It’s August, almost half way through the long summer
holidays, if you have kids. How are you doing? Are you surviving with a smile
on your face, or like me, getting more and more stressed as each hour ticks by?
I’ll let you into a secret. One day last week, I actually locked myself in the
loo, just so I could answer some emails in peace! Yep, I'm that kind of mum.
I'm normally pretty organised, but the last week everything
went to pot. I have over the years, learnt to just roll with it, but when work
calls, you stick to the floors and you realise that your five year old is
living on food from the “goodie cupboard” I had the feeling that I needed to
take some kind of control, again.
OK, so it won’t stop me working strange hours over the
holidays, but if that means I get to bake cupcakes with the littlest, then
that’s fine by me.
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| My personalised wall planner from Who ate my crayons |
It’s time to “Live by the Planner” again, plus it gives me 5
minutes to just sit down and look at the week ahead. I always put in the “Family”
stuff first, dentist appointments, play-dates and what-nots, so that even if I don’t
know what I'm doing, at least I know what everyone else is doing! Second on the
planner is my work schedule, orders that need to be made and admin which needs
to be done. Thirdly, I enter a bit of me time…… I find that if I don’t then I
start to get frazzled, snappy and just right down horrid! It may be just half
hour chill out time or gasp, a whole afternoon!
To-do lists.
I break them down into monthly, weekly and daily. Just remember
that not everything needs to be done that minute! I keep mine all together in another
pretty notebook, again broken down into “Life” and “Work”. The monthly one has
everything on that must be done, I then break it down into weekly amounts and
then again daily, that way what’s starts to look like a big, daunting list gets
smaller and smaller and much easier to tick off!
This is where my planner, wall chart and note books come in.
And if you are a stationary addict like myself this is where its gets exciting!
Let’s face it, even if you don’t use any of the lovely stationary, it will look
pretty on your desk, kitchen counter or bag!
I've made a list of my favourites below.
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| Weekly planner from The Green Gables with lots of space for lists and notes. |
- Above my desk, I have a personalised wall chart planner, by the super Who ate my crayons. On here I pop all the important things that I need to see at a glance, such as the all-important hair dresser appointments, holidays and school terms. I always cross reference this with the kitchen calendar downstairs.
- I have another weekly planner by the wonderful Green Gables, I try to fill this in on a Sunday and it’s mainly used for my work stuff. What orders need to be made, what supplies I need to order and any other important information. It sits on my desk and is also a handy mouse mat, if your old school like me. One thing that I have found to be very important to how I work is to try and pencil in some me time, much easier when the kids are at school, much harder when it’s the school holidays.
- Small note books are a must for slipping in my bag, to jot down ideas, must do’s and any other “monkey brain” stuff that goes on. Personal favs are my sewing machine print, from Green Gables and my personalised “Awesome plans” by Who ate my crayons.
- Hard backed notebooks, now I have quite a selection, in all different sizes. They all have a different role, from sketch book, general note making, and the one that I always keep on the cutting out table for making notes on new products/costings, I love this one from Charlotte Macy and features one of her beautiful printed fabrics. I have another, slightly larger one for blog/photo/product ideas, big enough for me to sketch out ideas and layouts.
A selection of note books that I currently use, functional doesn't have to be ugly! So there you go, that is how I'm surviving (or not) the summer holidays whilst working from home x
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