-schedule you are more likely to keep to your schedule…this includes meal planning.

Brainstorming Busy

If the kids are constantly asking – what can I do? Or I am bored? Uggggg…..so annoying I know. But what have they done to earn the right to be bored? There is a good chance they don’t know what is in their range of possibilities to do.

So let’s make some lists – this can be done as one big brainstorming dump, or done day of. I 100% encourage you to make this list of things to do with your kiddos. If it is not their idea, or if they are not engaged in the list building, they will NOT buy in.

** FREE Worksheets Below **

Sticking to a schedule for the kids will not only help them with stability of what is happening, but it will give you structure on how to schedule your time around their schedule. Be open and honest with them on what you are trying to accomplish and why it is important that you need time to focus on your work – which opens up time to have you FULLY present to spend time with them.

Ideas for the Big Kiddos

Room Organization – Clean it and re-organize. Great opportunity to identify clothes that don’t fit – purge or donate.

Paint the Fence ($$) – Manually labour is the best!

Clean out the Garage or Basement ($$) – Any unwanted items they could try and sell

Lawn Care – for the Street. Good opportunity to test out their entrepreneurial skills!

Dog Walking – for the Neighbourhood. Good opportunity to test out their entrepreneurial skills!

Exercise Routine – Run or Work out.

Babysitting ($$) – Is there any family that could use an extra set of hands for a couple hours of day

Reading – Old School – find a book and read!!

Puzzle – Old School – Hours of fun, seriously lol.

Baking – Time to test out some real-life skills – assign recipes for dinner, or baking (delish)

Paperwork ($$)– Does your business or your home need some paper work entered online, or maybe sorted through. Delegate

Laundry – If they don’t know how … now is the time – delegate

$$ – May require payment for services completed. I do have an itsbitsy issue with paying the kiddos (allowance) if they are completing ‘regular’ duties such as cleaning room, laundry, and dishes.

Working From Home FREE downloads

Sometimes it is more fun building list when you have a template / worksheet – what ever works right? Check out the FREE downloadable PDF to build you BUSY OPPORTUNITIES list, Schedule Template, and Family Meeting Agenda.

Working from home can be a challenge – so taking advantage of a FREE tools is a good start to getting your better organized.