Time Management Skills for Your Home and Garden

Keeping the home and garden organized can be time consuming. Here are some time management skills that will help your family achieve home organization and regain some family time for yourselves!

1. Home organization often begins in the kitchen. To save time on bigger cleaning jobs later, keep a broom and dust pan and brush handy in the kitchen. This is to do the floors if there is a spill or after dinner. It’s amazing how much food does end up on the floor each time you are in the kitchen. The quicker you get it up, the less will spread to the rest of the house making the whole house dirty.
2. Place a 2 or 3 garbage bags in the bin as the liner so when you remove one, the next one is there ready to go. I have often forgotten to replace the liner and thrown rubbish in the bin making a mess of the bin and wasting more of my time by adding another job!
3. Saving time around the home and garden involves knowing where things are. Have a designated place for wallets, keys , handbags etc near the door you come in and out of. This helps prevent time wasted in searching for them as you leave each morning. In fact, for everything around your home and garden, have a designated place for each item. It makes doing tasks quicker because you don’t have to search for your tools. Pack up and tidy up is also quicker because you put everything back where it belongs and there is no trying to stuff it somewhere it doesn’t fit.
4. Hold a weekly family meeting and discuss the weeks plans and tasks that need to be done. This makes sure everyone is aware of what needs to be done around the home and garden. It also help each family member understand each others needs and activities and whether someone needs extra help. Show them where they can keep track of the week in the Family Planner and what jobs they need to focus on for the week. It will save you chasing up each family member individually and will also help everyone be more sensitive towards what the family needs that week.
5. Keep all receipts and warranty forms in the one place. If something breaks follow up on the warranty or toll-free help line before you spend money booking in a repair person.
6. Have a list of jobs for around the home and garden that need to be done over the year and plan which ones you are going to do each month. This ensures tasks are done well because you have designated time for them. It also means you don’t end up with extra jobs because your house now leaks because you forgot to clean out the gutters! (Has happened at our house before!)
7. Set yourself regular weekly cleaning and tidying up jobs and plan which days you will do what. It means you don’t have to think about what needs to be done and you will eventually become very quick at doing those tasks because they flow with the rest of your daily routine. For example, I clean my floors Monday morning before playgroup. It’s a habit now and gets done really quickly. I then plan to have a shower on my own (while kids watch cartoons) on Friday mornings and I clean the bathroom at the same time.
8. An important time management skill is to learn to delegate. Delegate the jobs that need to be done around the home and garden as you don’t need to be doing all of them. If the children are playing outside, I may get them to sweep the path for me after their game or help me pull some weeds. Learn to ask for help and share the tasks around.
9. Post up a list of who is responsible for what tasks around the home. You can include a reward system if necessary. Your form for this is included in your Family Planner.
10. Set up an easy to use filing system for your paperwork such as bills, medical records, vehicle records and so on. Make it a part of your weekly task list to spend time putting paperwork away into your filing system. It will mean less stress and time lost when you need to find a child’s birth certificate or prove that you have paid your last phone bill that you are being charged twice for! I also have a little tray that I collect all paperwork that needs to be filed or dealt with over the week so I know where to go when it is time to do that job. As soon as my mail comes in, I either throw something away or put it into my tray to be dealt with on paperwork day.

You no longer have to be intimidated by organizing your home garden. Gradually apply as many of the above time management skills and you will enjoy the environment you live in more and more.

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