Juggling Family Schedules

I am THRILLED about today’s topic because it is one that I enjoy thinking about! Give me all the planners, calendars, color coded pens and anything to do with feeling organized!

Now, please notice that I said I enjoy *thinking* about this topic…the actual execution of it…is a little bit more of a struggle for me haha!

We have just recently transitioned from one huge job role to a completely different job role for Theo. When he was a police officer, juggling our family schedules felt like an actual performance in the circus. He worked every single weekend so anything scheduled at that time (sports, birthday parties, moms night out, church) that typically involved two parents fell to me. This was tricky and sometimes very hard and lonely, but mostly I just got used to it and showed up a lot of places solo with all four kids.

Now, Theo has a new role that typically has more of an 8-6 workday schedule, and his schedule can be flexible sometimes. So if I need to run somewhere or plan something, I can often ask him to come home and drive one of the kids somewhere, or bump his hours a little bit to help me. This has been such a BLESSING after countless years of doing all of the kid scheduling stuff on my own.

I’m not sure that I’m the right place to get tips on juggling family schedules, because most of the time I feel like a hot mess, but here are some of the things I do to manage our family schedule:

• I have a dry erase monthly calendar hanging on the wall in the living room. I put any appointments, parties, sports practices, meetings, people over for dinner, etc on this calendar. Basically, if we have to be somewhere at a certain time on a certain day- it’s on this calendar. Surprinsingly, I don’t color code this calendar but kind of just use initials since we all have different ones- Th, S, T, K, E, O
• I have a large desk calendar that I use for much more minute and detailed things. I also put the big dates and places to be, but this calendar also has my blog posts, my planned exercise routine (especially if I’m training for a race), and extended family birthdays.
• On the fridge I have a calendar that I write our menu plan on. I try to sit down at the beginning of the month and just plan the whole month out for meals.
• I also have a teacher planner that I use for school related things. A lot of the school events are also personal family events and they make it on both calendars, but for example I would write “parent teacher conferences 4-8” on my home calendar and in my school calendar I would write each individual parent teacher conference that I have in 15 minute increments.
• As much as I can with four kids, I try to keep our schedule simple. I have a current house rule that they can play any sport or do any activity as long as it is offered by our school. I’m not adding any other outside organizations to my schedule, and we have been happy enough with our school offerings that we don’t need to go looking for more to add. We also don’t do music, swimming, or other lessons outside the home. I would LOVE to be a family that has all of those things on our “resume”, but it’s my sanity or the resume….so we chose sanity 🙂
• Sometime within the first week of the month, I try to update all of the calendar/organization things. I send out the monthly birthday cards, I update the monthly wall calendar, I do the monthly menu planning, I try to figure out dates that I may be getting together with people, I request monthly classroom books, and I try to figure out when I might need babysitters during the month.
• Theo is not an organizational/calendar focused person, so we have a good process that involves me making all the schedules, and then informing him what we are doing and where we need to be at certain times. It works great for us- he doesn’t feel stressed about remembering every detail, and he doesn’t mind finding out last minute that we have something going on. I just take the reigns with scheduling and feel zero resentment that he isn’t as involved in the detail parts of our life. We make a great team 🙂
• As of right now, I still am mostly in charge of the kids calendars too. We have sports, student ambassador programs, youth group, play dates, field trips and tutoring to manage. I’m sure it will add a whole layer of complication when my kids start really making their own plans!

Here are some of the products that I’ve used or would love to use to help me juggle our family schedules:

Dry Erase Wall Calendar

Monthly Desk Calendar

Habit Tracker

Magnetic Meal Planner

I’ve been eyeing a Skylight Calendar- somebody who is NOT a sponsor of them, can you tell me if they are worth it?

I can’t wait to hear how you all juggle your family schedules, and I’m hoping to get some good tips and tricks from you all!