4 Steps to Organizing Your Life: Creating a Household Time Map

Fairy Godmother, Kim Flynn entrepreneur and mother of 4, writes the following article: I like to compare a person’s time management to a junk drawer. If you are like most people, you have a junk drawer that is full of everything from legos to batteries to rubber bands to chapstick. Everything is tossed into one big collection, and even though it all may not be, it looks like a big pile of junk because it isn’t organized.

Now think about your weekly schedule. Your schedule is probably full of everything from ballet class to making dinner to date night to checking email. If everything is thrown into your schedule with no rhyme or reason it looks like a big pile of junk. In time management terms, a big pile of junk translates into a big pile of stress.

If you are trying to run a household, raise kids, and run a business all at the same time you have to have a time map to keep things organized and stress-free. Here is a picture of my junk drawer. Yes, that is a “lego” section that is actually labeled. Before you think I am too crazy, however, know that I organized this junk drawer in its present state when I moved into my home five years ago. I did not clean it out for this picture. This is how it looks every day . . . because it is labeled. If you create a space for everything in your life, things tend to magically stay in their place without much effort from you.  Let’s do the same thing for your weekly schedule.

You will need a paper & pencil for this so go grab one . . . I will wait.

STEP #1: Write down all the basic things you do (or you wish you would do) every week. This is not the time for minutia—don’t include making your bed or getting the mail! Most people end up with 10-20 things on their weekly schedule. Here are some examples:

• Clean the house

• Deep clean 1 room of house

• Work on business (you may need to do this several times a week)

• Home office/pay bills

• Errands

• Kids’ tutoring

• Hobby time

STEP #2: Print out the empty weekly time map at the end of this article. Notice that there aren’t exact hours on the time map. If you try to organize your time “to the penny” you will drive yourself crazy. “Oh no! I only have 5 more minutes to feed Jonny before I need to get started on laundry!” Creating false stress is NOT what we want to do.  Here is a sample time map.

This weekly time map is organized by time chunks: morning routine (more on this later), morning, afternoon & evening. For a relaxed lifestyle, I recommend only ONE activity in each time chunk. A busy person will have one or two activities per time chunk. If you have more than 2 activities in any one time chunk I would be able to spot you in a crowd. You are one of two kinds of people:

Weekly Time Map: Household
	Moving Monday	Tutor Tuesday	Windex Wednesday	Thorough Thursday	Field Trip Friday
	Routine	Routine	Routine	Routine	Routine
Morning	business meeting grocery shop	work out with Becca work on business		work out with Becca work on business	field trip Friday & errands
Afternoon/ Kids home		kids: tutoring	clean house	home office/bills	scrapbook kids piano lessons
Evening	family home evening	Photoshop class		deep clean 1 room	date night

1. You look like you have it all pulled together. People comment on how much you can accomplish. You are probably president of the HOA, PTA, as well as your own company. You work hard because you feel like you need to earn your worth. You aren’t living life to the fullest because your life is too full. Ironically, life will feel more substantial, more meaningful, when you choose to do only the most important things and marinate in the empty space that you will create. It is time to edit—not because you can’t, but because you can!

2. OR—You look like your life is falling apart. You don’t answer email for days, if not weeks. You tell people in conversation, “I just can’t think about that right now. I have to get through ___ first.” People worry about your stress levels. You feel frazzled. You aren’t living life to the fullest because your life is too full. It doesn’t matter that others can get more accomplished & not feel stressed out. Your life is too full for YOU to handle. Embrace this reality & prepare to make changes.

Back to the time map. Starting with scheduled events (ie Piano lessons on Tuesday afternoons), place each item from your list onto your time map. Remember: one item per chunk is the ideal. Use a pencil because you will be switching things around a lot as you work.

Tips:

• Put like-items together. Run errands after your kids finish soccer practice.

• Most people like to clean the house & go grocery shopping at the beginning of the week

• Plan work time when the kids are in school. If you can’t, it is time to hire a regular, weekly babysitter.

• Limit each child to 1 activity per week. Unless you are encouraging your child to excel at something at a professional or Olympic level, they really don’t need more than this. We tend to think that our kids need piano, dance and spelling bee club all at the same time. What our kids really need is a mama who isn’t yelling at them all the time because our lives are too busy!

• Include AT LEAST one hobby time for you. If you don’t have a hobby, block this time in for you to GET a hobby! This is your spice of life, ladies. Treat yourself as well as you treat your kids. Take a class in something you find juicy!

• As you place items in your time map, think about WHEN you like to do this activity. Mondays are usually really busy for me so I keep them as unscheduled as possible. By Thursday & Friday I am ready to relax, so I schedule my hobby times then.

• Try to limit driving to 2-3 times a week. Getting kids out the door is one of the most stressful activities for me as a mom. I limit my driving to grocery day and errand day. When I take the kids on field trips, or when I schedule doctor appointments, I always do them on the same day as errands. The kids don’t mind going to the bank on the way to the museum.

• If at all possible, plan your business work schedule to be three times a week without kids instead of five times a week with kids. You can afford that $5/hour for your babysitter because you aren’t out shopping every day any more!

• Don’t schedule more than 2 items in any 1 chunk of time. If you have too many items to fit into your schedule, this is not a matter of time management. You just have too many things in your life. Start crossing out the less vital ones (resign from the HOA, cancel your daughter’s ballet lessons, etc). Do this TODAY. It feels so amazing to have that weight lifted.

• Don’t list individual tasks of your business work yet. Just schedule “work on business” as many days as you need to. Look for how to create your business time map in a separate post. It is organized a little differently.

• If your business is a full-time, out of the home business, you have 2 choices:

  • #1 is to edit your household schedule substantially. In my humble opinion, your children are better off having a relaxed mom and a less active schedule than a hysterical mom driving them to swim practice every other day and deep cleaning the banister at midnight. Sorry, there are only 24 hours in the day and you are a human. You have to cut back.

  • #2 is to make changes in your business. You set this baby up to run, and you can change how it is run. Hire help; give up a less productive time-consuming division; make the changes needed to create more space in your time map. This is your business—make it work for your life.

STEP #3: Create a cute phrase that goes with each day’s purpose. This helps you and your kids memorize the schedule. As cheesy as this sounds, I wake up every morning morning and think, “Oh! Today is Tango Tuesday!” or whatever the phrase for the day is. (I imagine myself doing the tango as I walk down the grocery aisle). It gives my day a purpose and a mission.

Tips:

• Don’t use negative adjectives. Would you rather wake up knowing that you are facing “tedious Tuesday” or “tranquil Tuesday”?

• Here are some examples to get you started:

Moving Monday

Macy’s Monday

My Monday

To-do Tuesday

Tango Tuesday

Tranquil Tuesday

Tidy Tuesday

Working Wednesday

Workout Wednesday

Wal-mart Wednesday

Windex Wednesday

Thin Thursday

Thankful Thursday

Thorough Thursday

Fun Friday

Field Trip Friday

Football Friday

STEP #4: Create a morning routine. You will do this every morning when you wake up, before you begin your first “morning” time chunk. Here is my morning routine:

• Make my bed & clean room

• Clean my bathroom while my babies are in the bath

• Do 1 load of laundry

• Do dishes while kids eat breakfast

• Defrost food for dinner

I love my morning routine. I love walking into a bedroom that is always clean. I love having a time to bathe my kids. I can keep up with the piles of laundry if I always do my daily load of laundry. I love knowing what is for dinner at 10 am instead of waiting until 5:30 pm.

Tips:

• Notice that “check email” isn’t on the list. For me, checking my email involves following up on email, and often takes over an hour. This needs to be scheduled on my time map in a “work on business” time.

• Limit your morning routine to only 4 or 5 items. If you have 10 items on your routine, it won’t be a memorized routine. It will be a slave of a to-do list.

• Don’t put menial tasks like “get dressed” on your morning routine. That is, unless you have a serious problem forgetting to get dressed.

Your household time map is complete! Although you will probably memorize yours within a few weeks, it is helpful to keep it handy. I tape a copy of mine in the front of my planner so I can refer to it whenever I have a time choice:

• Should I schedule a doctor appointment on Thursday or Friday?

• Do I have extra time to take an evening photography class?

• What non-essential items can I delete from my schedule to make room for a new business venture?

If you keep your time limited to one or two events per time chunk, you can maintain the organized, purposeful, but relaxing lifestyle that you want. Just like that junk drawer!

My Morning Routine:

Weekly Time Map: Household
	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
	Routine	Routine	Routine	Routine	Routine
Morning
Afternoon/ Kids home
Evening					© Kim Flynn 2010

Kim Flynn is the mother of 4 and the founder of 3 active businesses: Tutoring Connection LLC (2000), Brenson Property Management LLC (2004) and Fabulous Living (2009). She has received business recognition as “Woman of the Year” at the 2006 Thanksgiving Point Women’s Conference, and was the director of the 2008 Women’s Conference in Provo. She has also been featured in Utah Valley Magazine and on the radio program “Ask a Woman.”