The recurring tasks of motherhood can drive me crazy. Laundry is never ending, and the family always wants to eat! I barely have enough creativity sometimes to feed just myself for lunch! So, to stop minimize craziness, we created this weekly scheduler and it has made things (a little bit) smoother!
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How We Use the Weekly View and Menu
Schedule Your Family Meet-Up
First thing, schedule a time each week that your family can sit down together to go over the calendar. We scheduled our family meeting on Thursday nights, and it's pizza night for extra ease with dinner! For us, Thursday works best because there aren't scheduled activities.
Before We Meet
A few hours before family dinner, I take five minutes and fill in a new copy of the Weekly View and Menu. Some of the spots don't get filled until we actually meet, but this is a great discussion starting point.
Schedule
I start by numbering the dates, so I know what we're looking out. Since our meet-up is on Thursday night, our scheduled events start with Friday. So, our calendar is Friday through Thursday.
Look at your calendar (we use Google calendar) and write down each event scheduled for the next week. If it's a person-specific event, I will preface it with their initial. For example, I would write "R - 7:30am Dentist" if I had a dentist appointment. I also include school specials (PE, art, library, etc.), so my kids can prepare themselves.
Menu
Pizza night is every Thursday, and I automatically fill that in. The rest of our meal nights are divvied out between family members. Dad cooks on Saturday and Sunday nights, and then everyone else gets one night to be in charge of dinner.
Faye and Aedan decided they like to cook on Mondays and Fridays, so I leave those dates open. If I see something in the freezer, I will go ahead and write down my meal choices. For Gwen too, since she's too young to actually decide and cook her meals.
Notes
This space I primarily use for myself for goal setting for the week. What are the big tasks I'm hoping to finish? Is there something my husband and I need to discuss, like something with our budget? I try to keep it still pretty open so it's not overwhelming, but it's a good summary space.
We also give out weekly allowance during this meeting. The Notes section is where I put comments about their behavior and how they did on completing their chores.
During Our Meeting
While the pizza is cooking, we clear off the table and then start our week-in-review. Since I'm the one that started the system, I command the meeting, but I think we may start taking turns. It's a good idea for leadership experience.
Schedule
I read through the calendar day-by-day, listing what each person is doing and what they need to prepare.
Menu
Each person picks their meal day, and tells me what meal they want. I am in charge of making sure we have the correct ingredients. Our kids are extremely picky eaters, so letting them pick meals has been essential to make sure they actually eat. They get to prepare themselves for strange meals others have chosen for meals. What's for dinner is never a surprise.
Notes
I add any ingredients we don't have to the Notes section, as a quick shopping list. We buy other snacks too at the grocery store, but this is a quick view of essential items. Each kid is encouraged to choose a weekly goal as well. It's at least getting them thinking about their actions and what they want to be.
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