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Daily Schedules

34 At our house, we have much more productive days if we have a plan. I've been using a printed schedule since I had 2 kids and they were 5 and 1. At that time, I was providing daily child care to another baby and toddler. I accomplished so much with those 4 small children! I had time to teach my 5yo, garden, scrapbook, cook clean, and play with the kids.

I got the basic layout from Managers of Their Homes.


Here's their method in a nutshell:


. . . this process can take a few days as you assess your activities and needs



I know, I know; I can just hear the crowd yelling, "I couldn't be tied down like that. It's too restrictive." But I never feel tied down. I schedule flexible times, free time, play time, and other such times. The days when we don't use our schedule is when not much gets accomplished and the kids get bored and cranky.


{ My nifty Excel spreadsheet loaded but it was too blurry to read . . . so . . . I'll work on sharing it again in a different format . . . stay tuned . . . If you're REALLY interested, I'll email it to you }
So what happens on days when things don't go according to schedule? I have several options:


Here are a few more explanations:

My favorite part? Everyone has a place to be at all times, even if it's unstructured time. This way I KNOW I'll have some uninterrupted time with both older girls for certain subjects.

My best advice? BE FLEXIBLE. Be willing to stop what you're doing and handle what may come. Even if you have to pick up later in the schedule, you will have accomplished more than if you hadn't tried to do anything at all.

AND...be willing to tweak it as often as necessary. The one I showed above is about to be updated. Baby doesn't take 2 naps anymore, and 4yo doesn't take naps AT ALL. My husband's schedule is much longer, so dinner time is later. And we are about to start Sonlight for our schooling, so our school schedule will look different than it does now. In order to do this, I'll make notes about how things seem to flow best, and then start playing with my spreadsheet.

I'm always interested in how other families manage their day. Sometimes I find some great ideas just from reading other family's schedules. I saw this one recently and it sounded so laid back with lots of family togetherness.

So, how do you manage?

Here are some other home management ideas you might like.


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