the jury is in

I knew trying to decide on what area of personal improvement would be a very hard thing for me to decide.  I want to work on it all...right now.  After hours days of thinking, debating, and deliberating of where to begin, I have decided!!!

Family schedule is so important in our house because when our schedule gets too busy and fails, we all feel the effects of it.  We get tired, grumpy and everything goes awry!!  No fun at all.

I am really wanting a new suburban, but have become very accustomed to no car payment so reworking our budget is going to take some work.  The sooner I get our budget all worked out, the sooner I get a new car.  But, I really don't think this is the most important for our household.

Organization of our family systems and our house is super important to me because if I have a happy home, my family has a happy mommy.  When my house falls apart, I become very hard to live with.  I become that nagging, hateful, scary mom.  No one likes her, including myself.  So this is where we begin for the year.  I feel like if I get things started in the right direction with our household responsibilities, many other things will naturally fall into place.

So this is where we begin.  I stumbled upon this little blog that had several great ideas for organizing your home.  I have searched her blog inside and out and decided to use some of her ideas.  They sound very efficient and useful.  What worries me, is yes, they are very efficient and useful to her, but can I adapt the system for myself.  Adapting is the keyword here.  No, not every system will work for every person, but adapting a system to fit your own unique lifestyle will surely benefit you and your family.  That is my hopes for myself and my family.

What am I using and what am I tossing?

I have begun the process of developing the Kirkland Family binder.  So far it has a calendar printed for the year, a monthly menu, chore charts for the kids, grocery list, and our family budget.    These are just some samples that I found from the internet that I liked.  I am sure if these didn't fit your needs, you could Google and find something out there on the internet that you could use.   Or better yet, make your own and publish on the internet.  Robby and I have gone through the Dave Ramsey course and have worked with his budget forms in the previous years.  Here is website with some pre-made forms you might like.  Or even here.

Things I will be adding to our family binder are MM Routines (Minimum Maintenance),  and Household Systems.  It will take a bit to sit down and get my thoughts squared away, but I hope to have it completed by the end of this week.

I also really like the idea of tackling a "zone" of the house each week.  Tackling would be defined as de-cluttering and reorganizing.  Read here to find out more about zone cleaning.  That is one problem that I have, I know I need to tackle a few areas of my house, but get overwhelmed and end up not doing any of it.  Well not this week anyway.  I had very good intentions of taking on the pantry and laundry room this week, but NO!!!  If I address a zone a week, I should be able to work through the entire house, for the most part, through out the month and it won't get to the overwhelming stage.  That's my hopes anyway.  Remember...kids can help with these cleaning jobs.  Oh, and mine will!!  Really, if it weren't for these kids that lived with us, we might not need these drastic cleaning and de-cluttering measures to begin with.

I must sign off for now.  The baby is awake.  I spent her entire nap time working on my Household Binder and typing this blog.  Now, I must get to work.  I still have lesson plans to do for back to school tomorrow.  ugh!!!  Dreading it right this minute.  But. that will be our test.  Can we make all this work when we throw work and school back into our busy lives.

Have a super evening. I am looking forward to spending mine at home with my family.