Family Rule of Life: Routines, Charts, and Checklists — Oh, My!

by Catherine | Feb 24, 2015 | Faith, Family

This Type A geek is beyond excited to share this post with you!  Who doesn’t love some good charts???

After examining the 5 P’s (Prayer, Person, Partner, Parent, Provider), it’s finally time to jump into pulling our Family Rule of Life together.  As you may remember, I first read A Mother’s Rule of Life last Lent when we were in a different house.  I had to rework our schedule and adjust our routines to reflect life in our new home with everyone at their current ability to help.  (I will revise our Family Rule again in the fall when we start a new school year.)  Putting together the schedules and routinizing everything was simultaneously the most difficult and most rewarding part of this process.  Now that I’ve had these schedules in place for a few months, I am thrilled to share them with you.

First, a few caveats:

• Don’t Compare:  Remember that these charts are specific to my family’s home, each family member’s ages & ability to help, and our schedule.  It looked very different last year, and it will continue to morph over time.  What works for us now won’t work for us in a few months, and it probably won’t be what works for your family’s unique needs.  I’m just sharing our routines to give you a sense of how to pull your family’s unique Rule together.
• Baby Steps:  Don’t try to take it all on at once.  That’s a recipe for discouragement and a whole lotta anger!  It took me a few months to figure out the basics, and we are still making adjustments as we go.  The most important part is making a decision to get your framework in place and take it one day at a time.  I make revisions to these schedules and timeframes on a regular basis.
• This is the Ideal:  While we aim to accomplish these tasks everyday, sometimes life happens.  The beauty of this system is that having a routine allows us to be more flexible.  When the home is maintained, it’s easy to take a day off when someone gets sick or there is a family emergency.  Then, we pick up the slack as best we can, redistribute tasks, or just abandon them until next week.  If you’re finding that your routines are more of a burden than a blessing, that’s probably a sign that you need to lessen the everyday load.

So, what are these routines looking like at our house these days?  (All of the links take you to previous blog posts or Google docs of our household routines that I have shared.  I took a few screen shots to show you what they look like, but you should open the Google docs themselves to print higher quality images.)

Prayer Routine

I addressed a lot of this when I talked about the “P” of Prayer.  Before I could look at other aspects of our family’s schedule, I had to make time frames available for regular prayer–personal prayer, couple prayer, and family prayer.  If I didn’t carve out time for prayer first, I knew it would be difficult to find the time during our busy days.  Here’s what I came up with:

To learn more about how I came up with this routine or the why behind it, read about my prayer routine here.

The Daily Timeframes and Routine

After carving out time for prayer, I could come up with our daily routine.  I keep this daily routine on the side of our refrigerator, but I no longer need to reference it since I’ve been following the routine for a few months.  The kids appreciate having a schedule they can rely on.

To help get the kids used to their role in the daily routine, I created some picture charts for their bedrooms.  They have one set for their morning jobs, and another set for their bedtime jobs.  Now, they are used to taking care of all of these things on their own.

Jane’s morning and evening jobs (Pink for AM, Purple for PM)

With the routine in place, I created a list of all of the household tasks I want to accomplish on a daily basis.  I kept this list in my binder on the kitchen counter to reference until I memorized it.  Now, it has become second nature.

Weekly Household Routine

With the daily routine in place, I made a weekly calendar accounting for all of our regularly scheduled weekly, bimonthly, and monthly commitments.  This included things like a shared holy hour, preschool, playdates, date nights, mother’s helper, Mass, family meeting, spiritual direction, GodTeens, Philip’s call schedule, book club, kids’ activities (art class, swimming lessons, etc.), dinner club, Mother’s Sabbath, confession, etc.  For our privacy, I’ll keep that one to myself.  To create this chart, I made seven columns to account for each day of the week and put each regularly scheduled event with its time in the appropriate day.  I keep this chart on the side of our refrigerator.  I learned that routinizing everything as much as possible reduced my mental clutter.  So, that meant finding regular pockets of time to make various events happen.  Philip can have guy time on this day of the week, I can blog during this afternoon, we can host playdates these mornings, etc.

With the weekly routine created, I was able to take into account our day-to-day commitments in creating my weekly home maintenance routine.  This chart is the workhorse that keeps our home maintained on a day-to-day basis.

To create it, I considered which days of the week I would have the most motivation and how much time I had to commit to various household tasks.  I looked at my room analysis I mentioned in my Provider post.  There, I had listed all of the household tasks that needed to happen in each room on a daily (weekly, monthly, seasonal, or annual) basis.  I found a day of the week to make each task happen.  I had to use some restraint in creating this weekly home maintenance routine.  I was tempted to keep adding tasks to each day, but I had to remind myself that I could lessen the load by making some tasks only monthly requirements.

I wanted the chart to be a quick reference tool, so I limited the words to focus on rooms or areas of the home.  Some rooms required more tasks than others, so I separated them by numbers (Example: Kitchen 1 and Kitchen 2).  During my “training” period with this new routine, I had a list of what needed to be done in each room during the weekly clean.  I kept the list on my refrigerator during my training, but it’s in the family binder now that I have it memorized.  When I couldn’t remember what “Kitchen 1” meant, I referenced this list.

A peek at the room by room weekly chores

The first few weeks of the weekly household routine were difficult because they required some deep, deep cleaning.  Once I had the first few weeks under my belt, it was back to maintenance mode.  I realized that I had so much more free time on my hands!  The house was cleaner than ever, and I was doing only the tasks assigned to that day to maintain things.  With my daily tasks routinized, I was finding large, regular pockets of time for the fun stuff–playtime, outings, prayer, blogging, other hobbies.  The structure and cleanliness in our home brought about an overall peace that we hadn’t previously felt in our new home.  We had achieved it in our old house, but it took us awhile to find it again here.  With our routines in place, it came back, and we are so glad to have found that peace again!

Monthly, Seasonal, and Annual Tasks

After creating our weekly household routine, I had remaining items on my room by room analysis that needed to be done.  I created separate lists for monthly, seasonal, and annual tasks.  To make sure these tasks are actually getting accomplished, I keep them in our family binder and reference them each week during our Family Meeting.  Then, I look at the week’s calendar and find pockets of time to hammer them out.  I delegate the tasks that I need Philip to do, and I make notes to call the appropriate businesses for routine household maintenance.  I also reference the ongoing repair/project list at our weekly Family Meeting to see if we can tackle a project that month.

A peek at the annual household tasks, separated by month

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That’s it!  It all sounds perfect on paper, but it takes a long, long time to work it all out in practice.  (Holly Pierlot recommends giving yourself a year and writing all of the charts in pencil.  I’m too lazy to recreate them, so I just type them up the first time and make edits when necessary.)  Remember, I first started working with our Family’s Rule last year, and I’ve had to rework it since moving.  I’m only a few months in with this new system, but it is already bringing a lot of peace.  I hope these charts are a good starting point for you.  Read Holly Pierlot’s longer descriptions of how to create your own routines for your family’s needs in A Mother’s Rule of Life.  Her questions and checklists were invaluable in creating our Family’s Rule.  Let me know if you have any questions!

I’ll conclude the series next time with a few notes on how to stick to a Rule once it’s all on paper and some words of encouragement.

Questions for you:

• How do you keep your home maintained?  Do you have a system in place that is working for you?
• What is preventing you from bringing order to your home?  What practical step can you take this week to reduce the chaos?