Mom Planner

Keeping the whole family on track and staying organized is not an easy task! I'm gonna show you how we do it and why we love organized chaos. 

Why I Love Organized Chaos

We are all imperfect, I have health problems, my husband owns his own business (which can be affected by the weather), we have 4 teens all 2 years apart, I could go on about the things that can change our 'routine'. The way I plan gives us a routine with flexibility, so when my hubby is off work because it's tornado season or I wake up feeling really bad, we have a 'backup plan'. 

Should I Go Digital?

This is literally the name of a personal Pinterest board of mine. I have struggled with the thought of digital planning because that is what everyone is doing, but I LOVE paper! I mean, some other girls want to go clothes shopping, and I want to go to the office store or a hardware store, feel me? (Except for my Hey Y'all shirt, I am a girl and I do like boutique shopping!) My husband encouraged me to try it so I'm a little more lightweight when shopping and running errands. Digital planning can be convenient because we travel a lot, some for quick family vacations (camping over a weekend), some for volunteer work, some to visit family. 

In the end, I paper plan. I use digital planning sometimes for some things, read on and that will make sense y'all. ;)

My Planner

I have used so many different planners! I will go over the pros and cons in the next blog post. For now, I will tell you what I use and how I use it. 

I use a Franklin Classic Size Planner. I have a Planner Love system with my own printables separated by Planner Love tabs. 

In the front of my planner I have a pocket divider, behind it I keep my weekly routine, my basic cleaning routine, and a reminder page. More to come on what these are.

I have the following tabs:

• Weekly Planner
• Week At A Glance
• Healthier Me
• Today
• Meal Planner and Shopping List
• Homeschool Weekly Plan
• Cleaning Flow Chart and Cleaning Checklists for the Kids
• On My Mind
• Important Dates (includes gift ideas and thank you's that need written)
• Important (such as websites and passwords, etc.)
• Blog Ideas and Store to do's
• Receipts & Errands 

How I Plan My Week

I sit down every Sunday and organize the week ahead with our monkeys. Let me back up a smidge, part of the digital planning I use is a Cozi calendar and shopping lists. Why does this work for us? We kept double and triple booking ourselves, so I found this app, and my kids and hubby have on their phones. I have a shopping list with the stores we frequent and one named 'Kids'. When they need something, they add it to the list. The lists and calendar sync, so when something is added, it updates immediately. I started training the kids (and hubby) to add a plan to the calendar as soon as a plan is made. If it wasn't added it didn't exist, and they didn't get to do it. Yes, the still had to get permission, but I wasn't expected to remember that I gave permission anymore. If they didn't add it, it wasn't happening. This took a few months, but after a couple cancelled plans since it wasn't up to me to remember, it worked itself out quickly. 

OK, back to planning my week. On Sunday, I do these steps:

1. Move to do items that need to be pushed to the upcoming week. 
2. Check the Cozi calendar and write set in stone plans on my paper calendar. Usually by Sunday, cancellations have mostly worked themself out.
3.  My 'Week At A Glance' tab.
   
4. Daily To Do tab:                                               If I know I'm going to have a super busy crazy day, I do make a specific 'Daily To Do' list so I'm on point. This list covers my to do, errands, phone calls, text, email, supper plans, don't forget, and notes (AKA On My Mind).
5. After I have these basic things planned, I can move on to meal planning and lesson planning. Here is what I use to meal plan.                                  I use this form of meal planning because I can plan a weeks worth of meals without it being planned by the day. When we make a meal, we cross it off the list. We learned sometimes we didn't want to eat what was planned for that particular day....organized chaos y'all! My shopping list then commences and I plan a pickup order for Walmart and Sprouts. My week is planned and we are all on point ready to take on the busy week ahead! 

How do you plan your week? Does organized chaos work for you? Let me know in the comments below.

Happy Planning Y'all!

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