Practical Every Day Helps: Getting Organized

We would like to dedicate the next several post to give parents out there some very practical every day helps, some things that you can really use in your parenting and life. As a parent I’m sure you would agree with the statement that any practical advice goes a long way, we’ll gladly accept any good ideas. For today’s post we would like to start at the beginning: Getting Organized

How does your home look?

Have you ever walked into your home after a hard day’s work and feel like you’re walking into a landfill? Maybe it may not be that extreme but right now think, how clean is your home? Getting organized starts with a clean home, you need somewhere to sit down and plan things out. It’s very hard and also distracting when you’re sitting there looking at yesterday’s dinner. If you’re too tired because of work, have the kids clean. What do they have to do, right? Be very specific with them and put them to work, be specific because you know they’ll side step tasks if they feel there’s some wiggly room. Now, think how nice it will be tomorrow to come home to a clean house, you’re already smiling aren’t you?

                        

Do you have a plan for your week?

When’s your son’s soccer game this week? What time does your daughter have her tennis lessons tomorrow? When are your husband and you going to that work function? Do you plan out your week or is it anything goes. Getting organized involves a purposeful plan. There are many tools that can help you with planning: Franklin, Daytimer, Phone Apps, and a regular old calendar and a pencil. Use one of these tools to lay everything out on paper and have a definite plan for your week. Look, were not sitting here telling you that you have to have everything single detail of your life planned, all were saying is that your life shouldn’t be organized chaos. If you don’t have a solid plan it with tickle down to your children, and as we always talk about, your children will learn from your example. If you need some help with organization and want some generic forms, get some at printfree.com.

How do your finances look?

We could write a whole book about finances, right? If we are disorganized here, it has the potential to really screw up our lives. Right, off the bat, we want to say that life is a little bit easier when you don’t have a lot of debt. As a group we all have committed to become debt free. There’s more freedom and a lot less stress when you have less debt. For the purposes of getting organized, do you have any clue of what’s going on with your finances? Do you have enough money but miss paying your bills on time because you don’t know what’s going on with your money? Is your check book balanced or do you have no clue of what’s what? We’re going to assume that anyone reading this has their stuff together, so it’s more about having a plan for where you want to ultimately end up with your money. We want to submit one idea that should help you get your finances organized: do a written budget every month. Just like uses resources to plan your week out, use a budget to plan your month out with your money. Most of us probably hate to sit there and write a budget out but from personal experience, when you do your going to feel like you’ve just gotten a raise. You never realize how much those little expenditures add up unless you see them on paper. Do you know where your money is going every month, just take one of your old bank statements out and you might be shocked! Go to smartaboutmoney.org to get free blank forms to start writing everything out each month.

Just a beginning       

Having everything laid out and planned out is just the start; it will help everything else run smooth. Get organized today, this will help you take control of your life a little better. It will be an example to our children for when they get older. You have enough stress and chaos in your life; don’t complicate things by not being organized!