Shifting Focus Strategy - Household Routines

What are your goals?

I’m sharing my 5th strategy on shifting focus and this strategy is all about your household routines. That includes cleaning and meal planning routines. The very first thing that you need to-do to shift your focus onto your household routines and figuring out where you should be spending your time is to write out your goals. 

Is your goal to have a pristinely clean home? 

Or is your goal to have a clean enough home so no one's tripping over things? If you invited someone over, you wouldn't be embarrassed to invite them in or just have to spot clean before they got here.

Too many people feel like they have to strive for a perfectly clean home. And if they can't maintain that, especially with tiny kiddos they give up altogether.

There’s a better solution

And part of it is in creating a goal. What do you really want in your home? One of the best ways to make it easier to clean your home is to get rid of stuff. Purging and getting rid of things you no longer need. Those things matter and consider reading books or blogs on minimalism books.

I'm not a minimalist because it doesn't fit our family goals, but we're also not collectors. When you get rid of things, also really rethink what you're bringing back into your home. 

You can save money on the things that you don't actually need to buy.

You will also reduce the amount of stuff that’s moved around when cleaning because cluttered homes are harder to clean. You're spending time moving stuff from one space to the other.

Consider that you're also having to clean around them. This was eye-opening for me as a military family. We move a lot and store a lot of things not needed in this home or don't need right now because the kids. 

I’m sure you've seen those big Rubbermaid tubs. We have plenty of those. We packed them tightly with stuff that we don't need right now in this period of our lives.

I read an eye-opening fact that I’m going to share. If you measure the tub and compare the amount of square footage and cubic space.

Add up all your tubs to your overall square footage and then divide by the amount of money that you pay either for rent or mortgage. Next you decide how much money it is costing you monthly to pay for those storage tubs. We had a lot of tubs. Needless to say, we got rid of them. We downsized a lot and it could possibly help you downsize the home that you need too.

Do you really need a home with ample storage space if you just got rid of the stuff that you're not actually using. 

For us it was definitely time, money and space saving. I was worth it for us.

Routines are Key

The other thing that is key is really getting into a cleaning routine. Just like you wouldn't want to leave a pan out from dinner overnight and scrub it in the morning. You wouldn't want to leave your toothpaste in the sink or any other scum that builds up from day-to-day use of your home.

You don't want to leave that overnight. You want to try to get rid of it every day. I'm not saying scrub every single thing every day, but you can get into the routine of wiping down every main surface. For example, the kitchen and bathroom counters, and kitchen table. If you have a little tub with handles under each sink with a microfiber cloth with a good spray. I recommend Truce, which is a natural spray with peroxide and peppermint.

We spray it down, wipe it down and the kids can do it now. They are old enough to do it. And if you can do that it will keep your residue down to a minimum!

Meal Routines

It's really hard to eat healthy or even cook without a plan.

I don't know how people do it. I’m not someone who can just look in the fridge and whip together food. I have tried that and my family didn't eat it. I'm not a recipe maker but a recipe follower. 

I use a meal planning app and I love it.

If you want to get into a meal planning app or meal planning service, here's the link plus some resources from the blog:

• Real Plans - Meal Planning App
• Healthy Eating Routines
• Best Meal Planning Service for Your Real Food Family
• Real Food On a Budget

With meals it's a good idea to match your recipes with the amount of time that you have to prepare a meal. One of the biggest reasons people fail when they set out to meal plan is that they get a recipe book, they just go through and pick recipes they think will taste good, then buy the ingredients, but when they get home to prepare they don't have enough time to prepare that recipe. If it says 15 minutes to prep and 30 minutes to cook, it's going take you at least 20-25 minutes to prep and 30-40 minutes to cook because you're new to the recipe.

It's very important you match recipes with the amount of time you have. 

The other thing that I want to leave you with is enlist the help of the people in your home. If you're spending a lot more time at home, you're going to be making a lot more messes. There's a lot more cleaning and a lot more tidying.

Routines are important and it's vital to enlist everyone's help. And t's ok to ask your toddler to do chores.

Make Routines a Family Affair

I’ve followed the Montessori method with my kids from a very young age. I’ve taught my kids how to wipe things down, use a itty bitty broom and put things back where they belong. Get your kids involved in the chores, especially if you're going to be staying at home. 

Homeschooling requires you to have a chore plan. It requires you to have a meal plan. There is no more winging it! There's no more fending for yourself, because you will need their help. 

Shifting your focus because you'll be spending a lot more time together if you are choosing to stay at home but a lot of these tips will apply to you even if you're not.

If you've missed any posts from the series you can catch up here:

• #1 Beginning Homeschooling
• #2 Priorities
• #3 Mindset
• #4 Money