Family manager Kathy Peel shows how to organize a household and keep chaos under control. All it takes is a little planning.
- When children return home from school, have them immediately unload their backpacks and place any permission slips or papers that need a parental signature into an in-box marked Mom and Dad. Once the parent signs the papers, they should be returned to each child's personal in-box.
- Give children some downtime when they get home. They need time to decompress from the day's events, but be sure to limit this time to a certain length and strictly enforce it.
- Parents should schedule their paperwork for the same time that they schedule the children's homework time to help establish a quiet atmosphere. Have younger children limit their playing to quietly drawing or coloring.
- To make dinner a less stressful part of the evening, have a family meeting on Sunday to decide dinner menus for the week. Make sure each family member contributes his or her own suggestions and come to a family agreement on each menu. Post the week's worth of dinner menus on the refrigerator door.
- Preparing dinner and cleaning up afterward should be a team effort. A seven-minute cleanup after dinner works very well. Put some music on the stereo and have each family member rush around the house cleaning. It's amazing what is accomplished in this short time period with everyone working together.
- Take time out each night to have fun as a family--even if it's only a 10-minute card game.
Resources The Family Manager's Everyday Survival Guide
by Kathy Peel
Ballentine Books, October 1998
Order this title from Amazon.com.
Guests Kathy Peel
Author/Family Management Expert
Website:
www.familymanager.com
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