Having a place for everything and every thing in its place is a wonderful way to keep your space organized.
But you can also apply this same principle to regular tasks, as a way to keep your time well organized, too.
This has several benefits:
- You save time by not having to schedule regular tasks each time
- You avoid stress by not having to remember regular tasks
- You create good habits for yourself
- You find optimal times for regular activities.
Here are some examples.
Daily Tasks
Checkprocess email every day around 8am and 3pm- Refill coffee machine every night before bed – even if it’s not quite empty
- Clear sent mail folder before closing Outlook at the end of each work day.
Weekly Tasks
- File nails every Saturday before showering
- Follow up email Pending folder every Friday after lunch
- Do grocery shopping every Tuesday evening when the store is well stocked and quiet.
Monthly Tasks
- Clean fridge last Saturday of every month
- Declutter inbox and delete unneeded emails first Monday of each month
- Do birthday gift/card shopping first Saturday of every month for the month ahead.
You don’t have to be cheerlessly anal about this. Use the idea only to the extent that it helps your productivity and time management – not as a rigid noose around your diary.
Do you think this can work for you? Do you have daily, weekly or monthly tasks that be given a set place? Please share in the comments!
[Image by ohdarling]
Only thing that won’t work for me is shopping on Tuesday, That’s senior day at my grocery store! No way will it be well stocked and quiet! LOL
Thought you would enjoy a recent FB post I put on our homeschool page about chore schedules for large families:
H is for HOME MANAGEMENT!
When it comes to chores, I am thankful that I learned the approach that we have used for the past twenty years plenty early in my homeschooling tenure:
1. Attach three different chore sessions to twenty to thirty minutes prior to each meal.
2. Use one of your “chorers” for meal preparations for that upcoming meal. (Eventually, our kids did breakfasts and lunches completely by themselves for the family–and either did dinner with me or rotated through and took a different night each week as they got older.)
3. Put the most crucial chores in the first chore session–the things that need done every day regardless. For us, this meant one load of laundry, one load of dishes, trash throughout the house, wipe down bathrooms, get out/start something for evening meal, and fix breakfast. This way you will almost always get to the priorities (“dailies”).
4. In the second chore session, put more dailies and a couple of weekly tasks. (For us, this meant another load of dishes, laundry, and trash; lunch preps; possibly baking; and another weekly or two, such as dusting and vacuuming, cleaning out fridge, etc.)
5. In the third chore session, I put the things I only dream of getting to and dinner preps. (I always had a child in the kitchen with me each evening as I prepared dinner–unless the child fixed it himself or herself!)
6. Before each chore session, I called out “Room to Room”–which meant that each person should go through the main rooms and pick up what they have out. This allowed the chorer for that room to dust, vacuum, etc., without having to pick up first.
The key to successful chores, in my opinion, include the following:
A. Do dailies daily! Do not skip dailies. Do not try to do anything else until the dailies are down pat.
B. Never miss the first two chore sessions!
C. Have everybody work the entire chore session. (If someone got done early, he came to get another task or helped someone else. This wasn’t a race–it was a daily lifestyle that helped us have time for homeschooling and all of the wonderful teaching, heart training, and family times that we wanted to have.)
D. Don’t make it the least bit optional. After a couple of months of this lifestyle, my kids never even questioned whether they had to fold and put away three loads of laundry that day or fix lunch every day or cut up a fridge full of veggies. It was a way of life–a way of life that made our family successful.
E. Don’t eat until the work is done!
F. Have I mentioned not to skip?
H is for HOME MANAGEMENT!
@sopranonsc : Ooh I LOVE the idea of waking up to the smell of coffee!
Sleep more soundly: Choose outfit for the next day, complete with undies and accessories. Set them out together. Set the table for breakfast after kitchen is cleared from dinner. Set coffee maker to go off 15 minutes BEFORE the alarm (you’ll wake up to the smell of fresh brewed coffee beckoning you to the kitchen!). Just a thought. 🙂
Christine M.–Just clean out the fridge the evening before garbage day! That way it isn’t sitting in your garbage can, stinking to high heaven for the next few days! 🙂
@Jeff: So true – it’s easy to forget the big picture in the day-to-day overwhelm. Great idea to ‘have a place’ for your goal-related tasks as well! 🙂
@Christine: If you use Outlook or Awesome Note (iPhone app) you can schedule recurring tasks. It’s very handy!
Michele, I agree about not being anal about these regular tasks, but from my experience most people need some routine in their lives. You can benefit from having a daily/weekly/monthly checklist that not only covers your need-to-do activities, but your goal-related tasks (e.g. “read 1 hour,” “take morning walk”) as well. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the miniscule tasks of our busy days and forget the big picture items.
Great post. Really jarred some ideas loose!
I use Remember The Milk to schedule tasks like that. For example, “Clean Toilet” every other week on Thursday. I don’t just use it for cleaning tasks. I use it to schedule my homework so I don’t put it off til Sunday. I really need to schedule a time to clean the fridge. I might use that frequency that you used as an example.