Lyndsey The best home management solutions available for busy moms and busy families.
What does your typical day or week look like? Does it ever feel a little (or a lot) overwhelming? Is it time to look into organizing the chaos, to finding home management solutions that work? As a family with kids, your days can typically be very hectic. All families deal with a huge amount of tasks, obligations, and responsibilities. You know the ones I am talking about, those tasks that always seem to weigh on us and never seem to end. Many common examples include:
- Work (for one or both parents)
- Sports (practices, meets, tournaments, games, recitals, etc.)
- Extracurriculars
- School (including drop offs and pick ups)
- Homework
- Housework
- Chores
- Home projects
- School projects
- Meals
- Grocery shopping
- Parties and events
- Birthdays
- Family gatherings
- Date nights
- Organizing
- Home maintenance
- Yard maintenance
- Trips and vacations
- “ME” time
- Doctors appointments
- Dentist appointments
- Vet appointments
- School functions
- Holidays
- And many more…
No wonder life can feel overwhelming! So… how do we make it feel not so overwhelming? How can we organize the chaos? Mom’s carry many different titles throughout each day… but let’s focus on the title at hand. We need to become the chaos coordinator! The point of this title is to coordinate and organize the chaos that comes with managing a family, and managing a household. But how do you become a successful chaos coordinator? The answer… an effective home management solution that works for you and your family.
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Easy Home Management Solutions
Home management is like being the secretary or office manager of your home and family. Every family is different, with different needs and dynamics, so I wanted to provide a few different ideas for home management solutions that might work for you and your family. The key here is to find a solution that will work for your family, and to choose a solution that will not create what feels like more work!
When considering jumping into home management, it’s always a good idea to have a starting point. Have a plan, or a backbone to your system. Sometimes it’s easier to gain information on the easiest tactics to help make the process and easy and efficient as possible. If you are looking into more information on organizing your home and family, consider reading or listening to a book to get started. It’s not necessary, but it can help to give you a baseline.
- Family Command Center
- Shared Family Calendar
- Home Management App
- Home Management Binder
- Magnetic Refrigerator Calendar and Memo’s
1. Family Command Center
My number one selection for home management is a family command center. The reason I find this option so appealing is it’s flexibility and ease. You can make a family command center whatever you want it to be, that works for your family.
What is a family command Center?
A family command center is an area in your home that holds all of your home and family schedules, lists, to-do’s and more! In other words, it’s a centralized location for managing the chaos home life. It can be extravagant, or it can be simple. It can be elegant, or it can be plain. This option can be whatever you need it to be, and whatever appeals to you.
What does a family command center include?
Deciding what to include in your family command center is what makes it personal to your family and home. Commonly, a family command center will include a calendar with schedules, appointments, events, and birthdays. Additionally, these commonly contain to-do lists, grocery lists, meal plans, chore charts and/or cleaning schedules. Some ideas to include in a family command center:
- Family calendar
- To-do lists
- Grocery list
- Meal plan/menu plan
- Chore charts
- Cleaning schedules
- Home maintenance schedule
- Reminders/memos
- Bill schedules/reminders
- Important dates
- Paper/letter holders
- Key hooks
- Charging stations
- Goals
- Trip plans
- Important/Emergency contacts
- Pencil/pen/marker holders
How to create a family command center
Creating your own family command center can be super fun! You can make it whatever you would like. It can be solely wall hung, or you could make a command center with counter top components. You can choose the colors, textures, designs and whatever else that suites your style and provides a beautiful aesthetic while still providing the same organization and home management. You can use whiteboards, magnetic calendars/lists, letter holders, key hooks, cork boards, chalk boards, the possibilities are endless!
Take a look at some of the supplies I have compiled below for ideas on how to create your own!
2. Shared Family Calendars
My second favorite option for home management, and one that can nicely pair with any of the other options (or be used on it’s own) is a shared family calendar. As mentioned above, a calendar can be a key aspect of a family command center. Adding this into a digital/mobile application that can add reminders and a convenient access space from anywhere can provide an edge of convenience and organization.
If you are looking for the simplest way to focus on home management, this is it!
What is a shared family calendar?
A shared family calendar is a calendar that the entire family has access to. In this aspect, I am speaking of a digital shared family calendar for ease and simplicity with home management. Shared family calendars can provide a very simple and easily accessed way to provide everyone schedule in one place, set reminders for events, practices, conferences, sports, or anything else.
What can you use a shared family calendar for?
Shared family calendars can be used in whatever way works best for your family. The downside, many calendars don’t offer simply shared to-do/task lists or other items, but they do allow you to customize the “events” to your liking. If you are looking to have more digital information easily accessed and shared, you can look into home management apps, which I will talk about next. As for the digital family calendars, here are some ideas of what these are useful for:
- Reminders
- Events
- Easily shared important information
- Appointments
- Meetings
- Work schedules
- Sports schedules
- Color coded schedules
- Bill reminders and tracking
- Color coded event types
What types of shared family calendars are available?
There are many different types and apps that offer shared family calendars. One of the easiest access type shared calendars is found right on your android or iphone. Did you know, the calendar that comes standard with your phone can be used as a shared calendar? The only downside to this method is your entire family would need to have the same operating system (Apple/Android). Many times, this is already the case, but if it isn’t you may need to consider a family calendar app. Some of the higher rated free family calendar apps are:
- Google Calendar (syncs with many other calendar types)
- Cozi
- Family Shared Calendar
- TimeTree
How to use a shared family calendar
When using a shared family calendar, you can tailor the way you use it to your family’s needs. You can create different calendars, or calendar sections depending on the app you are using, that will color code your calendar. For example, using an Android calendar app, you can create different shared calendars that have different color designations so you can easily see who the event/task belongs to.
For my family, I have a calendar/color created for the family together, me, my husband, my son, my daughter, bills, and to-do. You can also do this depending on task type if you’d like.
You can see some examples of how this could look on the Android Samsung calendar app.
3. Home Management Apps
If you are looking for a digital solution to home management that will provide the same types of details and convenience of the family command center listed above, then a home management app is what you need. Good home management apps can help to organize and plan family schedules, meal plans, to-do lists, and more.
In order to determine which app will be best for your family, I strongly suggest doing a little research or looking into the key points of each app you’re considering. You must determine what aspects and items are most important to you and your family. Determining this first, will allow you to select an app that will provide the most convenience to you.
What is a home management app?
A home management app is a digital solution to keeping your family and household schedules and tasks in an organized and easy to utilize manner. These apps are designed to provide organization to family stress points such as schedules, meals, chores, to-do’s, and more. They provide a comprehensive view of everything that requires organization in your family and home.
What solutions can be found on home management apps?
The detail and type of information that is provided on a home management app is really dependent on the app you choose. Each app has different stress points that it’s meant to solve for, so make sure to do your research. Some examples of items you can find on a home management app are:
- Family calendar
- To-do lists
- Grocery list
- Meal plan/menu plan
- Chore charts and/or tracker
- Cleaning schedules
- Home maintenance schedule
- Reminders/memos
- Bill schedules/reminders
- Goals
- Trip plans
- Important/Emergency contacts
What home management apps are available?
There are many different types of home management apps. Some of these focus more on a calendar and organization aspect, some focus more on sharing and storage, while others have a focus on chores and tracking them. I have provided some examples of top rated home management apps below:
4. Home Management Binder
A home management binder is one of the more polished and intricate solutions for home management. If you are looking for an “all in one” type solution that will cover basically everything you could think of, and the things you haven’t thought of, this is the solution for you! The best part is, you don’t have to try and come up with this solution on your own. There are so many different designs and printable’s available for this solution, you are bound to find something that fits your families needs.
What is a home management binder?
A home management binder is an simple to navigate solution that creates a principal place for easy access to every piece of information you might need on a daily basis. It’s a centralized informational “hub” that includes everything about your daily life, family and home. Each binder will be slightly, or vastly, different dependent on what will work best for you and your family, and what information you feel is necessary. These binders can be very sophisticated, or very simple. This is your choosing! That’s the best part about these types of solutions.
What does a home management binder include?
A typical home management binder will include family information, schedules or a calendar, household information, routines, chore charts, budgetary and financial information, and more (or less). You will want to choose the aspects that work best for you and your family. Some examples of information that can be included in a home management binder are:
- Cleaning routines/schedules
- Chore charts
- Allowance tracker
- Goal charts
- Emergency planing
- Emergency contacts
- Family notes/information
- Password logs
- Utility providers and schedules
- Interior/exterior home specs (paint colors, brands, flooring information, etc.)
- To-do lists
- Home maintenance logs
- User manual storage
- Family schedule
- Calendars
- Cleaning checklists
- Appliance maintenance logs
- Seasonal and annual task/maintenance lists
- Car maintenance logs
- Pet care information
- Pet vaccination logs
- Contacts
- Family
- Friends
- Doctors
- After hours doctor
- Dentist
- Babysitters
- Contractors
- Warranty’s
- Utilities
- Appliance plans
- Vet
- Teachers
- School
- Coaches/sports
- Budgets
- Expense tracking
- Bill schedules
- Investment logs/accounts
- Meal planners
- Grocery/shopping lists
- Kids routines/schedules
- Travel planning
- Project ideas/plans
- Project to-do lists
- Party or holiday planning
How to create a home management binder
Creating a home management binder can be quite simple. I highly recommend finding free printable binder pages, or Etsy sellers offer a wide variety of very reasonably priced digital downloads with beautiful designs. You can also create your own pages, if you are handy with creating printable pages or documents.
You will want to get a 3 ring binder, tab dividers, pocket files or zip pouches that fit in 3 ring binders, or any other organizing tools you might find handy for this type of organization solution. I have provided some great examples of my recommended tools/items below to assist you in putting together a beautiful and organized home management binder.
Tip: use a label maker to create labels for tab dividers for a clean look.
Downloadable Pages: Shop Now
5. Magnetic Refrigerator Calendar and Memo’s
If you are looking for the easiest to start and maintain solution for home management, a magnetic refrigerator calendar and memo board is the way to go. This is a very quick and easy solution to set up, and is a very easy solution to maintain.
What area in your house is more centrally used than your refrigerator? Well… besides your bathroom maybe, but who wants to put a calendar in their bathroom? Anyways, the refrigerator is a great central location to place a calendar where everyone will see it, and everyone can access and edit as needed.
What can you use a memo board for?
The calendar is a given, but what about the memo board? What can you use this for? The memo board is great for notes to each other in the family (especially for different start times for different family members). This is also great for meal plans, important reminders, chore charts, or whatever you need to use it for!
There are quite a few different options available for magnetic refrigerator calendars and memo boards. Commonly, you can get white boards or clear boards that are acrylic dry erase. My personal preference are the clear boards, as they just appear cleaner and more discreate to me.
You can use this option to supplement other options as well, such as a supplemental addition to a shared family calendar or home management app.
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I love the idea of a family command center. I never had much success with shared apps (for several reasons), that that command center that is right there in front of faces is a great alternative. Great variety, too. Pinning! 🙂 Visiting from Tell it To Me Tuesday. (I’d love to see this shared at my weekly linkup as well, Will Blog for Comments, if you’d like: https://lifetalesbooks.blogspot.com/p/calling-fellow-bloggers.html)
This is such a practical idea. Even though all our children are grown, my husband and I have to work at co-ordinating our schedules and keeping each other updated about important information.
I’m glad you found this useful, I hope there are some tips, tricks or advice that you can use!
This is a great post. I created a home management system with binder and everything when my kids were little. It was loosely base off of the FlyLady philosophy. Now that my kids are grown & flown it’s kinda gone by the wayside but some habits have stuck through the years. Thanks for the reminders; you have some great tips. Thank you for sharing at the Home imagined ink party. XO- MaryJo
Thank you so much! I am hoping that this post will be useful for people who are feeling overwhelmed with it all! Home management can be very useful at any point in your life, but with kids it’s almost a must to help feel less overwhelmed or lost when it comes to what to do, and where to be. I’m glad you found this useful and interesting.
Great idea! Families with children need all of the help they can get with all of the goings and comings. Thanks so much for linking up at the #UnlimitedLinkParty 138. Pinned.
Thank you, and thank you for sharing!
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