Ten Tips To Help Manage and Organize Your Family

To me managing and organizing a family go together hand in hand. There are a few tricks that I have learned throughout the years that work well for me and my family. Icon Apps and Twitter Moms have asked us to share a list of 10 tips that we use for keeping organized and managing family.

1. Start early, the earlier a child starts to learn organization skills the easier it is. Princess who is 19 months old can put her toys up, throw trash away, and help keep her room clean. If the area is more organized and neat then managing the area will be better as well.
2. Meals, home school, homework, playtime, and cleaning chores can all be kept on a schedule. This allows you to know what and when something should be done. If a task is looked at in whole it may seem rather difficult to do. But when broken down it may seem more simple.
3. Creating a menu in our house helps us to make sure that meals are done. It allows us to see what we are having that night and the next night so we can take out any frozen food that needs to be unthaw as well as prepare anything that we can do ahead of time if we know we will be short of time the following night.
4. Creating an ongoing shopping list helps us by allowing us to write down whatever we may need and be out of or run out of in short notice. We have a list that hangs on our fridge and we often write down whatever it is that we need alerting the whole house that we will be going to the house on a certain date and time. That way if the teens need anything they can add it to the list as well.
5. We have a sort of house bank where the teens are paid weekly. I must say that the teens are old enough where we have a chore system in place as well as how much one can earn by doing this chore. Each of the teens has an equal chance to earn the same amount of money. This keeps the house clean and organized as well as the financial matters as far as what the teens make in allowance are easier as well. The teens use their money to buy any extras other than what we supply them.
6. We have a blast off station where all the kids put their stuff they will need the next morning. We have had this in place for many years and works well. Now, we also have separate places in the teens rooms for the stuff they are responsible for.
7. Family calendar, we have a large calendar on the kitchen wall where all activities for the entire family are kept. If they are not going to be home for a meal I expect to know why so they place whether they are eating or not on the calendar as well. This allows for family time together, activities are planned and all of us are happier.
8. Family meetings are another way we help stay organized and the family is managed. We all gather together and discuss what we need to talk about, what upcoming activities will be going on, what meals are planned for next week and whatever we need to talk about.
9. Clothing is managed by taking out the winter putting up the spring and summer, no new clothing is purchased unless we are ready to get rid of another, and the drawers and closets are organized once a week
10. We keep important papers in bins, I have 3 , the boys and my hubby each have 1 , the girl both have a shelf for their stuff to keep straight This does help as everything important goes in these bins. While they may need cleaned up often we always know that if we look in the bins we will find it.

This post is part of a blogging contest from the TwitterMoms community. There is a chance this post could be randomly selected to win a $50 Target GiftCard, so wish me luck! For more details, you can view the contest page here (http://icomp.ly/IconApps).