WARNING: I am not an organized person, never was as a child, nor a young adult, and now as an adult it has been one of my constant struggles. When I first read books like
A Mother's Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot, I thought, "there is no way I can micro-manage my life like that - NEVER happening, nope...I will be miserable!" Honestly, I believed that becoming a micro-manager in my home, homeschool, and daily life would equal a tormented mommy and wife. I mean if every aspect of my life was organized and timed and schedule, when would I find the time to "play", "relax" and really "enjoy life". So I went with the flow like I always did, organized my homeschool, some, the house, some, my prayer life, some. But my so-called "freedom mentality" was just the opposite! Yeah, I admit it, I was dead wrong!
With the move to the new house and adding 400+ square feet more to clean and keep organized PLUS depleting the house of clutter by selling or giving away TONS of things before the move, this was my opportunity to give this micro-management a try. I went kicking and screaming, I confess (to you and my spiritual director). So I started searching for a method, a practice, what would work for me but also get me to be super organized. I bought a new book written by fellow Catholic homeschooler (and blogger) Laura Dominick entitled,
A Plan for Joy in the Home (highly recommend it!), re-read the old ones (actually, I skimmed), and searched the internet for an answer,
Holly at The Three Sided Wheel has other great printables and has been a great inspiration to me. After seeing many examples of great domesticity and ideas, I came up with a game plan to implement at home. {Pray for me, this hasn't been easy but it is so necessary.}
It's amazing how getting everything written down on paper helps to get your life in order.
I will be posting in parts, the way I set up a cleaning schedule, a chore schedule (which we are still working on), a school schedule and daily micro-management of my home. Maybe, my struggles will be an inspiration to another mama like me, who struggles in this department? So here I will chronicle my journey to becoming an Organized Mama and in turn creating a Happy, Healthy and Holy Home (Domestic Church anyone?). I, of course, will also be sharing all the goodies I've spent time working on. They are, obviously, going to be super "cuttie-patooty", because I'm a visual learner and like "pretty". So today I'd like to share my Daily Organizer. I know it won't be a practical sheet for EVERYONE and yes it is in color but I do print front and back (to save trees) and also on draft mode (to save on ink).
Also, if you don't want to have to print this all the time, go ahead and print in regular mode (for bright colors), slip this into a heavy-duty sheet protector and use a dry erase marker. But if you are like me, I love saving the sheets to look back on things. Another idea is to print a week's worth and then sheet protect them so that you have the whole week to look at but other clean sheets available to use. Enjoy!
UPDATE: After printing on draft mode and keeping the sheets I realized that there was no need as I have my monthly planner that stores it all. SO, I printed regular mode and slipped them into sheet protectors. I love the bright colors. I also made a second sheet that doesn't contain the flower back ground for all the even pages (it is page two on the PDF above). I printed 14 so I have two weeks available to write on to plan ahead. Here's what the second sheet looks like:
