reVision: Take Charge

Are you in charge of your day? Your time? Your schedule?

Are you running your life or is it running you?

I want to give you permission to take the reigns in your life. Take control, get in charge of your life!

Here's some help:

Think pace, not race. A great way to get control is to not be on call 24/7. You can put down the cell phone. You can log off Facebook. You can choose to let some one's text message go unanswered. We have technology....let's use it to help us! So letting voicemail get your call every now and again...it's OK!

Learn to delegate things that don't need your expertise. Believe me....no one cleans the bathrooms like moms and women in general, but letting some things go and letting someone else do it will be good for you and for them.

Limit the number of things on your to-do list. When you make a list of things to accomplish and it is a mile long, you can feel defeated before you even begin. So limit that number to 5 or 6 things that must absolutely get done. 5 or 6 is way more manageable than 500!

Develop routines that work for you. We've already talked about the weekly plan sheet idea in a previous post and the idea of preparation. But what about these routines that make life a little better:

Keep things of importance in important places. Keys, purse, bills, documents, etc....these should all have a specific home so that you aren't frantically searching for them.

Keep pen and paper in the car, kitchen and by your bed. These are the places I always seem to be when I think of something I don't want to forget....like a grocery item I am out of, something I need to do that my husband reminds me of right as we are going to sleep, etc.

Make your bed. If your bed is made, about 50% of your room is clean. What a nice feeling to walk into the bedroom and the bed be made. It also makes for a better night's sleep

Clean out your kitchen sink and clean off counter tops at night. This is really important if you leave the house in the morning. Nothing is worse than needing to make breakfast or a cup of coffee and the sink being full of dishes or not having a work space on the counter top. Also, when you come home at the end of the day and the kitchen appears a mess, who wants to dive in and make dinner?

Use one calendar to log all the stuff you and your family are doing. Nothing is worse than having Timmy's t-ball schedule on the fridge when you are at church and someone wants to know if you are free. Or better yet, you are at the Dr's office and needing to schedule an appointment and you don't know what hubby's work schedule is. Write it down on one calendar

One of the best and simplest ways to get started with organizing your calendar and to-do's is to use a spiral, one subject notebook. They're cheap but effective. Get the notebook and number each page 1 to 30 or 31, depending on how many days there are in the month. Along the left hand column, list the hours of the day - make sure to start with the time you get up and keep going until the time you go to bed. Then you have one page to log your scheduled things as well as the rest of the page to make notes, lists, etc. Plus, when someone tells you on the 15th that on the 21st you have to be somewhere or something is due, you simply flip to page 21 and write it down. You don't have to continually remind yourself of it because you wrote it down! How freeing is that!!