Day-to-Day Life Organization

Who’s up for another long post?

I hope you are all enjoying these organizational posts. Focusing on getting my life organized the last couple of months has been a game changer for me. I was not always an organized person. My mom and I used to have battles over my disastrous room. There was always a part of me that wanted to be organized {I always wanted to have a label maker, for crying out loud. What kid wants a label maker?}. I just needed to have systems in place that made sense in my own head. I mainly needed to have less stuff. I needed to simplify. I think we all fall under that category in some way, don’t we?

I’m sharing my systems with you…that work for me and my lifestyle. They may or may not work for you. I hope you leave here feeling inspired to examine your own personality and lifestyle and find what works for you!

I keep myself pretty busy. We don’t have kids yet, but between working full time jobs, running this blog {basically a second full time job}, freelance jobs, church commitments, and leaving time for family and friends….we still manage to keep a full calendar. It is so important for us to have a good system and routine in place. It makes our life flow so much better and really simplifies things.

Daily Planner, Calendar, and Home Management

Even with all of the technology available to us, I still like to keep a real life planner where I can handwrite my to-do lists and pencil in appointments. I’ve tried to digitize this part of my life, but for some reason the old fashioned way works better for me. I’ve pieced together my own planner for day-to-day life and for the blog.

My planner is with me at work and home and pretty much keeps my afloat. For the personal planner and calendar I used the Large printable planner from Polka Dot Posie. I also have their calendar stickers, which are awesome! I love their stickers over any others I’ve seen because they’re not just kid-centric. They have little stickers for anything you could possibly want to put on your calendar.

The planner has a 2014-2015 overview calendar and monthly, weekly, and daily calendar views. I spend most of my time in the weekly view. I love that there is space for dinner plans, a to-do list column, and then extra space for notes. It has worked so well for me!

Behind my calendar pages I have a couple of lists in sheet protectors. The first is my daily routine schedule. I have certain tasks that I take care of on certain days. I started doing this when we were fairly newlywed and it has always worked great. {Of course it works 100 times better when there is less stuff in the house to take care of!}. My daily chores consist of wiping down the counters in the kitchen and bathrooms, loading and unloading the dishwasher, and sweeping up any crumbs in the kitchen. I also try to do a load of laundry every day.

On Mondays I tidy up and dust the living room, Tuesdays are for our bedroom, Wednesdays are the guest room, Thursday the office, and Friday the laundry room. Over the weekend I clean all of the floors {sweep, mop, thorough vacuum} and clean the bathrooms. Wednesday is my grocery store day, so I try to have my menu and grocery list done on Tuesdays as well as a quick fridge clean out. My husband is awesome and helps out a lot around the house. He does the chores that I hate, because he is amazing and therefore named Mr. Wonderful.

It seems like a lot sometimes when it is written down, but my daily tasks during the week only take me around 15 minutes. This is because I’m maintaining the hard work I’ve already done.

If I have a few extra minutes one day, I’ll take a look at my deep cleaning list. I’ll take care of an item or two and then check it off with a dry erase marker. Once the entire list is checked off, I start over. I do this instead of spending a full day or two each spring and fall doing a deep clean. I’ll link to printable versions of my daily to-do’s and deep cleaning lists at the bottom of this post. Use these as a guide to create lists that work for your home and your schedule.

In between my daily planner and blog planner, I have a pencil bag. I keep a dry erase marker, a pen, store and restaurant coupons and menus, vouchers, etc. It’s a good place to keep time sensitive things that I’m not sure when I’ll need.

Blog Planner

I bought a printable blog planner from My Joy Filled Life. I’ve tried a couple different types of planners for my blog, but this is the best I’ve found. I like that there is such a variety of sheets and you can kind of customize it to meet your needs. You can keep track of your stats, social media numbers, giveaways, affiliates, brain storming ideas, and all of your posts. It has been so helpful to me! I keep my blog planner in the same binder as my daily planner. Everything is in one accessible place and I only have to keep track of this one binder.

Budget Binder

I use the budget printables from A Bowl Full of Lemons. Again, these are easy to customize to our needs. My favorite part of the binder is the monthly bill check list. Half of our bills come in paper form and the other half are automated or online, so this is a great way for us to check everything off and know we’re not missing any of our bills. These sheets help us keep a close eye on what is coming in and what is going out. This is especially important for folks whose income changes each month, or those who do a lot of freelance work.

We keep our binder at our mail station. We can each take a look at it whenever needed to make sure we’re on track. It has been helpful to see trends in our spending each month so we can tweak things as needed. {You can read more about our mail station and how we control the paper clutter here}.