Monday, February 11, 2013

Taking Control of Your Time (Part 4)


(This article was previously published by me in Queenly Quest Magazine.)



                                                                     Finding Time

My husband and I realized one day that we were not doing activities that we wanted to be doing . This led me to take a different look at our week and see if we could find some time for these activities. I found this template.  I printed off seven copies, one for each day of the week. This template has four spots one for each member of my family. There are different templates at this link ,pick the one that will work best for you or make your own. 

The nice part about having a different column for each member of your family is that you will not always be doing the same things at the same time. With this template you will be able to see what each member of your family should be doing.

 To start, I filled in the activities that I know will always take place. Such as, we know the times every Sunday and Wednesday that we will be at church. 

 I then wrote down the days and times when I would like for other activities to take place.

 Then I wrote down the times when  I want school to be held, chores to be done, meal times, etc. Anything that usually takes place a certain day and time I filled those into the chart.

After doing that I set down with my husband and children, we made a list of things that we really want to be doing, but have not had the time for. Things such as exercise, letting my children ride their bicycles, having more time to read, visiting family, etc., anything that you really want to do.

 We found the blank times on the chart when we could schedule those in. Sometimes it is not feasible to do something every week so I would write more than one thing on a line and we can pick the one we want to do that week and leave the other one for the next week.

 Another great thing to add to your template is a morning and nightly routine. My morning routine consist of, praying, reading my Bible, exercising and showering. I try to do this all before the kids wake up. My nightly routine, consist of me stretching, washing my face and praying, reading something fun and checking my to do list for the next day. You can add anything you like to your morning and nightly routine. Make sure that you add what you really would like to do so you can have a great start and end to your day. It would also be a good idea to add a daily and nightly routine to your children’s schedule. This will give them a regular start and end to their day as well.

As an added bonus, all those blanks spots are free time.  This is the times you have nothing at all scheduled. It is nice to see those blank spots. And since you have everything already scheduled in your day that you need and want to be doing, you don’t have to feel guilty for not doing anything at these times.

 When I finished scheduling all my days, I put the templates in page protectors and keep them together with a clip. I keep the schedule out where I can see it at all times. Realize that this schedule is not perfect. Everything will not happen exactly as planned every day. This is just to be used as a guide and it will work most days. This not only helps us get to do things that we had previously not been doing but it helps keep us on schedule and makes our day run smoothly.

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