After immersing myself in pinterest I found several ideas that I thought would help me and put them all together into one. Here's what I made:
Here are some of the things I like about this chart and how they've helped me.
1. This chart has my menus for the week clipped to clothes pins. This way if I don't feel like making a certain meal one day, I can change my mind last minute and switch days. This was one of the biggest problems I've had with menus written on paper. I like to change my mind.
2. On the back of the menu strips are the food I need to make the meal. This was also a problem with paper menus. I would think I had everything when I went shopping and when it came time to make the meal I'd find I was missing an important ingredient. All I have to do with this system is flip the paper over and write down on my shopping list what I need to get that week. No more searching through recipe books weekly to make sure I have everything.
3. I have meal ideas in the "Menu" pocket. No more searching through recipe books trying to figure out what to make. If I find a new recipe I want to try, I just write it on a strip of paper, with the recipe page number if I need to and what I need for it on the back.
4. Cleaning- I have little green pockets next to each day of the week that have the jobs I need to do that day. Here's a site I found that has ideas for how to keep your house clean by doing one chore per day. I modified the chores a little to fit my individual needs and circumstances.
5. I have a "Monthly" and a "Seasonal" pocket at the bottom to help remind me the things I need to clean monthly and seasonally. Here's another website with one thing you should deep clean per month to keep your house clean. You could also use their daily job ideas as well.
6. Lastly, I have one thing that I want/need to do as an individual Velcro-ed onto the front of the green pockets for each day. This helps me feel like I've accomplished something. So here are some of my individual day things:
* Make Something - make one thing which could include a craft, sewing project, gift, website, something for kids, something for spouse, something to help organize etc.
* Fix/Organize - mend one pair of pants, fix a broken toy, organize a messy closet etc.
* Photography - go out and take a photos of something new.
* Bake/Cook - bake bread, rolls, breadsticks, cook a new recipe, cook freezer meals etc.
* Blog - write on your blog.
* Get Outside - get out of the house and take your kids to the park, weed a flower bed, plant something, go shopping etc.
Again, I like that they have Velcro on the back because I can switch them around if I want to if I don't feel like doing something one day, or if it doesn't fit in my schedule.
Maybe you could do a couple of these things each day, but for me, I have four children that demand my attention, so I have to start with baby steps and just try to do one thing for myself a day.
Anyways, this chart has helped me so much. It has helped me finally feel balance in my life.
Now there is one more thing I do to help remind me to do things with the kids. Some days the older kids play all day with each other and I never see them. While this is kind of nice, it doesn't help me feel like a very good mom. So, I got a cup and put a bunch of popsicle sticks in it. On each popsicle stick I wrote one thing to do with the kids. Some examples are things like, "Read 3 books," "Play 2 games," "Do a puppet show," "Put together a puzzle," "Draw a picture together, " etc. I have the kids draw at least one of the sticks per day and that way make sure I am spending time with each of them. The kids love it and it makes it so I don't have do come up with ideas to do off the top of my head (I'm not very good at that).
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