Families are busy and staying on top of all of the demands of your day is difficult. Add in your family’s tasks and responsibilities and managing it all can feel impossible. With life as busy and demanding as it is for everyone, it is necessary to find ways to manage your lives so that what could be chaos is instead an orderly unit working towards specific goals in a productive and organized manner.
Use Digital Tools
One of the best ways to begin your plan for organizing your family’s life is to take advantage of the digital tools that are available to you. You and your family probably have many devices that have the ability to connect each of your calendars and schedules and can provide you with a one-stop place to keep track of everyone’s to-do lists. Create a digital command station where you keep track of everyone’s lives, and everyone can access it whether this is on phones, tablets, laptops, desktops or other smart devices like watches or possibly even your smart refrigerator if you have one of those.
If a digital home is a priority and you want to find more ways to digitize your lives in order to have it more synchronized, there are a variety of smart devices that you can invest in for your home to streamline your activities and your lives. A company like Plume can deliver the platform you need to have a smart home that helps you have a seamless digital experience with syncing and running your home.
Start the Day Orderly
Beginning the day on the right foot is the best way to be productive. A chaotic morning usually results in a chaotic day, so it is important to find ways to start the day off right. Routine is the best way to help this happen. When you and your family wake up there should not be a question of what happens first, second, or third. And if there is a question, the answer should be at the digital command center, even if that is a printed reminder, perhaps with pictures for small children–of what needs to happen each morning.
Assign Tasks to Everyone
When you are utilizing your digital command center in your smart home, use it to assign responsibilities to members of the family. A home that has shared responsibilities is a much more productive home rather than one that expects all the responsibilities to fall on one or two people. Even smaller children can have daily responsibilities such as clearing the take after breakfast and returning their toys to toy bins. Assigned tasks will help the family achieve more in less time and will also help instill in each family member the importance of their place in the family. Make sure that each member of the family can use the digital command center to check off tasks when they have completed them.
Plan Ahead
In order to maintain order and productivity, planning is essential. There are a number of digital apps that can help you with planning meals and your day. This will also help you keep the family informed on important information such as who will be where and when and what is for dinner–which is always an important question that children have for parents. Meal planning will also allow you to shop in advance for what you will need for the week and can help you utilize the online shopping that many grocery stores offer. Planning is critical to getting the most out of every productivity tool that is available to you.
Organization and productivity are the results of intentional planning and implementation. If you wish for your family and your home to be a place that is orderly and moving in the same direction, you must take the step necessary to make your home such a place. The intentionality and planning required to implement will eventually become second-nature habits and routines that will have your home running like a well-oiled machine.