Is family organization a myth, like unicorns? Or are organizational skills something people are born with, like red hair? Neither, anybody can do this, even me. Having a busy family can be chaos at the best of times, but when you have kids, pets, aging parents and jobs, organizing your family can feel unmanageable. You are paying late fees, begging for exceptions and forgiveness, and picturing others rolling their eyes at you. You are either indignant and defensive, wracked with guilt or both.
It does not need to be that way.
Your style should be Younique.
The key to feeling in control is having systems that work for You.
Many people think organization is a fantasy or else something you are born with. I am here to tell you that is a myth. If it were true, I would be a disaster. I didn’t get my personal, family and home life organized until I was in my 30s. My parents used to just sigh and roll their eyes at me.
And then I discovered the truth. Once I did, I managed to keep our family afloat through 7 years of back-to-back crisis. Even when all is chaos around you, it is possible to keep it together, if you know how. But it is a skill you need to learn.
Figuring this out saved my family. My mom, my dad and I were all going through health crises at once, while my daughter was learning to crawl and walk. Without organization, it would have all fallen apart.
The 5 Truths About Family Organization
Recognizing these organizational truths will help you get past any misconception that you can’t be organized or that the latest fad is going to solve all of your problems.
1. There is more than one way to be organized
There are hundreds of ways to get organized. Over a thousand books on the subject alone.
There is a reason why so many people make a living from the organization industry. Books, products, consulting, stores and TV shows, all trying to help you solve your problems. Because there are so many ways to get it right, and so many to get it wrong. Try out some of the different systems and methods and see what you like and don’t like about them. There is no right answer. Feeling on top of your game is all that matters.
2. Each of us has a unique organizing style
Your style will be as unique and different as you are.
What works for you is going to be a system based on your preferences, strengths and weaknesses. When I didn’t have success with the first few methods I tried, I wondered if I might be the problem. But I persevered and discovered that it was just a matter of finding the right habits and tools. This is true for all of us.
What works for that friend you admire might not work for you, but you can crush it, in your own way. Once you find systems and habits that work for you, you will never look back.
3. The wrong organizational style won’t work, the right one will
Make the system work for you, not the other way around.
Trying to use a style that isn’t you is like wearing clothes that are too tight. You won’t get used to it. Practicing a bad system long enough will not make make it work for you. Practicing a good system will feel good, which will help you practice it and so on.
Find the right system and it will be (relatively) easy to turn into a habit.
Don’t settle for one style. Mix and match. Just as there is no one-size fits all, neither are there 10 sizes that fit all. You may love using activity baskets or favor keeping like items together. You may have a digital calendar but a paper to-do list. This is true for most of us. It is why picking up one book and expecting it to solve all problems just isn’t realistic.
4. Your organizing style needs to change & adapt
Be prepared to nip and tuck as life changes. Nothing succeeds if it doesn’t change.
Every time you go through changes in your life, things need to change and adapt to accommodate them. This is why so many of us feel so out of control all the time. What use to work for us doesn’t anymore, but we don’t know any other way, so we keep hammering away, not realizing it is time for a screwdriver.
When you get promoted, have a child or buy a house, take a step back, assess your needs and adapt your style accordingly.
5. Your family rarely share your organizational style
Organizing your family is like ordering pizza. Sometimes you need to accommodate a lot of different preferences.
Tweak to factor in your family’s styles. My mother was a master list maker, my father tolerated them and they sometimes cause my daughter to cry (they make her feel overwhelmed). These things are important because you are not just working on your own when you organize your family. You are a team and a team has to work together and commit to a plan together, see truths 3 & 5 above. This may mean maintaining some separate or even duplicate systems.
Examples:
- If your partner is completely overwhelmed by your 200 item to do list of things to do this decade; take the top 3 you need him to do and paste them into an email or print them out and give them to him. It might make it more palatable.
- Alternately, if he wants the big picture, give him the list, or better yet, let him make it and then pick off what he wants to do.
- If your child can’t abide lists, give them one thing to do at a time, with a small reward after each one. Use post-its, so they only see the thing they are doing now. It is easier to digest that way.
Organizational Areas
Most of us are neither organized nor disorganized, but somewhere in between. I have always been super-organized at work, but used to be a disaster at home. Every time my home life changes, it becomes chaotic for a while until we adjust. This is true for most of us.
Identifying what areas of your life works can help you find the right tools to manage the rest. If you are on top of one thing but not another, the skills are transferable. Figure out how to make it work in another area of your life.
Which of these do you have down? How do you do it?
1. Personal Organization
Is your hair trimmed? Are you getting regular exercise? Your clothes in good repair? Are you living your dream? Are you working towards one? How is your health? The answers to these questions are good indicators of whether your personal organization is working for you.
Ideas to Try:
- Life Binder – Your Portable Vision Board
- How to be Happy by Living Life Backwards
- Keeping New You Resolutions – Remember Small
2. Office/Work Organization
Do you miss deadlines? Ignore emails? Spend time dodging your boss or coworkers? Do you act panicked or harried at work? If you are not on top of your work it shows and it hurts your chances of success.
Ideas to Try:
- Creative & Mobile Home Office Ideas
- How To: Personal Assistant for the Working Mom
- Find Mid-Career Satisfaction
3. Family Organization
Are you shopping for birthday presents the day of the party? Late for everything? Are you paying premiums to book everything at the last-minute? Or do you miss our on things because they are already booked up? Are you constantly making apologies? Or are you scrambling around all the time, so that the chaos won’t show, but you are always exhausted?
Life does not have to be that way. Looking after a team is not much different from looking after yourself; there is just more of it. Plus you can’t always count on children to give you advanced warning of anything, so if you live on the edge, they will tip you over it.
Ideas to try:
- The Family Command Center
- 5 1/2 Step Meal Planning Guide
- Have a Great Family Road Trip
- Sending Your Kids to Summer Day Camp
- Best Christmas EVER! and a Christmas Planner
4. Home Organization
Is your house clean? Tidy? If someone dropped by right now, would you be embarrassed? Do you have trouble sleeping at night because you can’t remember if you’ve paid the electric bill? When you last checked the gutters? Changed the furnace filter? Or where you put that pump for the air mattress? Getting this stuff going on automatic pilot will help a lot with your peace of mind.
Ideas to Try:
- Managing Your Household Checklists
- Love Spring Cleaning At Last
- Get That Load Off Your Back
- From Chaos to Organized in One Day
- Do Not Clean Your House – Starting Your Cleaner
- 5 Bad Excuses for Doing Everything Yourself
3 Tools for Family Organization
No matter what your organization style, you will need 3 simple tools to maintain it. Simple is the most important part. But don’t be locked in to what anyone else says about what form those tools need to take or how to support them. Find and stick to what works for you.
All of these systems depend on three key things: You need one or multiple locations that everyone can get access to, good maintenance habits and great communication. These tools need to be used by more than just you or they don’t work at all, but if you don’t make it easy, it will never happen.
Family Calendar & Schedule
It doesn’t matter if it is digital, physical or both, every family needs a calendar. If your children are small you may need more than one. But there needs to be a single version of the truth. Do not expect to get this is you and your partner have separate ones. You need to have at least one place where everyone in a family can see everybody else’s appointments, not just their own.
Try It: Organize Your Calendar And Maintain It
Family Task & To Do List
Again, what form this takes is inconsequential. Have some of it on paper, others in an app or keep it in your calendar. Just have a list or lists somewhere. And a habit for maintaining it and scheduling the work, but more on that later. I have a paper copy of this weeks list. I email my husband his and our shared list and I keep the master in an online app and only look at it once a month. Sounds like a lot, but it takes maybe 5 minutes a week and 15 every month, now that we have found what works for us.
Family Filing System
Digital and physical; you need to know where you keep your house deed & your passports as well as user manuals & account numbers. You need a clear system everyone understands; having one will save you days a year.
Snail mail, email and reminders us of things we need to do; books, websites, reference manuals that tell us ways we need to do it. Tax forms that we have to keep for 7 years and insurance contracts we only need in an emergency. Storing it, tracking it, accessing it and maintaining it are critical to our sanity. But the sheer volume can be overwhelming.
And the books sound great with their hundred folders for each day, month and year, but if you have ever tried to maintain that you know it is not for everyone.
2 Sides of Being Organization
There are various aspects of family organization. They are inter-related and although you can tackle one without the other, all of them will impact your overall success. Taking some measures to move them each forward is essential to gaining that “on top of things” feeling. They divide into two categories:
Space, Stuff and Information Management
Clothes, housewares, furniture, knickknacks and collections. Whether you are a minimalist or a hoarder, stuff takes energy. Making sure that energy is well spent and has a good payback is important to your happiness and well-being.
Contacts, passwords, identification, account numbers; in this day and age, storing, managing and protecting your information is more important than ever. But there are also more options than ever, so figuring it out can be completely overwhelming.
To master your space you need systems to address storage needs and maintenance habits, whether that be cleaning, purging or other. Everything we own requires it. Even the digital stuff. Without both, you drown under the weight of your property.
It will all still come back to your style. A collector will not have the same style as a minimalist, nor will a single person use the systems of a family. You need to figure out what works for you.
Ideas to Try:
Productivity, Task & Time Management
The other half of the equation is time. Unlike space, we have no power over time; we have just so much of it a day, and no amount of money or influence can manufacture more. The key to a happy and fulfilled life is making it work for you and not against you.
Acceptance and mastery. and they can only be accomplished by You.
No one else can tell you what’s important to you and what needs to get done in your life. Only you can decide how you spend your time. And only you can decide how to manage it.
Ideas to Try:
Get Your Family Organized
Take a step, especially a small step. You are not going to go from disaster to master today, no matter how hard you try. That is why so many of these programs don’t work and why there are so many bestselling books, not just one.
We try, we fail, we quit, six months later we try again.
So take one small step. Try out one time management suggestion, just one for a week. Try one space organization system. At the end of the week assess, did it work, was it easy? If yes, then try another and another and so on. If not, try something else.
Start with an incoming mail task basket. Start by putting ALL of the appointments you and your family make this week into a single calendar. See how it goes.
Ideas to Try:
