Establishing a Solid Schedule: Create a foundational schedule that’s repeatable and adaptable. Know your major time markers, and manage your appointments and kids’ activities to fit into a manageable routine.

Developing a Cadence: Automate and rhythm-ize your day to make it flow smoothly. Set up routines that turn chaos into a predictable dance, making daily tasks feel effortless.

Cleaning in Sections: Break down your cleaning into manageable zones. Focus on one section at a time to avoid overwhelm and keep your home in order.

Writing Out a Family Plan: Clearly outline the week’s schedule, to-dos, and cleaning tasks for your family. This transparency helps everyone stay on track and share responsibilities.

Next Steps: Don’t miss the next blog based on Episode 427, where I’ll delve deeper into a week-by-week plan to build on today’s foundation.

Listen Below For The Entire Episode On The Systemize Your Life Podcast

The Building Blocks To Managing Your Home

I’m excited to share the four crucial steps you need to take, that will help you manage the cleaning, to-do lists, family schedules, and all the stuff. Today is the foundational building block of what I’ll be sharing in the very next blog post, where I’ll be giving you a very specific four week plan that’s broken down week by week. So make sure you come back and read both, because I intentionally built them to pair together.

Trust Me. I Completely Understand The Challenges You’re Facing.

My daughter is currently flexing her entrepreneurial muscles with a supervised babysitting gig. She’s still young, but actually quite capable! For now she’s only going into homes of women that I know and trust. As I go along with her into these homes, I see what other women are struggling with. Actually seeing it with my own eyes. I’ve coached and worked with thousands of women at this point, but it’s a whole different level to physically SEE it for myself. To talk to their children… to see and feel and touch and smell and breathe in their house. To listen to the things that they’re struggling with when it comes to managing their homes. It makes it so much more real. 

Over the past several months, I’ve thought about how to break this down and make it very easy to digest. So that’s essentially what this blog is about. If you want to keep up with all the things like cleaning, to-do’s, and getting everyone where they need to be without it running you ragged… Trust me. I know this burden very, very well. In the beginning I even tried outsourcing some of the foundational things like cleaning. More recently I’ve taken those back onto my own plate for certain reasons, but I’ve met so many moms who don’t want to be tangled in all the details. I just really love being in the weeds of my life.

Read more about outsourcing here: Outsourcing in Motherhood: Unlocking Your Untapped Potential

For instance, I like figuring out when sports will be and how it’ll work into the schedule. We recently signed the girls up for gymnastics and while looking at their class schedules, I realized none of the times were going to work. So then I find myself having these meaningful dialogues about the PM block! Explaining what it means to us and how it’s part of our language. My husband doesn’t understand it super well, but we both feel strongly about having our kids at the dinner table. And then having them be able to settle in and unwind and get really good sleep. That’s just one of the things on top of everything else! We’ve had birthdays, personal health issues with more doctors appointments than ever before, and the dog fiasco we recently had.

I understand trying to keep all of this straight. Truly I do, and I lean heavily on my home management system for this.

So if these concepts are brand new to you and you’re struggling, there are four steps I recommend you take towards managing your home better. If you’re hungry and eager to actually make change, you’ll want to take some notes on this. Write down steps one, two, three, and four – leaving some room to write your notes in between. Let’s dive into step number one.

Step #1 Of Managing Your Home: Establish a Solid Schedule

The first step is making sure that you have a schedule that is fairly set in stone. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever break from it, but you need to have a foundational schedule in place. Know what time you’re working, when the kids have to be in bed, when they have to get up, etc. What are the necessary markers in your schedule? Know it like the back of your hand.

It blows my mind when I coach high level CEOs and I see their calendar open 8 hours, five days a week. What is actually happening? Please know that we’re in control of our own schedules, so get it under control. Sit down and look at it. Find something that is digestible and repeatable. Plan your doctor appointments on the same day, make sure your kids’ extracurriculars are at a time that makes sense. If you absolutely can’t make it work there are other options. For my family, we were even willing to go to a different gymnastics facility or pick a different sport when it conflicted with our schedule. Figure out whatever that looks like for your family. You’ve got choices, okay?

Step #2 Of Managing Your Home: Develop a Cadence

Step number two is to create a cadence with a rhythm and flow. Automate as much of your day as possible. I don’t care how far gone or how lost you think you might be. This is where you can find so much relief in almost a snap of your fingers. You need a clear understanding of what has to be done every single day on repeat. Otherwise it’s going to feel like Groundhog’s Day for you. Whenever something comes up for the 15,000th time, it’ll be a surprise over and over again like a Jack In The Box.

Life should not be that terrifying!

It shouldn’t feel like there are curve balls coming at you 24/7. Because so much of it could be resolved with essentially choreographing your day. What is your dance in this season of life? What is the way you swing left, then right, then you do a fancy turn and a cool little dip at the end of the day?

If you’re wondering what the heck this step actually means, I’ll break it down even further in the very next blog post. But for now I want you to be really strategic about how you’re stacking things together in your day. Identify what tasks repeat every week and build them into your rhythm. It’s all about integrating the routine into your cadence, not just tackling what’s urgent. It can be like a work of art. As women and mothers we’re essentially given a paintbrush and the most beautiful canvas of the entire world. This is our skill set. You may not think this is your skill set, but I promise you as a mother and a female, you’re intuitive and receptive to what’s going on around you.

Are you paying attention? Or are you distracted by stuff that you can control? 

There are a lot of things we can control in our lives, that we’re letting control us. You might be distracted by your kids not sleeping well, so you need to focus on solid sleep hygiene for them. Maybe you’re distracted by the way you feel. I’ve personally been highly distracted by the way I feel for a very long time. Physically, I have stuff that comes up every single month that’s excruciatingly painful (without going into major details here). Everyone has stuff they deal with. I’m working very hard right now to make sure this one specific area of my life is no longer a distraction for me. I know I have to spend time and energy on healing myself since I’ve had seasons of this before with major autoimmune issues. But I healed and I worked through it. 

So it doesn’t really matter what your distractions are. Whether it’s a bad relationship, bad sleep, bad physical health, bad mental health… There’s a way for you to heal and work through those things so you’re no longer distracted by them. Then you can focus on actually being receptive and being intuitive with what your day holds. When you do that, you’ll be able to create this rhythm and cadence that you and your family need in order to keep up with all the things. I want you to think very specifically when you want cleaning layered in. Then where your family’s schedule needs to be in order for you to get your to-do’s done every single week. These are the things you should be sitting down and analyzing as you work through these steps.

Step #3 Of Managing Your Home: Clean Your House In Sections