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I think over the last year with adding another baby to the mix, work­ing what some­times feels non-stop & with Hubby & I both try­ing to fin­ish our grad­u­ate degrees I’ve real­ized a few things.  And by the way we both are done now with school! Hubby is an offi­cial grad­u­ate next month!!!  I’m so proud of him for earn­ing his MBA while work­ing full-time, being present for his fam­ily & stay­ing sane.   And so through­out all this crazi­ness there were 5 things or lessons that I realized.

5 lessons on man­ag­ing fam­ily time & work time.

1.  A visual wall calendar.

It turns out that not hav­ing a visual cal­en­dar to glance up at left us miss­ing appoint­ments, for­get­ting school sched­ules and all around los­ing track of every­thing that was going on.  We both have cal­en­dars in our phones, but hav­ing the larger week or month ahead to look at on the wall together allows both of us to see what is com­ing up & what we need to plan ahead for.  It also makes it eas­ier to see everyone’s sched­ules, with 6 peo­ple in the fam­ily & all our other com­mit­ments hav­ing this is tremen­dously help­ful.  I wish we had this the entire year, we did last year & it was life saver this year we learned the hard way it is still a life saver.

2. Some meal planning.

I’m not one to map out the entire year, month, or even week to the let­ter with food.  How­ever, hav­ing a list of go-to meals that were fast & sim­ple to put together really saved time & money.  With­out a loose meal plan we would be left scram­bling for some­thing & that often means pick­ing up food that costs more & isn’t as good as home­made.  Even end­ing up with cereal every night would cost too much & not be as good as home­made.  Hav­ing a loose meal plan with a few go-to meals & ideas for the week saved us huge headaches & money.

3. Have adult time as a couple.

We can largely thank fam­ily for help­ing watch the kids to let us out among adults after dark.  With­out their help we’d never have that.  But if we didn’t have fam­ily we’d have to be more cre­ative to find sit­ters through the local high school or friends who might have a night a month (even once a month can be a san­ity saver) for us to get out.  When we are home we also have time for each other after the kids go to bed, we do this every night, mak­ing time for each other.  We spend that time talk­ing about our days, relax­ing and just enjoy­ing each oth­ers’ com­pany.  Being able to stay con­nected helped us to face the chal­lenges of the day as a cou­ple & to con­tinue to grow together in love.

4. Have adult time for yourself.

Hard to do but really very nec­es­sary.  I found that blog­ging, read­ing and get­ting together once in a while with friends for break­fast (even if baby was along for the ride) helped me to refo­cus my time.   I focused on what was good & was able to laugh about what might have gone wrong (like say if you leak breast milk all over your­self dur­ing a lec­ture).  My hus­band had foot­ball nights and other times he went out with friends, he also took time to find books he wanted to read.  Even if we didn’t get out for hours on end we found ways to have time for self every­day.  I real­ized how true it is to say “with­out some time for you, you can’t give back to any­one else.”

5.  Make the most of fam­ily time.

It’s easy when try­ing to sched­ule every­thing & get through the week to for­get fam­ily time.  We real­ized that unless this, like adult time & time for self, was a pri­or­ity we’d end up not spend­ing time with the peo­ple we were work­ing so hard to make a liv­ing for.  I mean what’s the point in bust­ing your tush to get to the week­end only to spend it zoned out in front of the T.V. not even talk­ing to each other about what you are watch­ing & real­iz­ing you wasted the time to be together as a fam­ily?  Yes, you are tech­ni­cally “together” but you are not engaged in real fam­ily time.  Instead, we wanted real fam­ily time the kind where you actu­ally talk to each other & get to know each other.  We planned trips to the library, did errands with kids in tow (even if it was just one of us tak­ing 2 kids, while the other spent time home with the other 2 kids), had game nights, read books together as a fam­ily and if we watched T.V. together we made it an event like fam­ily movie night or liv­ing room camp out with talk­ing.  Mak­ing time for fam­ily was & is important.

I am sure I will con­tinue to learn more lessons as we fig­ure out how to man­age daily life.  Heck, even before kids we had to fig­ure out a lot of things.  Now it’s just with more people!

So, for you all out there, what are your lessons on man­ag­ing fam­ily & work?

Remem­ber it doesn’t mat­ter if you are stay-at-home, work-at-home, work-out-of-the-home or any com­bi­na­tion of these things we all work & we are all try­ing to man­age our days!

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