Our simple Home Management routine – how we made a realistic, workable routine that fit our family, and how you can make one that fits YOURS!

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Last year I was drowning. There have been a few seasons of life where I felt totally overwhelmed by the house. But after we moved into our first home, I realized I needed to make a big change. We didn’t have nursing babies anymore, and for the first time in 8 years, I was getting a (mostly) full night’s sleep. The house should have been better than ever. I shouldn’t have felt like I was living in chaos every day.

So after a few months of flailing, I overhauled my whole approach to homemaking. I shared my big mindset shift in this post. After that, I was got very, very practical. Two things helped me do that.

Habits vs. Tasks

There is an important difference here. Habits are something you do every day or every few days that are built into the natural rhythm of your life. Some of them you do by choice, and some are forced on you.

• Feeding the baby is a habit.
• Making lunch and cleaning up after it is a habit.
• Packing lunchboxes.
• Doing a load of laundry.
• Washing the dishes.
• Drinking eight glasses of water.

Those are all habits. You do them today and more or less, tomorrow you repeat them. Habits are extremely important and create anchors in our home management routine. Even if you got nothing else accomplished today, I bet you did a TON of habits.

A task is different. It is a job you do today, and then it’s done – if not forever, at least for this week. Examples of tasks are:

• Calling the dentist.
• Going to the grocery store.
• Meal prep for this week.
• Washing the dishes.
• Cleaning out the fridge.

Our days are full of habits and tasks. Habits keep our days running smoothly, but tasks are more urgent. Unfortunately, sometimes when we make a to-do list, we treat our habits and tasks like they are the same thing. We list them all, end up with something a mile long, and feel defeated before the day begins.

When I list my habits and my tasks separately, it helps me prioritize. Habits should get done, but it’s not the end of the world if I don’t get all the dishes washed today. Then I pick 3-4 tasks for that day. That’s it. If I accomplish at least 2-3 of those tasks (depending on how urgent they are – because I learned to cut my goals in half) and a handful of habits, I win. My day was fairly productive, and I go to bed feeling good about what I accomplished.

Watch our Live Video replay here! I shared about Habits Vs. Tasks and our Simple Weekly Home Management Routine. Start watching at 18:57 to dive right in!

Our Simple Weekly Home Management Routine

Some Home Management jobs fall into habits. But the weekly routine I want to share with you falls into tasks. Keeping them separate helps me break my days and my weeks into bite-size chunks.

The best thing I did last year was take a quick eCourse called Home Management How-To. It teaches you to split your home management chores into themed days. This makes it easy to remember, easy to focus, and easy to prioritize your tasks for the day.

Home Management How-To teaches you to create one theme for each day of the week:

1. Office Day
2. Errands Day
3. Kitchen Day
4. Laundry Day
5. Cleaning Day
6. Rest Day
7. Catch-Up/Prep Day

The course goes into detail about what each day should hold, sharing special hacks for different seasons of life, and empowering you to prioritize what needs to happen for each of those days in YOUR life, right now.

In order to accomplish everything I need to in a week, I separate my chores into Habits and Tasks. Check out the video above to read how I applied what I learned in Home Management How-To to our home!

The Home Management eCourse is set up into 8 simple, easy-to-follow lessons designed to give you the tools and resources you need to be able to make a realistic and workable routine that fits YOUR family.

Home Management How-To Will Teach You to:

• Create a realistic routine for your family – based on your needs.
• Overcome laundry overwhelm with a simple plan of attack.
• Tackle your paperwork clutter and get rid of the piles.
• Make the best and most efficient use of your time each time you leave your home.
• Enjoy a clean, organized kitchen and employ an arsenal of tips to feed your family well.
• Develop a cleaning routine that will help you maintain a neat and tidy space.
• Build in purposeful time to get ahead and prepare for busier seasons.
• Rest!

Simply put, by the end of this course, you’ll have a plan in place to take control of the chaos in your home.

BONUS: If you work outside the home, this course is for you, too! 7 of the 8 lessons include a short bonus video dedicated to strategies specifically for those who work outside the home.

The course is a few years old, and it’s not super fancy like a lot of the new courses. But that’s one reason it’s so affordable!

I have followed the creator, Stacy Myers for YEARS and she really knows her stuff. I knew that it would be loaded with incredible knowledge that would help me take control. And that’s exactly what it did.

We have a workable routine that helps us keep our house tidy with minimal effort. I’m no longer overwhelmed by the errands, the laundry, or the perpetually dirty bathrooms.

We have a system that works for us, and doing it this way would not have occurred to me on my own. Home Management How-To isn’t the fanciest eCourse out there, but the content is PURE GOLD, and that’s why I wanted to share it with you this week.

We’re all in different seasons in life, and I want to empower you to live well and create a home management system that helps you win and take control of the chaos.

Go back and read my unique (weird?) approach to home management, then check out Home Management How-To!