planning

Weekly Planning Sessions

September 27, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

My best days start with a weekly planning session on Sunday afternoon. I gather up my google calendar, my Power Sheets, my bullet journal, my Simplified Planner, my favorite pens, a tasty beverage and I pull up some good tunes on Spotify.

It just takes a few minutes to look over what I did last week and select a happy memory from the week to write in my planner. Then I add any accomplishments to my tending sheet in my Power Sheet workbook. I try not to focus too much on what didn’t happen but just move the things forward that still need attending to and let the ones go that can’t be helped.

Next, I shift my focus to the coming week checking my google calendar and writing any events on the daily pages of my planner and any to dos on the appropriate day. Visualizing the week ahead of time really helps me so I am not caught unaware.

I check through my brain dumps in my bullet journal to see if there is anything I can add to my to do lists for the week. Then I write it down on the appropriate day.

This usually takes me about 30-45 minutes. I come away feeling refreshed and confident about what needs to be done over the next few days. I look forward to this time every week and really miss it when it doesn’t happen.

Afterwards, I like to have a family meeting to spend a few minutes talking about everyone’s plans and schedules for the week. That way we all know what is going on. We add everyone’s schedules to our white board to keep us all informed. My ideal is to have a fun dessert to bring everyone together as they usually aren’t that fond of having family meetings.

Do you have a weekly planning session? What does it look like?

Back to School Checklist

July 23, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

We are in the dog days of summer and although it might seem too soon to talk about it the kids will be back to school soon! My kids start back in less than a month. I have found that if I spend a little time now making a checklist of our back to school needs I can work through it a little at a time instead of going mad that last week before school starts to get everything done in time.

Here is what is on my list:

1. Clothes Inventory

I like to spend some time going through each child’s clothing to see what they already have and what they are going to need to go back to school. I like to do this 1 or 2 kids at a time on their laundry day. I have them work with me to pull out anything that they have outgrown or that has holes in it. Then we make a list of what they still need. Once we have the list we shop our bins of hand me downs and if we don’t have everything then we add it to the shopping list.

2. Buy the Needed Clothes

As much as possible we shop thrift stores followed by Target, Old Navy and Ross. Clothes shopping is my least favorite activity. But it has to be done. I only take 1-2 kids at a time to make it less overwhelming.

3. Lunch Boxes

It only takes a few minutes to gather up the lunch boxes and containers from prior years but it helps so much when the kids are ready to go back to school to make sure they have what they need! The last couple of years we have gotten lunch boxes from Costco that have lasted really well. They come with ice packs and containers.

4. Backpacks

What says back to school better than a new backpack? I am always hopeful that at least some of the backpacks are still usable the next year but it seems like most of them have a broken zipper or seam by the end of the year. We did get a High Sierra backpack from Costco last year for one of our daughters and it stood up well and she can still use it this year! We are definitely going to buy more of them for this year.

5. Shoes

Do your kids always grow over the summer too? Now is a great time to find sales on shoes and make sure everyone has shoes that fit well to go back to school!

6. School Supplies

Now here is my love language! Give me $100 to spend on notebooks, pens, pencils and all the school supplies and I am a happy girl! I like to stock up on things I know they will use throughout the year because it costs so much more later in the year but sometimes I stock up too much on a particular thing. So before I go shopping it’s helpful for me to double check the supplies we already have on hand. I know many schools don’t give you lists until right before school starts but it helps if you get the basic needs and only have to shop for the couple of extra things at the last minute. Everything gets picked over if you wait until the last minute and it is so much more stressful!

7. Restore Good Bedtime Routines

Over the summer we are a little more lax on bedtimes and our normal routines. I find it helpful if a couple weeks before school starts we slowly move back to earlier bedtimes and wake up times so it doesn’t come as quite a shock when school starts. One of my favorite tools for helping with this is our Echo Dots. We set daily reminders to help us start our bedtime routines, brush our teeth long enough, turn out the lights and alarms to wake everyone up in the morning.

8. Plan a Fun Activity

We love to plan a fun activity to signal the end of summer. It could be a trip to the ice cream shop, a camping trip, or a water park. Having markers to signal the change of a season really helps with transitions and is a great way to make memories that will last a lifetime.

If you would like to print out a handy checklist just sign up below:

Summer Prep Challenge

May 16, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

You know how at the beginning of each summer you think wouldn’t it be nice if we did fill-in-the-blank? And then you get to the end of the summer and think where did the time go? I want to help you actually do the things you want to do this year! Each day for 5 days you will receive a summer prep challenge email with a prompt to help you prepare for the summer you have always wanted.

We will make sure you know what it is you want to do with your time this summer and make a plan for actually getting it done with step-by-step directions as well as ideas to make this the best summer ever.

Taking a few days to plan here before summer starts will allow you and your family to embrace the summer season and be prepared for it.

Sign up for the Summer Prep Challenge below!

New Year, New You? How to harness the power of a new start while loving who you are right now

January 8, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

The New Year is such a mixed bag, isn’t it?

On the one hand, it is a fresh start, a new beginning, a clean slate.

On the other hand, we are still who we have always been and will continue to be.

How can we harness the energy of the new year but not live in shame over all the past year’s expectations that haven’t come to be? What if we can reframe our thinking? Instead of deciding to be a whole new person (some imaginary perfect version of ourselves) we look for ways to make better choices each day. To celebrate our victories and to give ourselves grace when we don’t accomplish all the things.

Don’t get me wrong, I love making plans! Tracking my habits and breaking my goals down into doable steps has made really accomplish the things that are important to me. But there isn’t a day that goes by that I actually check off everything on my list. And I’m okay with that. Having those daily intentions have helped me to do more of the things that are important to me than I ever did before. To me this is a VICTORY!

Over the next few posts I am going to go through the tools I use to organize my thoughts, plans and to do lists. I hope you find them helpful. But they are just tools. I want you to understand that you are a beautiful human being just being you without having to fix anything! Let’s step into this new year knowing and believing that we don’t have to change anything but its okay if we do 🙂

September: the New (Old) January

September 13, 2018 by mamakay Leave a Comment

Fall is by far my favorite season! I love the cooling of the air, the shortening of the days, and the invitation to prepare for winter by preserving the harvest (even if its not from my own garden). It is the time of returning to routines and the home is central to it all. Warm meals and baking are welcomed after so many hot months where the kitchen seems unappealing. School begins and the rhythms of life become more predictable.

Each season brings a time for reflection for me. What is working in our lives? What isn’t working? What can we do differently? How do we want to spend our time during this season? I try to take some time to really think through these things. The last 2 years I have been able to get away for a couple days and it has been such a blessing to have the time and space to consider our lives. We have made some huge changes this past year and having some space really helped me have some clarity.

This year I also started making a wall calendar on a half sheet of poster board for the family for the season. It has been amazing to me how much it has helped us be intentional about our time. Seeing our schedule a little zoomed out has helped us so much as we make our plans.

I have been thinking about how much September seems like new year. It is a time for making plans, lists and preparations for the coming time. And then it hit me as I looked at the calendar. Rosh Hashanah was this week. In the Jewish calendar, September has been the new year all along.

So Happy New Year! May God bless you in this coming year!

MamaKay

Bullet Journals, Planners and Goals! Oh, My!

October 12, 2017 by mamakay 3 Comments

For the last few years I have working to find a system to keep myself on track with all the things going on in this busy life as a Manager of a household of 10. I started using a Bullet Journal in January 2016 so that I could have everything in one place! I loved its flexibility and having one place. But I quickly tired of my sloppy attempts to draw calendars and using it for a future tracker proved to be difficult.

Enter the Happy Planner! I had heard people rave about them online and then they had them at Costco last December. I immediately fell in love! They are so pretty and using stickers is so much fun! I use it for my brain dump to do lists, calendar, memory recorder, meal planner, prayer list reminders and focused to do lists.

It worked so well I bought a special Teacher Edition to keep track of our homeschooling. I previously had used A Blue Sky Planner which included a monthly calendar and a paragraph sized space for each day of the week. I love that the teacher edition has spaces for subjects and has more space since it only has 5 days a week. I use 1 side for my individual students and the other side for our group subjects. It also has a monthly calendar and a place to write goals. Plus using stickers is fun too!

Then I got my hands on the Cultivate What Matters PowerSheets in May! (The new sets for 2018 will be available in just a couple more weeks.) I love how they guide you through brainstorming what you want your life to look like and then break that down into practical goals. The tending sheet is wonderful as a habit tracker and keeping my goals before me. Just this month I realized I could tear it out of the book, paste it to a blank page to insert into my Happy Planner! I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before!

I still love my bullet journal for all my ideas. I use it for planning, journaling, my commonplace notes, reading journal, notes from podcasts and meetings and keeping track of ideas I don’t want to lose.

I also use Google calendar to help communicate with our family what is on the schedule as well as Google Assistant to set reminders of random tasks I need to do at specific times. Most of us have smart phones now so it works well to be able to check schedules where ever we are.

At the beginning of the month I try to take a couple of hours to sit down and reflect on the past month and develop a vision for the coming month. I use the Powersheets to help me work through that.

Then I plug in the details into my Happy Planner including tucking the Tending List into my planner. I put all the main things on calendar and start my brain dump to do list.

Then on Sundays, I plan out that particular week. I use my stickers to decorate and get my mind wrapped around what I need to focus on. I add a To-Do list bookmark to the week. On a daily basis I try to add anything I want to remember, track things like my steps and look ahead to the next day.

Before bed I pull out my Leuchtturm1917 and record my day. I’ve been using a modification of the 5 Minute Journal to provide a template for what I want to record.

I am a very visual person and I need to be able to see all the details. All of these tools help me to do that! I tried to go digital but there is just something about writing things out that really help me to cement them in my memory. If I keep to my routines I can sleep better not worrying about what I need to remember or spending so much time trying to find a bit of information I need.

I want to live an intentional life! In order to do that I have to set aside time regularly to make sure I am getting the things done that I say I want to do. Life slips by so easily! I want to remember what has happened and choose where I am going to the best of my ability!

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11(ESV)

MamaKay