Juggling (31 Days: Day 19)

Busy busy busy!  Every fall seems even more eventful than the last.  It's been one thing after another around here, sometimes more than one thing at once, and it shows no signs of slowing down.  A lot of times I've found myself making that juggling analagy to myself - you know that one about all the balls in the air and hoping I don't drop any of them?  I'm not sure about you, but when I get busy my organizational strategies go right out the window - just when I need them the most!  I had piles of paper all over the place.  Craft supplies stashed in a million different locations.  Projects only partially finished.  Bills that almost got neglected. Appointments to keep.  Follow phone calls that kept getting put off.  And much much more.
I can't function like that for very long before I start feeling stressed or worrying that I'm forgetting something.  My stack of random post-it notes and scrap paper reminders just weren't cutting it.  So with Kaitlyn's big birthday party behind us I was able to carve out a day this week to start putting things back in order again.  Once I had cleared myself some space on my craft table, I pulled out our family binder.  This is something I've been meaning to update for a while now, because when I'm on the ball this 3 ring binder has everything I could possibly need to know for keeping this household on track.  Originally I got the idea for this from FlyLady's Control Journal (www.flylady.net - if you love organization or struggle with it and need some help and haven't explored her site, you really should check it out) years ago.  And as with quite a few things I learned from FlyLady, I made the concept my own and it has stuck with me for a long time, transforming from time to time as needed.

 

Back when I was doing interior design, my boss was really big on keeping everything in one place.  He even went so far as to make sure I had a fancy Franklin Planner with all the inserts and that I had it with me all the time - at meetings, on the jobsite, out shopping, etc.  And he was right - if you have everything in one place you always know where to find it!  In some ways, my phone can and does fill this requirement, but it's always good to have a place for the paper.  (oh the paper!  piles and piles of paper from the mail and school and lists and reminders and...)

Inside my current binder I have divided it into sections:  Emergency, Calendar, Routines, Important Info, Addresses, Shopping Lists, Menus, Wish/gift lists, and Projects.  Most of those sections still need updating, but I did focus on the most important one for me right now - the Calendar.  I gathered up all the Post-Its and scrap paper and notes from school and typed every single important date/activity into my calendar on Google (that also feeds into my phone so I can get automatic reminders or check it when I'm out).  I even input all the teacher workdays, etc from the school's yearly calendar.  Then I printed out the calendars for Oct, Nov, and Dec and put them in the binder.  I punched holes into things like the school lunch calendar and the notice about dress up days/events for Red Ribbon week and stuck them in the binder as well.  I even added a page protector and slipped in the wedding and birthday party invitations that we plan to attend in the next couple of weeks so we have easy access to phone numbers and addresses when we need them.  (I was pretty pleased with myself over that tricky idea LOL).

By the end of an hour or so I was feeling so much more on top of things and much less worried that something important may slip through the cracks.  The peace of mind is absolutely worth the little bit of effort needed for planning and organization, right?
How do you cope with the crazy schedules that seem to go hand in hand with the Fall season?