Day 21: Functional (Management)

Welcome to my 31 Days to Create Purpose in your home!  During the month of October, I am posting every day about creating purpose in your home and joining all of these bloggers who are also posting for 31 days on a topic of their choice.  I would love for you to follow me, and check out all of the other posts in the series and the introduction to it here.

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Managing your home can be summed up in to one word, systems.  A functional home that is organized, can be managed by systems.  You may already have systems (or habits if you prefer) in place and you don't even realize it.  For example, my husband and I have several systems, mostly involving how we tag team the kids when going somewhere.  These systems help us ensure that things run smoothly, and we don't forget things.  Systems help you keep things from falling through the cracks.

1. Create a paper system
Paper is one of the hardest things to handle.  There is so much of it and it goes in so many different places.  The mail, pay stubs, receipts, notices from school, craft projects and the lists goes on.  I wrote about how I handle paper here.  Find a system that works for you and that is easy to maintain, (or we all know that it will just become piles and still be unorganized.

2. Create a cleaning system
We do the dishes before bed.  I clean the cooking dishes as I cook (as much as possible), we sweep daily, we mop 2-4x's per week and hand spot as needed.  We constantly pick up after our toddler, (which is always a loosing battle), and I deep clean everything once per week.  Find something that works for you, and stick with it.

3. Follow the KISS method
My husband loves this method, KISS stands for Keep It Simple Stupid.  Each home will needs systems, and ways to keep order in your home.  Above I simply laid out two types of systems that we have in our home (there are many more) and your home may need different systems than ours.  The hole point of systems is to make your life easier, so don't make them super complicated.  Keep them simple and easy to follow and maintain.

There are many different strategies that you can use, several people like Home Management Binders, but there are many different types of systems and ways to keep track of them.  The main point is, find a way to manage your home to keep it functional.

Cheers!

Ashley