There’s no question that in my house I’m Grand Central Mom, everything runs through me. It’s okay, I like it this way. I want to know everything that’s going on because I don’t want to miss anything. My kids are teens and they are very busy. They have full schedules at school, play sports and have social lives. When they were young I remember planning everything for them including their play dates, activities, after school programs…everything. Not only was I managing their schedules but I was certainly in charge of my own which included my work, exercise and social life.

There was a time I had it all committed to memory but then one day I realized that I had a lot to manage and I couldn’t remember all the details. I tried everything, memos, calendars, planners, leaving voicemail messages for myself and yet I always felt like I was forgetting something. So we called a “Family Meeting” and discussed how we could better manage our lives so that we could enjoy it more.

We decided to do three things:  schedule less things, involve the kids, research really good organizational systems.

This is how it went down:

1. Schedule Less. In order to schedule less we took on less. As a family we began to choose what our priorities were and how we wanted to spend our time together. We looked at what each of us wanted to do in a day and what we had to do during it (school, work, home chores).  We realized that all we wanted to do couldn’t happen unless we figured out how to make the time for it. It came down to choices. By freeing up wasted time in our days we soon learned how to make the most of the time we had together and then I found more time to do the things I needed and wanted to do to take care of myself.
2. Involve the Kids. Because I worked I felt that I should “pamper” my kids. I wasn’t around all day so I wanted to treat them wonderfully when I was with them. What I didn’t realize was that my enabling really wasn’t a very wise choice. I soon learned that they couldn’t do chores or simple tasks because  they hadn’t been taught how, we or I had just done things for them. Some of it I rationalized was because it was faster to just do things myself than have to explain it. My husband and I made a conscious decision to start teaching the kids how to do the basics: fold and wash their clothes, wash the dishes, clean, vacuum, sort through the mail and take out the trash. All things they’d need to learn to do when they were on their own anyway. As they began to do more I had to do less and I felt so much better..no more arguing, no more resentment and more time for me to go for a walk or practice yoga.
3. Choose great organizational systems. This took me a while to figure out because I had so much to organize. The kid’s paperwork, our home, my work, emails, multiple voicemail boxes. It’s gotten much harder as we have more to manage. I resisted technology for a long time but when I finally caved it made all the difference. I’m not a purist, I do carry a paper organizer as well but now I’ve learned a way to keep up better. One thing I do is follow Digitwirl, Carley Knobloch searches out the latest tech gadgets that can help make tech work for you. She puts out a weekly 3 minute video to show simple ways to organize life digitally.

Life has gotten far easier since I’ve started simplifying and managing it better.

What do you do to make life easier for you?