Q&A: Family & Business Organization

I’m so excited to finally kick off this portion of my site!!! For those of you that don’t know, I do have a Q&A page where you can submit your questions anonymously (only nice ones! naughty will be ignored and reported) and I’ll answer them here so others can chime in with suggestions as well!

Let’s get started with the first question:

What’s your secret to keeping your family & business organized as well as balanced?

Great question. Sometimes I ask myself that same question! Ha. I kid. I tend to compartmentalize EVERYTHING so this answer has a couple of pieces.

Planners are my life. I have 4 planners that I’m functioning out of right now simply because one doesn’t encompass everything I need. I have a Monthly/Weekly planner that I start out with and everything is done via color specific pens (turquoise blue is business, pink is personal, purple is my editorial calendar, and green has to do with money) On the monthly outlook, I put anything that I need to look out for (i.e. bills, school trips, etc). After I’ve done some high level building out for the week, I plan my week. I normally do this on Sundays since those days are no-work days for me. I review the week and anything that needs special attention for home first. I plan out what chores I want to get done on each day, then special activities to do with the kids after school, and anything going on with the family. Then I plan out my to-do’s for business. Do I need to respond to emails? Apply for certain posts? Have events? Orders to go out? All of that is brainstormed on the weekly pages. I plan my days out the night before so it’s still fresh in my head (I did this part while in corporate too).

I also have an editorial calendar for my business. I use EPIC BLOG: One-Year Editorial Planner by Regina Anaejionu. This planner is awesome because it literally helps me plan out and track everything for all my business–both the blogging and the shop. So here I plan out 2 months worth of content at a time which I love doing so I have the flexibility of moving things around as well as the direction I need for when I sit down and write. My last planner I have is a meal planner/grocery list. Why have this when I have all these other planners or I could print something out? Well I did the printing out for awhile and it just didn’t feel right since I try and live a more green life. All that paper……I just knew a tree frog was going to show up at my doorstep looking for his home. But with my meal planner it makes it easy for me to just toss in my bag so I don’t leave home without it. We spend $100 every 2 weeks on groceries because of my lists and I don’t want to jeopardize that!

So it’s a lot of planning and that seems like it takes FOREVER to do right? Well it doesn’t. I have a loose skelton plan that I follow everyday and then I just fit the extra things in there as needed. So I wake up every morning at 5am and I know that no matter what, at 11:20 I’m picking abc up from school and she’s going to nap until 1ish. And then I pick mini up from the stop at 2:37 and then we head to the gym until 4:30pm. So there are a lot of standards in there that make it easier. It also helps because we have a daily routine. The girls have expectations and that makes things way smoother with them.

I find that having things planned out makes it easier in case something pops up and the plan is no longer viable. You already knew the things you had to get done so now you just have rearrange some stuff to fit it in!

And I have an amazing husband.

I hope this answers your question!

Friends, if you have any additional tips, drop them below!