Getting Control of your Summer! {Organization Tool}

 

First, I wanted to share that I am guest posting today on one of my favorite blogs; Abby from Just a Girl and Her Blog invited us to share our favorite organized space, so of course that means I get to talk all about my Kate Spade inspired Home Office. You can see it HERE!

 

*********

I always strive to make summer all about having fun.  However, as much as I love the freedom {and sleeping in!} of this time of year, by this point I am going to guess I am not the only mom feeling a little frazzled by having my kids in the house all. day. LONG! Earlier this week I was working on a blog post and dealing with other blog-related stuff when my daughter bounced into the room and announced we needed to go to the pool–I mean it is summer after all, right? I found myself a little frustrated by the interruption and told her to go play so I could finish what I was doing. Shortly there after I admit I felt frustrated yet again to have to stop working to feed the kids and their friends lunch {several times because my kids never seem to be to eat lunch at once}… and on and on, needless to say my work finally got finished way later in the day than I’d hoped.

 

All this made me realize that I was probably just one of many moms juggling working, having kids at home, summer boredom creeping in and paying the price for being a little too summer-laid-back and not doing enough planning and time management. And, as usual I was hoping to accomplish too much while, at the same time, really hadn’t ‘planned’ enough fun time for the kids –all this while feeling like summer was passing by.

 

I love my Calendar Pad time management system, but with our weeks not being as busy I don’t use it as religiously during the summer as I do during the school year. I decided that it actually was the perfect summer planning tool, I just needed a few tweaks to my system.

 

 

While I make sure we don’t have the jam-packed calendar we have during the school year, I do still have to work on blog posts, DIY projects, and I am knee deep in finalizing some new products that will be coming this Fall {I can’t wait to tell you more about those!}. Of course my kids still want to go out and do fun things during their summer break so I knew I could do a better job looking at the week and figuring out when I’d ‘work’ and when we could ‘play’. That way my daughter wasn’t crushed to find out that the pool wasn’t happening that day because I could promise her exactly when it would. So I printed out a calendar pad planning sheet and looked at my week, this is what I came up with. I penciled in work time and pool time, plus all the other stuff I know has to happen like grocery shopping and sports practices, birthday parties and such. My kids are old enough to see the calendar and know what the day holds and if it isn’t all about them, they know they can go find something else to do 🙂

{For younger kids, drawings or pictures work great!}

No matter if you work at home in the summer months, have small children home all day, or if you only have a few precious hours after work and on the weekends, scheduling time for fun is important! The planner will also help feed the masses of hungry children that appear. Getting some sort of a meal plan in place–keeping in mind I may be feeding a bunch of kids–also makes it less stressful for me, and with some planning I was able to stop going to the store every other day. Our evenings are easier because we cook once and eat twice most nights but I still have to have a general meal plan, because as we know, they always want to eat!

I decided to share these tools with you all to help your summer be happy whether you are a work-at-home mom, own your own business or just want to knock out a few projects all while keeping your kids happy 🙂 From now until Sunday, you can use the discount code of SUMMER2016 to get $2 off any product in our Organizing Store until 7/27/2016. So, if you want to print out the letter-sized Calendar Pad {get that below} it’s only $2.99 and you can print it as many times as you want!  That is the lowest price ever :), or if you want the full-sized printed Calendar Pad you can apply the discount too– current customers you may want to take advantage to restock a pad for next year :).

NOTE: I made a change to the printable {after I photographed it} from the “bills and budget” section to “chores” based on some feedback I received. If that isn’t your preference, simply email me once you’ve purchased and I’ll email you back the old version with the bills section. I thought since chores can be a headache over the summer, this system will help with accountability there too!

I am hard at work of a new line of printables and home management system so be sure to look for that coming in August. It’s my biggest product launch EVER and I can’t wait to share them with you to get your back to school off to a great start! In the meantime, take back your summer, it goes way to fast not to!

{PIN THIS TO SAVE IT}

AND–We have a gorgeous necklace giveaway going on–enter to win it HERE!

XO,