Do you feel like you have tried everything and your house is still chaotic?
If you have been following along since the beginning of my How to Easily Manage Your Home series and implementing the routines and putting everything into practice but your house still isn’t running as smoothly as you would like – this post will hopefully help you out!
I wanted to troubleshoot with those of you who are still struggling to manage your home and see if there might be some other reasons that are leading to this problem.
If you prefer to watch the video that goes along with this post, here it is:
1) Possible Problem #1
If you are still struggling with the day-to-day management of your home, the first thing that could be tripping you up is if you have not effectively integrated your family into helping you out around the house.
Now I know this can take some time, so you may still be working on it.
But there are a couple of other areas you want to be aware of as you get them to help you out.
It doesn’t have to match exactly, but ideally it should coordinate with what your children will be doing each day.
For example, if I am cleaning my downstairs, I am not going to send my young children upstairs to clean their rooms. Kids are pretty social as a general rule, so it works much better to have them do some cleaning on the same floor that you are on.
I will have my kids dust the furniture on the same floor that I am cleaning on or I will have them clean the bathroom as I am vacuuming on the same floor.
And that way you’re just all in the same space and are working together, and if they have any problems or need some help, I’m only a few steps away.
2) Possible Problem #2
Another thing you want to keep in mind when you are getting your children to help out around the house is to make sure you are giving them enough chores so that they feel like they’re actually making a difference.
This can be a little counterintuitive, especially if your children aren’t used to doing chores. You may think you want to start them out kind of easy.
If they’re currently just in charge of making their bed and cleaning their room, they will feel more grown up and feel like they are helping out more if they have other chores that help the entire family.
Now, I don’t think that children need to work all day long, but I think that each child should have enough chores for their age.
And I’ll tell you a story about something that happened very recently at our house . . .
I decided to increase the number of chores that my six-year-old was doing because she had just recently turned six.
At first she was not happy about it. She didn’t understand why she had to do so many chores, and she wished she was still three like her sister because her sister doesn’t have to do as many chores and “it just wasn’t fair.”
But after only a couple of days, she started doing her chores faster. She started doing them better. She started actually completing the chore in a way more like I would’ve done it than she had been doing it before.
She also started trying to do the chore before I asked her to. She would sneak around and try to get her chore done before I realized it, and then come and get me and show me what a good job she had done.
So I found this very interesting because it validated everything that I had heard about children really wanting to be valued and wanting to be an important member of the family.
They don’t just want to take from the family, they want to give as well.
3) Possible Problem #3
Now, another area that you may want to look at if you are still struggling to manage your home is Meal Planning.
I have a series on YouTube where I show you How to Easily Plan Your Meals, and that will give you all the steps you can take to Easily Meal Plan,
So in this post I’m just going to give you a short list of things that you can do today to make your Meal Planning Easier.
Make Breakfast Super Easy
I’m talking about eating the exact same thing every weekday easy.
Or if you think you would get bored with that, you could come up with a five-day rotation like this:
Monday could be Granola
Tuesday could be Eggs and Toast
Wednesday could be Hashbrowns
Thursday could be Oatmeal
Friday could be Pancakes
By putting your breakfast menu on autopilot it takes you much less time to cook and clean up each time you do it.
Choose Simple Lunches
At our house, we eat leftovers every single day of the week.
This is a great way to reduce food waste, it takes no prep work at all, and it requires very little cleanup.
But again, if you think you would get bored with leftovers every day, you could come up with a five-day rotation like this:
Monday could be Sandwiches
Tuesday could be Salads
Wednesday could be Tacos
Thursday could be Leftovers
Friday could be Quesadillas
Then you could just repeat this rotation every week.
Use Theme Nights for Dinners
Now for dinners, I’m not gonna tell you to eat the exact same thing every week because that would be boring.
I may be a minimalist, but I’m not a minimalist when it comes to loving food!
Just about everyone in my family is a foodie so that would not work for us to have the exact same thing for dinner every single day.
So instead, what I suggest to simplify your meal planning is to create a Theme Night for every night of the week.
Then, each night of the week, all you have to do is come up with a meal that goes along with that Theme Night.
Now, if you have your family helping you out, and you have your meal plans all taken care of, and your house still doesn’t feel like it is running on autopilot, you may want to take a look at you clutter.
Clutter can be a lot of different things. It can be :
Physical Clutter in Your House
Clutter on your Schedule
Clutter in your Mind
But I highly recommend that you look at all of these areas and figure out if any of them are causing stress in your life.
Yes, the routines that we discussed in this series will help your house run on Autopilot, and I recommend setting those up because it just gets your house going in the right direction.
But once you declutter, your house feels clean – All.The.Time.
I have a series on YouTube if you want to check out the four steps to Completely Decluttering Your Home. But I do want to give you a couple of things to get started.
Start with the Physical Clutter
You may have problems with clutter everywhere in your life, but starting with the physical clutter will be the easiest way to start easily running your home.
You can start by dedicating just 15 minutes a day to decluttering and it won’t be long before you notice results.
As soon as you get a bag or a box full of stuff, put it into your car so that you can drop it off next time you are near a donation center.
Next, Work on Simplifying Your Schedule
If your problem is having too many time commitments, I recommend going back and reading this post about How to Create a Weekly Rhythm, and that will help set you up for success.
Then you can implement some boundaries in your week so that you can start simplifying.
I also recommend setting a limit with your kids for how many extracurricular activities they can do so that you don’t ending up running people from one practice or event to another.
Freeing up you schedule allows for the truly important things to happen that often get pushed aside, like having dinner together.
So practice saying, “No.”
Practice saying, “No,” when you really don’t want to do something, but just kind of feel obligated to.
And practice saying, “No,” when your kids say, “Hey, can we do this other think in addition to all the other things we have been doing?”
5) Potential Problem #5
And if you have all of those areas working for you and you still don’t feel like your house is running itself, you may want to look at your Budget.
I have a full post on How to Start a Budget, and I will be doing a series down the road on Budgeting.
But I will give you a couple of tips here if you wanna get started:
First, create a spreadsheet for your budget so you can see where every single dollar is going.
Second, if you have any debt, whether that’s student loans, car loans, or credit card debt, you want to pay it off as quickly as possible.
It is so freeing not to have that hanging over your head every single month.
If you want to see the steps we took to paying off our student loan debt quickly, check out this post.
The white walls, the modern art, the stereotypes. . .
If you have ever been interested in minimalism, but have been intimidated by all of the reasons that you “couldn’t be a minimalist” then keep reading because this post is for you!
I’m going to show you how you can implement minimalism in the areas of your life that work for your family!
There are so many different ways that you can embrace minimalism in your life, and it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing type of thing. Just having minimalism in one or two areas of your life can help lower your stress and make your life easier.
As I go through the different types of minimalism, I’m going to tell you why you might find it helpful. I’m also going to tell you if it is one that I use in my house!
If you prefer to watch content instead instead of reading, here is the video that goes with the post:
Different Types of Minimalists
1) Ambience Minimalists
These minimalists stereotypically like the white walls, curated art, and keep very few possessions. This is what many people associate with minimalism.
These minimalists are really concerned with how their house feels and looks.
This type of minimalist is more concerned with having a minimalist look and feel to their house than they are with having any sort of personalized decor.
Now, I personally don’t relate to this type of minimalist because I love decorating my house with family pictures. And having a house that looks and feels like a minimalist house isn’t as important to me as having a customized space that I enjoy living in.
But just because I don’t personally relate to this one, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a great reason for you to explore minimalism. If you love clean lines and clean looking spaces, this may be a great reason for you to check out minimalism and see if it might fit with your lifestyle.
2) Cozy Minimalists
The cozy minimalist is much more concerned with having a space that is customized to them and feels cozy when they are in it.
Often when you think of the ambiance minimalist, it looks like a sterile environment. Often they don’t have as much furniture, or if they do, it’s very minimalist. Typically no throw pillows and things like that.
Whereas, the cozy minimalist will have more pillows, blankets, wall decor and things that just make the house feel homey.
You would enjoy this type of minimalism if you want your house to feel clean, but you also want it to be comfortable and feel like it’s customized to you and your lifestyle.
This is definitely a type of minimalism I subscribe to. I love having a home that is easy to clean, but also feels warm and inviting.
3) Extreme Minimalists
Now, this is the type of minimalism that you would have seen if you watched the documentary on Netflix called Minimalism. These people have very little furniture, they pack for months in a tiny little suitcase, and they just have a miniscule amount of possessions.
People who like this type of minimalism will often will count their possessions and know exactly how many things they have in their house at all times.
This is not a type of minimalism that I am drawn to. I like to have enough things in my house for it to be comfortable for me to live in.
However, some people find this type of minimalism freeing because they can easily pack and travel at a moment’s notice.
So if you just have too many things in your house and you’re ready to just get rid of everything, this type of minimalism may appeal to you.
4) Frugal Minimalists
Frugal minimalists are typically drawn to minimalism because minimalists tend to buy less things. And when you buy less things, you happen to have more money (funny how that works 😅).
This type of minimalism might be appealing to you if you are already a frugal person by nature. But it might also be something that could help you if you have a budgeting problem and you need to reign in your finances.
Being a frugal minimalist helps you to not spend extra money unless you actually need to.
This is one reason I was drawn to minimalism in the first place because I am a very frugal person and I don’t like spending money on things that I don’t need.
5) Meal Planning Minimalists
Now often when people become meal planning minimalists, they create meal plans where they eat pretty much the same thing every single day. Or they may have a one-week or a two-week rotation of meals that they repeat over and over again.
Now, I do implement this type of minimalism in my house… but I put my own spin on it!
If you’ve read any of my meal planning posts, you know that I am a huge fan of having theme nights for every night of the week, and that simplifies my meal plan, without making things boring.
If you want to check out the Crazy Way I Meal Plan, you can read this post. Or if you want some help creating your own meal plan, check out Set It and Forget It Meal Planning.
But this is a great way to simplify your meal plan while still having variety!
6) Budgeting Minimalists
These types of minimalists are different than the frugal minimalists in that they try to actually minimise the overall budgeting process. This means that they will often have maybe one giant account that they pull everything out of, and they just have very broad categories within their budget.
Maybe at most they have four accounts that they work with, but it’s very simple, very streamlined. A lot of things will come out of the same chunk of money because they don’t want things to get too complicated with their finances.
Now I don’t personally subscribe to this type of minimalism. And I actually recommend that people have several accounts for their budget because that actually simplifies things in your mind. Check out this post here if you want to know which accounts I think everyone should have.
If you feel like you are going in way too many directions with your budget and you need to simplify it, this might be a type of minimalism that would work for you.
7) Stuff Minimalists
Just in case you’re wondering, yes, I am making some of these terms up as I go along 😅. But stuff minimalists are people who just don’t want to have so much stuff in their house.
They don’t really care if their home has the perfect minimalist ambience. They don’t necessarily care if they have a cozy minimalist house.
They just want to have less stuff in their life, and they want it NOT to look like Toys R Us threw up in their house.
So yes, this is a type of minimalism I definitely can relate to because I do not like having too much extra stuff laying around my house whether that stuff be toys, clothes, books, or anything else.
You may be interested in this type of minimalism if you feel like you just have so many things that you can’t keep your house clean.
I highly recommend stuff minimalism for anyone who has kids. I have found time and time again that my kids are happier, they share better, and their rooms stay cleaner more easily when we have less stuff.
I can always tell when it’s time to go through and start decluttering some things when they start fighting about toys.
And there’s kind of this reverse logic with it because you think when they have more, they should be happier. But it’s just not the case.
If you are interested in stuff minimalism, Check out this post on How to Start Decluttering When You are Overwhelmed by Clutter.
The next type of minimalist is a cleaning minimalist. Cleaning minimalists just like to clean their house as quickly and efficiently as possible.
And if you’ve been around my blog or my YouTube channel before, you know that I can absolutely relate to this type of minimalist!
I used to clean my house all day on one day of the week and expected it to stay clean all throughout the week. And it did not work. So instead, I created a very simple weekly cleaning routine where I do a small amount of cleaning every day of the week except for my rest day.
So if you are interested in this type of minimalism, you can check out my simple weekly cleaning routine and create your own.
Low waste minimalists embrace minimalism because they want to have a lower impact on the environment.
Now, this was not one of the original reasons that I came to minimalism. However, I would definitely say it is something I can relate to now!
Because I am a frugal minimalist, I started looking into buying things that were more reusable and figuring out which things I didn’t need to buy anymore. And it kind of led me down this low waste rabbit hole, which has been fun and eye opening!
And the further down the rabbit hole you go, the more willing you are to do some crazy things in the name of being low waste.
But if you care a lot about the environment or you just want to reduce your impact on the environment, this would be a great reason for you to explore minimalism.
9) Schedule Minimalists
Schedule minimalists want to have more white space on their calendars. They like to say no to a lot of things so that they can really enjoy the things that matter.
I definitely relate to this type of minimalism and I highly recommend it if you have children. Children can get very overwhelmed if they are constantly going and doing something (like so many of us are in western society).
If you schedule in time to be slow and schedule in simple days, children cope much better. And honestly, so do we, even if we don’t want to admit it!
So, if you are interested in this type of minimalism, check out my How to Set Up a Weekly Schedule so that you aren’t constantly going from one thing to the next.
10) Routine Minimalists
The next type of minimalists on my list are routine minimalists.
And these people really like to have a simple, predictable routine that will make their lives easier.
I can definitely relate to this type of minimalist as well because as you guys know, I love setting up easy routines that just make your life kind of run on Autopilot.
And if you guys are interested in setting up some routines that will help your home run itself, check out the YouTube series I did on How to Easily Manage Your Home, where I walk you through how to create every single routine that you need for your home to run smoothly.
11) Travel Minimalists
The next type of minimalists are travel minimalists.
This is a type of minimalism that I was interested in back when my husband and I were first married. We really slimmed down on just about everything else so that we could pay off our debt and travel before we had kids.
But this isn’t necessarily a huge driving reason for us now because we are on one income and we have kids, so we just don’t get to travel as much as we would like to.
But if you want to travel more, travel minimalism can definitely help you do this!
12) Quality Over Quantity Minimalists
Next are the quality over quantity minimalists.
These minimalists are very similar to the travel minimalists because they are able to get exactly what they want, when they want it, since they don’t have all the extra stuff and noise in their life.
For me this was not something that initially drew me to minimalism. I was very frugal and I liked buying clothes on the sale rack at Walmart because I figured “Why spend any more than that?”
But as I’ve gotten a little older, I have realized that certain things will last longer when you buy Quality over Quantity.
So this has been a mindset shift for me as I have continued to explore different aspects of minimalism. But it has definitely paid off to spend a little bit more on something that will last much longer than to buy something cheap over and over again.
So this type of minimalism might appeal to you if you are tired of buying cheap things and having them break all the time. You can invest a little bit more upfront and have things that last longer.
13) Off-The-Grid Minimalists
The next type of minimalist that I have on my list is the off-the-grid minimalists.
These people really like to be on their own.
They have so few needs and ones that they can take care of without needing anyone else to help them out.
Now, I just spent a week off-the-grid backpacking with my husband and several friends, and it was amazing. But I don’t know that I’d want to do that full time.
So I don’t really think that it’s for me, but I can definitely see the benefits of it if it appeals to you!
I mean, you’d spend a lot less money and you’d have a lot less waste if this was the type of minimalism that you embraced.
14) Practical Minimalists
The next type of minimalist is the practical or moderate minimalist.
These people love the benefits of minimalism, but they aren’t ever going to count their possessions or worry about how many things they have… as long as they have a manageable amount for them.
They also aren’t particularly worried about if they feel like they have a minimalist house or if their house is cozy.
They just take the aspects of minimalism that work for them. So this is definitely something I can relate to, although I do like to have a cozy atmosphere.
I think it is more important to be practical about how minimalist you are, than to just to be a minimalist for the sake of being a minimalist.
15) Rule-Breaking Minimalists
And the last type of minimalist that I have on my list is the rule breaking minimalist. There are a lot of unspoken rules out there about being a minimalist, but these types of minimalists just don’t care if they are breaking the rules or if they’re doing everything correctly.
But if you have seen my post on the 12 Minimalist Rules That I Break, you can probably guess that I can definitely relate to this type of minimalist.
Because, like I just mentioned above, I think it is more important to have a type of minimalism that works for you and works for your family than it is to just say, “I’m a minimalist and I follow all of these rules,” even if I don’t enjoy following them.
So that is it. That is all of the different types of minimalist that I could think of. Let me know in the comments below if you think I missed any, and I’d love to hear which types of minimalists you most relate to or which types you could definitely never see yourself becoming.
Ready to Simplify Your Life?
If you are ready to Completely Declutter Your Home, check out my course, Cluttered to Calm!
This course walks you through the 4 Steps of Decluttering so that you can get rid of the stress and have peace in your home.
My oldest daughter has always been really good about knowing exactly what she wanted to spend her time doing.
When she was 4 she wanted to learn to crochet. So we asked a friend who knew how to crochet if she would teach her. She brought over a bag of yarn and crochet needles, and our oldest has been making little bookmarks, necklaces, bracelets, and dolly blankets ever since.
When she was 5, she asked us if she could take violin lessons. So I found a teacher and she began to play.
And most recently on her 7th birthday she decided that she wanted to start making and selling homemade soap. So we figured out how to help her set up her little business, and off she went!
Our middle daughter, however, has not been as original with her ideas. When we ask her what she is interested in learning, what instrument she is interested in playing, or what business she would like to have someday; she responds, “Crocheting, violin lessons, and having a soap business.”
Recently, she had begun asking over and over again when she could start HER soap business. And I realized that I needed a plan.
I couldn’t have two competing soap businesses in my house. And I didn’t exactly feel like starting a business with my four-year-old (even starting a business with a seven-year-old is a lot of work for the parents).
But I did know that she needed SOMETHING that was hers. Something that she could spend her time on. Something that would give her some quality time with me and/or my husband.
That’s when it dawned on me, she didn’t need a business, she needed a hobby!
How to Know If Your Child Needs a Hobby
1) If they are bored.
If your child is following you around all of the time and not doing anything by themselves, then they probably need a hobby. This applies to kids that are 3-4 years old and older.
As your child grows, you want to give them the tools they need to be more independent, and you want to give them the confidence that comes from having a skill and being able to do it well.
2) If your child is asking to spend more time with you.
This may seem like the opposite of what I just said, but hear me out.
I am home with my kids 24/7. Yet, one of my children was telling me that she needed and wanted to spend more time with me.
In our case, I think this is because we have a six month old so I spend a lot of time feeding and taking care of him. And my seven-year-old also has a lot of hobbies that she tends to get help with.
But my middle daughter didn’t have any designated time with me that was just on her own.
3) If they want to do anything and everything they see someone else do.
If every time you get together with friends and your child sees the cool things that they are doing and then immediately asks if they can do it too. That probably means that they don’t have something that they are excited about and they just want to copy someone else.
4) If they are spending too much time on media.
Outside of Facetiming with grandparents and the occasional educational YouTube video, our kids don’t get any screen time.
But I realized with my younger daughter right before we found a hobby for her, that she was asking A LOT to watch YouTube videos about topics she was interested in.
It wasn’t a big problem since she was learning, but I still don’t think that learning on a screen is as good as learning hands on.
If you are finding that all your child wants to do is watch other people live life on YouTube, play video games, or watch TV or Movies; help them find a hobby!
5) If they don’t have anything to talk about with other people.
When friends or family would ask my older daughter what was going on in her life, she would have plenty to tell them about.
But my younger daughter mostly would focus on telling them about what she *wanted* to do (like starting a business like her sister).
We realized that she didn’t have anything that she was currently doing that she was passionate about. And we knew that needed to change.
Things to Look for When Choosing a Hobby
1) Something that is uniquely theirs.
Our entire family likes to go snow skiing in the winter and backpacking in the summer. Those are great hobbies that we all enjoy (my younger daughter’s Christmas list included a lot of backpacking gear), but this isn’t something that any of our kids can call their own.
I wanted the hobby my daughter picked to be something that she could grow with and take individual pride in.
2) Something that allows them to learn.
When I was looking at hobby ideas online, I realized that I wanted a hobby for my daughter that would allow her to learn a skill of some kind and help her grow.
This may not be important to everyone, but if my kids are spending a lot of time on something, I want it to be edifying.
3) Something that they can do on a weekly or daily basis.
Like I said before, backpacking and skiing are fun hobbies that get you outside… but they aren’t something that my child can do whenever they have free time.
They involve planning and someone else to drive them to where they need to go.
I wanted to help her find a hobby that she could do whenever the mood struck!
4) Something that won’t add needless clutter to your home.
And of course, as a Minimalist Mamma, I wanted to find a hobby that wasn’t just going to add a bunch of useless junk to my house. Now, useless junk is in the eye of the beholder, but for me, I didn’t just want collector hobbies or hobbies that were going have me storing a bunch of projects forever.
The thing I love about my daughter’s soap business, is that she sells the soaps. So we have a little bit more soap making supplies than we previously did, but we don’t just have tons of soap sitting around our house with no purpose.
5) Do they want to be able to give gifts?
My daughters LOVE giving gifts. They especially love giving gifts when they have made them.
One of the things that was frustrating my middle daughter was that she wanted to give gifts to people like my older daughter was with her soaps. The problem was that she wasn’t quite good enough at crocheting to give a nice gift to someone.
So this was another thing I was looking for when helping her choose a hobby, something where she could make things that could be used as gifts.
Plus, when they are giving their finished products away as gifts, you aren’t trying to store them forever… see what I did there 😜.
How to Choose a Hobby
1) Look at What they Already Enjoy
The easiest way to find a hobby for your child is to find something that they already enjoy and expand on it to make it more of a hobby.
With my daughter, she had recently been asking to water color every time she had the chance.
So I put this on her list of possible hobby ideas (since I didn’t know if she actually loved water coloring, or if that’s just what she was doing because she didn’t have anything better to do.)
2) Do Some Research
If they already have something that they love that they would like to expand into a full hobby, do some research about how to do that.
If they don’t already have something that they would like to do more often, do some research for hobby ideas.
Now when you start the research journey, I highly recommend doing this without the child looking over your shoulder. There are a lot of hobbies regarding collecting this, that, or the other thing. But this Minimalist Mamma wasn’t a fan of those hobbies and I wouldn’t have wanted my daughter to get excited about them when I didn’t want her doing them in the first place.
Here is a list of Minimalist Hobby Ideas for your child:
After I compiled my list of hobbies that I was okay for her to choose, I told my daughter that instead of starting a business we were going to pick a hobby.
She is four so she had no idea what that meant. But as soon as I explained it to her, she was stoked!
I read her the list of hobbies, and she seemed mildly excited about all of them. But when I got to the hobbies that she was very interested in, her eyes lit up and she said “OH I WANT TO DO THAT!!”
So every time she did that, I would write down the item on another list that we could narrow down from there.
Her short list included:
Making Backpacking Food
Music lessons with Mommy
Woodworking
Watercoloring
And Crocheting/Finger Knitting
4) Get the Supplies and Get Started!
The last thing is just to gather any supplies that you need and get started! On the list above I linked the supplies that you may want to get for each hobby.
I hope this list helped you choose a hobby for your kids.
Hobbies are so great for kids because they not only give them something to do with their spare time, but they also give them skills that will last for their whole life.
Even if the hobby that you choose isn’t the one that will be their hobby forever, it will still teach them how to learn something new and how to get better at a task. And those things can be applied to any situation!
Have you ever tried to create a morning or evening routine but found it difficult to stick with?
I think we all have😅!
There are a few reasons for this: one is that we don’t have our day set up correctly (see How to Easily Manage Your Home Part 1 and Part 2), another reason is that we create routines that are too difficult to stick with, or maybe there is nothing in our routine to motivate us to complete it.
No matter what your problem has been, this article that will help you solve them!
It is easy to get so caught up with life that we forget to stop and think about how we start and end the day. Or worse still, we forget to think about how our kids start and end the day.
Starting and ending the day on the right foot will help you defeat overwhelm and make you feel like you are in control of your life.
And getting a morning and evening routine set up for your kids will do away with a lot of the nagging that goes along with getting ready for the day or getting ready for bed.
So let’s go ahead and get started!
Grab your pen and notebook, or get out your Autopilot Workbook. We will be using the Daily Routines for Mom and Daily Routines for Kids pages.
If you are making your own template, that is totally ok! I just recommend that you put 7 little checkboxes by each item that you are including in the routine.
Putting boxes or circles or whatever you want to check off makes it more motivated for you (and your kids!) to complete the checklist. And this also allows your children to gain independence and take ownership of completing their own checklists once they get the hang of it.
1) Mom’s Morning Routine
I figured that we would start with the first routine of the day and work through the day setting up our routines.
Since I have a detailed post on creating an effective morning routine even if you aren’t a morning person, this will just be an overview. You can see the full post here if you are interested.
1. Brainstorm
To get started with Mom’s Morning Routine, we are just going to write down a list of things that we would like to do if we had a little extra time in our day.
You don’t have to be too realistic at this point, this is a dream list!
2. Time Each Item
Once you have your list complete, write down the amount of time that each item on your list should take next to it.
This will help you determine how many things you can do during your routine.
3. Choose Your Wake Up Time
When you are choosing what time you want to get up, be realistic about when you think you will be able to get out of bed… and when you think your kids will get out of bed.
Ideally, you’ll want to have the bulk of your morning routine (if not all of it) done before your kids get up.
I like to have my morning routine completed before my girls wake up. It just helps me get the day started on the right foot when I get some things accomplished and have some time alone before the house gets busy.
When I sleep until my kids wake up, I feel like I am already starting my day behind.
So I want to set the wake-up time that will allow me to complete my morning routine before the earliest that the girls will wake up.
Our girls typically wake up between 7:00 am-8:00 am, which means I need to have my routine before 7:00 am.
If I set it to be finished at 8:00 am, I wouldn’t be finished if they wake up early. But if I set my routine to be finished at 7:00 am and they sleep a little longer, bonus time for me!
So I decided to set my wake-up time for 6:00 am. It is much easier to wake up when someone else is waking up! And since Ross wakes up at 6:00 am, that is a time that was realistic for me to wake up.
4. Prioritize Your List
Now we are going to go through and prioritize our list.
Don’t prioritize your list based on how you think it should be prioritized… prioritize it the way that you want to prioritize it.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
You may feel like you should put exercising on your prioritized list because it’s good for you and you’ll feel good after you do it…
BUT if you don’t already have a good exercise routine, trying to exercise in the morning while you are trying to create and stick with a morning routine is going to be difficult.
If exercising isn’t motivating for you, you are more likely to hit your snooze button many, many times instead of getting up early and getting it done.
Establish a good morning routine first, then work on the exercise routine or vice versa!
No matter what you think you should have in your morning routine, you will be most motivated to get up when you have something that you look forward to on your routine.
5. Transfer Your List onto Your Template
Then the last step for creating Mom’s Morning Routine is to transfer your finished routine onto the Daily Routines for Mom page if you are using the Autopilot Workbook.
My Current Morning Routine:
Before the Girls Wake Up:
Brush Teeth
Do Devotions
Drink Water
Work Until the girls Wake Up
After the Girls Wake Up:
Once the girls wake up, we do this part of our Morning Routines in tandem. (They make their bed while I make mine, they get themselves dressed while I get dressed.)
Get Dressed
Make Bed
That is the end of the official morning checklist, but I also write down:
Work out
Shower
Because I like to keep track of how often I am working out, but it isn’t something that I need to get done before the girls wake up.
Sometimes we go on a bike ride in the mornings, or sometimes I will work out while they are eating breakfast, it just depends on the day and what we have going on.
So you can make your Morning Routine as Simple or Complex as you would like!
Only you know what will be motivating for you to get up and do every day and if your morning routine should end when your kids get up, or if you want to include everything in your Morning Block on your checklist.
But no matter how you have your Morning Routine whether it is Simple or Complex, I just recommend that you have A Morning Routine.
I found for myself that I am just a better mom when I have a little time for myself every morning to get a couple of the things done that I want to before I start doing things for my family all day.
2) Kid’s Morning Routine
Now let’s move on to creating the Morning Routine for Your Kids.
If you are using the Autopilot Workbook, print off as many of the Daily Routines for Kids pages as you have children. (I printed off 2 since I have 2 kids. 🙂
Write Down Everything They Need to Do
The Morning Routine for the kids should be much simpler than yours, but it is still a good idea to write everything down.
Before I started doing the checklists with my kids, every morning and evening was a struggle to get through our routine.
Once we wrote it down and gave them a checklist, they were able to take ownership of getting themselves ready for the day and for bed at night (even if they still like us to tuck them in!)
As you are writing everything down, even though we want their routine to be simple, we also want it to be detailed.
If you haven’t noticed, kids aren’t the greatest at connecting the dots… so if you don’t write down fold pajamas, put them away, and get dressed, the pajamas will probably end up thrown on the floor.
You have to write down every little step because you are teaching them the process. They don’t already know the proper order of things, so you have to tell them.
My Girls’ Morning Routines:
Go Potty
Fold Pajamas
Put Away Pajamas
Get Dressed
Make Bed
Read Bible Story
Work on Memory Verse
Drink Water
3) Kid’s Evening Routine
Now that we have our morning routines taken care of, let’s shift to creating our evening checklists.
In my house, our evening routine starts when we finish family worship and it ends when the girls are in bed going to sleep.
I recommend using your evening checklist for your kids in a similar way, essentially it is just a checklist of everything that they need to do to get ready for bed.
That way when you tell your kids to do their evening checklist, they are ready for the bed when they are finished.
So go ahead and write down everything that you want to put on your children’s checklist on the Daily Routine’s for Kids Template, or on your own template if you are making your own.
Just be sure that your own template has at least 7 checkboxes for each of the items on the kids’ checklist.
This will help them start to do the checklists on their own.
Now you may be thinking that your kids are too young to have their own routine that they do by themselves each evening. And I completely understand that. my girls are 3 and 6 and they still need quite a bit of help to get through their evening routine.
But having the evening routine as a checklist takes away a lot of the negotiating when it comes to getting ready for bed.
The checklist also helps them get excited about getting ready for bed and it gives them some independence.
So if you have any difficulty getting your kids ready for bed, I recommend trying out the checklist!
My Kid’s Evening Routine
Put on Pajamas (By Themselves)
Put Clothes in the Laundry or Away in the Drawers (By Themselves)
The last routine that we need to set up is our evening routine.
I think it is important for moms to have an evening routine because it can be really easy for us to keep doing housework until we go to bed. And it’s really nice to start and end your day with a little bit of “me” time.
But when we create our evening routine we don’t have to go back to square one since we already created our wish list on our scratch paper of all of the things that we wanted to do when we had a little bit of free time.
So we are just going to grab that Prioritized wishlist from back when we were creating our morning routine and look at the items that didn’t make the cut.
Now keep in mind as you are creating your evening routine, that you want to take your personality into account.
You might be looking at my morning and evening routine thinking “wow she is getting so much stuff done, I should do that too!” But remember that I have a Type A personality, and I LOVE being busy and working.
It’s actually relaxing for me to get work done… I know, I know, I’m a little crazy 😂.
But if you have a Type B personality, or a Type C, or even a Type D personality, the things that I enjoy probably won’t interest you… and they definitely won’t relax you!
You might enjoy reading a book, having a bubble bath, working on a craft, or maybe even just sitting and doing nothing for a while.
And that is totally ok!
You want to do whatever will help you relax and get ready for bed.
My Evening Routine
Put on Pajamas
Wash My Face
Make and Drink Tea
Work on Classwork
Work
Brush My Teeth
Read a Book
6) Write Your Routines Into Your Block Schedule
And the final step is to take your Daily Block Schedule and write down “Mom’s Morning Routine, Kids’ Morning Routines, Kids’ Evening Routines, and Mom’s Evening Routine” in the correct blocks.
The reason that we want to put these into our daily routine is that it can be really easy to build these routines and never get around to using them.
By putting your routines into your Daily Block Schedule, the routines will become helpful tools that enable you to live a better life.
I hope you found this helpful! Let me know in the comments what your routines look like!
If you are ready to get organized and make a plan that will help you run your home without stress, check out my course Put Your Home on Autopilot!
This course walks you through the steps to get your home practically running itself!
In Put Your Home on Autopilot, you will learn how to set up effective cleaning systems, set up your day for success, and start making time for the things that matter most.
In just one month you will go from feeling overwhelmed to in control. And if you have any questions along the way, I’m only an email away!
This post is Part 5 of the series How to Easily Manage Your Home (you can catch up on all the parts here!), and today we will be digging into how to create a simple, easy to follow weekly cleaning routine that you will be able to stick with forever.
Now, if you’ve been around the blog for a while, you may be thinking, “Kassy, don’t you already have a blog post about creating a cleaning routine?”
Yes, yes I do…
BUT it was one of the first 10 posts that I ever wrote, so I think it’s safe to say that it is time for an update!
As I was creating my course, I realized that there needed a couple of extra steps in order to organize all of your cleaning items, so this post will give you even more bang for your buck than the last one did!
(If you want to check out the original post… click here!)
I know you are as excited to get started as I am, so let’s dig in.
If you want to be sure you are keeping up with the series and are creating all of the routines you need to Easily Run Your Home, grab the Easy Home Management Checklist!
1) Grab Your Gear
If you want to create your routine right alongside me, go ahead and grab everything you need.
To create this routine, you will need a pen, some scratch paper, and a notebook (or whatever you are creating your Home Management Binder in).
And if you’d like to use the same templates I am using, you can grab the Autopilot Workbook!
If you want a free template, you can grab my cleaning schedule template. It is a little less pretty than the workbook, but it will totally work for creating the schedule 🙂
2) Make a List
So we are going to start by making a list on our scratch paper of all the cleaning tasks that we have.
As you are making this list don’t worry about if it is a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly task.
Just write everything down that you can think of.
One suggestion I have is that you write each item down separately. So instead of writing “bathrooms” on your list, write down “master bathroom, kid’s bathroom, and downstairs bathroom”.
If you just write “bathrooms,” it won’t look like much on the paper and it might be hard to remember that each of those bathrooms can take a bit of time to complete.
You want to write each item individually because that will give you an accurate representation of how long the task will take you.
Writing the items down separately also gives you the freedom to decide if you want to do all of your bathrooms on the same day or if you want to split them up and do them on different days of the week.
And as you are making the list, add in anything that feels like a chore to you.
For me, this is grocery shopping. I just don’t like it. It takes a long time, and it just stresses me out.
Because of this, I add it to my chore list so that I will remember to space it out with my other cleaning tasks.
So if you have anything that feels like an extra chore to you, add it to this list as well!
3) Look at Your Weekly Routine
Now we are going to look at the Weekly Routine that we created in the last post and we are going to figure out which days make the most sense for us to clean on.
If you haven’t yet had a chance to create your weekly rhythm, check out this postbefore you go on. Determining your weekly rhythm first will make sure you put the correct cleaning tasks on the correct days.
This is because you don’t want to pile too much cleaning onto days that are already Busy, and you want to take advantage of the days that give you a little bit more downtime.
Now you want to be sure that you are basing your cleaning routine on a typical week. We all have weeks that are a little bit different than the norm: like holiday weeks, vacations, and of course birthday week (because life is too short not to have birthday week!).
So I wouldn’t base my cleaning schedule off of one of those weeks.
And since I base my cleaning schedule off of a typical week, when one of those weeks comes up and I may have to skip a day or two of cleaning, it isn’t a big deal because my house gets cleaned consistently.
4) Choose Your Cleaning Days
Based on the Weekly Routine that we looked at in the last step, decide which days make the most sense for you to add some cleaning in.
For some people, it may make sense to do a small amount of cleaning every single day. That is what I do for my cleaning routine. But for other people, it may make sense for them to do most cleaning on fewer days.
So it really depends on your weekly routine how many days a week you should be cleaning.
The only recommendation I have for you when you are making this decision is to do at least 2 days a week.
It is just too much to try to do all of your cleaning on one day. Doing it all on one day of the week will leave you feeling tired at the end of the day and dreading next week’s cleaning day.
Spreading the cleaning out over multiple days just lets you enjoy life a little bit more on the days that you are cleaning 🙂
The more days that you can spread the cleaning over, the better and more relaxing it will be because you won’t be spending your entire day cleaning.
5) Sort Your List
Now we are going to grab another piece of scratch paper and sort the original list that we made.
Across the top of the sheet write “Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly” then put the cleaning tasks under the proper column.
6) Divide and Conquer
Next, we will take everything in the Weekly column, and we are going to divide it among our Cleaning Days.
Now be sure that everything on your weekly cleaning list is everything that YOU want to do in that week… not everything that your mother-in-law, or your sister, or your best friend or your cousin thinks you need to clean every week… only things that YOU think you should clean every week.
And that is really important because if you are trying to keep your house clean to someone else’s standard, you won’t be happy.
It will only make you happy if you keep your house as clean as you want to.
So if you want to just vacuum your floors and clean your toilets every week… just vacuum and clean your toilets every week.
No one will call the cleaning police on you (and even if they do, they really can’t do anything to you ;).
And I would say if you are going to err on one side or the other, I would err on the side of doing too little cleaning.
That might sound a little weird on a blog post about cleaning, but it is much more important to spend time with your family than it is to spend all of your time cleaning up after them.
So if you are using the Autopilot Workbook, grab out the Weekly Cleaning Routine and fill out the top lines under the days. (If you are wondering what the bottom 3 lines are for, check out How to Easily Manage Your Home Part 2).
Now, you’ll probably notice that on my template I only have 3 lines under each day designated for cleaning. And that is because I don’t think that we should be cleaning all the time.
If you are doing more than 3 cleaning tasks every day, you will pretty much be cleaning in all of your spare time and you won’t have any time to take a break.
And you all know how important I think it is for mom to have a break!
Why This Step Is So Important: Story Time
I used to clean one day per week and it was very overwhelming to try to do this.
Splitting it up to multiple days of the week really took the stress out of cleaning, and it also made my house feel cleaner longer.
Which is honestly kind of weird.
You would think that dedicating one day to completely cleaning the house would make the house feel really clean. But I found that it usually only last one day before it felt dirty again.
I’ve found that doing a little bit of cleaning every day just keeps the house in a state of perpetual cleanliness!
I don’t know why that it, or if it is just me, but it is definitely something I’ve noticed since I split up my cleaning among multiple days.
And remember as you are writing down your routine, take at least one day off where you don’t do any cleaning or laundry because everyone needs a day off!
7) The Cleaning Task Organizer
That last step used to be the end of the cleaning task creation… but as I was creating Put Your Home on Autopilot I realized that you also need a way to organize those long-term tasks. And that is why I created the Cleaning Task Organizer.
So if you have the Autopilot Workbook, grab the Cleaning Task Organizer and put your Monthly, Quarterly, and Annual tasks in the correct column.
Then as you go through the year and complete the tasks, just put a tick by one of the little circles next to each line so you can keep track of what you still have to do.
If you don’t have the Autopilot Workbook, you can easily make a template with three columns. At the top of the columns write “Monthly, Quarterly, and Annual”
In each column write several lines for you to write the tasks on. Then write the proper number of checkboxes next to the items. (12 boxes for monthly, 4 for quarterly, and 1 for annual.)
Now I’ll show you what I have on my Cleaning Task Organizer, but only if you promise not to judge me! Remember that everyone will put different things in each column based on the size of their house and their
Here are the Tasks that I have on my Cleaning Task Organizer:
Monthly:
Dust Downstairs
Dust Upstairs
Clean the Microwave
Declutter one area of the house
Quarterly:
Wash the Ionic
Wash the Highlander
Annual:
Clean the Baseboards
Vacuum the Couches
Clean the Stove
Clean and Organize the Garage
8) Test It Out
The last step to creating any cleaning routine is to test it out.
It can be really easy to write things down on paper and have it look really good, but in reality, it may not work as well as we had planned.
So test out your new routine for a week or two before you decide it is set in stone.
And if you find any glitches in your routine, go back to whichever step you need to and create a new routine!
If you find that no matter what you do you can’t seem to fit all of your cleaning in, try using a bi-weekly cleaning routine.
For that, you just split your cleaning up between two weeks and rotate between the cleaning tasks. If you are using the Autopilot Workbook, you can just print off an extra page of the Weekly Cleaning Routine and put Week One’s Items on one page and Week Two’s Items on the second page.
It is better to clean your bathrooms every other week if that is tripping you up than to never get around to cleaning them because you are too overwhelmed to get it done every single week!
I hope this helped you create your weekly cleaning routine! let me know in the comments how you set up your schedule!
If you are ready to get organized and make a plan that will help you run your home without stress, check out my course Put Your Home on Autopilot!
This course walks you through the steps to get your home practically running itself!
In Put Your Home on Autopilot, you will learn how to set up effective cleaning systems, set up your day for success, and start making time for the things that matter most.
In just one month you will go from feeling overwhelmed to in control. And if you have any questions along the way, I’m only an email away!
