I promised you a month of posts about organization and time management and then sort of dropped off the map. Sorry about that! I’ve been battling a stubborn asthma attack since the end of December and just haven’t had the mental band width to write coherently. I finally gave in and started steroids last night and I’m better today.
So, let’s get started on all the organization stuff I promised! I’ve implemented a new routine here at Chez Piercy that I’m really excited about – a weekly planning session with David. It takes so little to make me happy – ha!
This post may contain affiliate links and as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Read more here.
My Weekly Planning Session
We started this Sunday afternoon and I was very pleased with how it went. Here’s how it works:
- We each get a beverage of our choice. David opted for coffee with Coole Swan (like Bailey’s Irish Cream but better). I, of course, had my usual Earl Grey tea with milk and sugar.
- We sat down at the kitchen table with our phones, my clipboard, and the week’s mail.
- We went over our schedules for the coming week. He had two meetings and a business trip. I’ve got three meetings, choir rehearsal and a doctor appointment. We are trying a phone app called Cozi. We can each enter our meetings and appointments, color code them and then have access to each other’s schedules. I’ll let you know in a few weeks if we like this app.
- We discussed our nonprofit foundation, HMA Foundation, and I made a list of tasks I need to do for it. We have an event coming up soon so there are several things I need to work on.
- We decided on a date night. It would be nice if it could be the same night each week but our crazy schedules just don’t allow that. This week Thursday works best. I have a meeting that night which should be over by 7 p.m. He’ll meet me in town afterwards.
- I decided on a menu for the week, taking into account our meetings, his travel schedule and our chosen date night.
- Finally, we sorted the week’s mail. I recently bought the lidded container you see in the photo below. Whenever either of us picks up the mail we take a quick look for anything urgent (we pay bills online, most with auto-draft, so we rarely have bills in the mail), then toss the rest in this box. We sorted through it all together, making a pile for him to take to work to shred (we need a new one at home), filing and otherwise dealing with it all. I know that many organizers recommend immediately handling mail each day when you bring it inside but that just never has seemed to work for us. I’m hopeful that by setting aside time to deal with it together we can stay on top of it. I’ll keep you posted!
And that’s it. We both agreed that it felt good to have a handle on the upcoming week. We each have irons in a lot of fires so it’s important to make sure we keep one another up-to-date on what’s going on. The only thing I think I’d like to add to this planning session is music. Maybe I need to create a special playlist just for this.
What do you think? Do you do something like this? Or do you have another way you keep up with your family’s schedule? How do you handle the daily mail? Leave me a comment. I’m always looking for ways to fine-tune things.
Note: I bought the box shown at Aldi for about $5. I tried to find something similar online for you but so far haven’t had any luck. Obviously you can use any container you like but this one is just the perfect size for us. Big enough to hold a week’s mail but not so big that we might be tempted to let things pile up longer. I’ll keep looking and if I find something similar I’ll add the link.
Clipboards (set of three)
Taming the Paper Tiger at Home
Yes, having access to the same calendar is a must. My husband and I have calendars on our phones. We have used it for years. It works very well. We know what is going on with each other. We know when to schedule things. Just check the calendar. No date night here but we travel for pleasure at least 2 times a month. We do the mail as it comes in. Most bills are paid by credit card and then the bank.
We, too, have virtually all of our bills on auto-pay other than the water bill. That’s the one check we generally write per month. Wish they’d get with the program – ha! For years I would think we should do the mail each day as it comes but then there would be things David needed to look at and he would be out of town. Or we wouldn’t get it out of the mailbox for three days and not have time to sort it all immediately. I finally decided to quit fooling myself and accept that doing it together weekly is the best we can do.
Regarding mail: we immediately throw away junk and deal with anything important. But it usually takes us a couple of days to file paperwork, shred things that need shredding, or deal with less urgent letters.
Regarding planning: we aren’t very good at planning far in advance. Luckily, our schedules aren’t as full as yours as a rule, so this isn’t a problem. If we are going to have a busy week, we’ll discuss the week ahead at the start of it, and then review each day’s plans again the night before. If we just have what counts as an average week for us, we just skip to the reviewing each day’s plans the night before part. This is part of why I have such a hard time figuring out my menu for the week… I don’t usually need to plan more than a day or two in advance.
We’ve had different seasons of life with varying “busy” levels. This seems to be the norm for us right now so I decided to accept it and stop thinking of it as temporary. Ha!
Yeah, busy does seem to be the norm for you these days. Still, at least you can’t complain of boredom. 😉
I have no idea what boredom feels like. Ha!
Thought as much. 😉
Going through that with the menu, too, why had hard time, which shouldn’t have been doing anyway,swapling money for food stamps with dil
I deal with mail within two or three days if not immediately. Our schedule is such that we have plenty of together time to discuss needed things so that isn’t an issue. It’s filing that I delay on. Even though I have clearly marked files and all. It’s my goal this year to rid myself of the ugly great monster file cabinet and buy a new pretty one (used is fine, but def one that can be made prettier) and make a desk that better fits my work space. I’ve seen the sort I mean on Pinterest, with a file cabinet to one side. I did finally finally finally put the bill box on my desk and slid the shredder underneath so it’s truly convenient to tend to that part of mail now. It’s just the file cabinet that’s in another room, so not as convenient and way to easy to ‘forget’ as I pass by it to do other things.
We fail at filing, too. However, with our new nonprofit foundation we are going to have to be better about it. One thing I’m doing is “filing” pertinent foundation papers in plastic sleeves in a big 3-ring binder. I think this will make them easier to access. We’ll see…