Tuesday Tips - Command Station

Many studies have been done on how much a housewife would make if all of her duties were hired out. It seems like the total pay rate for a mother/housewife is somewhere around $150,000.00 a year! I use this only to point out that we have many very important responsibilities that if left undone would cause our harmonious homes to be come crazy chaos. With so much responsibility that ranges from fix lunch to prepare the taxes it is easy to loose track of what we are to accomplish next.

You see, it’s not that I forget a lot, it’s just that I can’t remember it all at once. I have tried to use everything I could imagine to tame the wilderness including a PDA, several paper calendars, a programmable calendar on my desktop, spiral notebooks scattered around my home, and sticky notes everywhere.

Finally, I found my solution. Instead of having information spread out all over my life, I needed to have it all in one constant area where I could coordinate and contain the chaos. I have a three-ring binder open on my counter top in an area that, due to poor building planning, is unusable otherwise. The two exposed sheets of notebook paper contain most of the information that I need for my week. It has my weekly menu, the important events for the week, a shopping list, and list of things I need to accomplish for the week. If I’m feeling particularly motivated I’ll even have the projected high and low temperatures penciled in.

I’ll check over it a few times a day, which is no bother since it is already open and accessible. By the end of the week I feel less ed and frazzled. My tasks were able to be worked on at my pace without being forgotten or past due. My menu was coordinated with our activities which prevented planning a 2 hour preparation for supper on an evening following an afternoon spent at the park. On the day with errands, I can planned for sandwiches which could be taken with us since we were running behind on time. This is usually the case, because somehow no one can ever find his or her shoes when it is time to leave.

My day seems just a little smoother when I utilize my external brain.