What are the best DIY household hacks for large families?
Having a big family is a precious gift and a generator of happiness. Having a lot of children playing all around the house can be very fulfilling experience, but there is another side of the medal. All that everyday activities can make your home chaotic. In order to avoid this, you’ll need to get organized and the whole family has to participate. Below are some tips that might be very useful. By following them, you’ll get your home tidy and everyone will remain happy and satisfied.
Create a plan
First of all, you’ll need a detailed plan of all activities for the upcoming week. That way, you’ll be able to remember all appointments, project deadlines, phone calls, and errands. Every family member needs to make entries in the plan, so you’ll get insight into everything and get organized in a timely manner.
Create lists
Making lists with daily activities will help you big time. Feel free to write down menus, grocery store items you need to get, names of people you need to call. You can use lists on the weekly and daily level. That way, you’ll always know what you need to do and where you need to be. Make sure that your kids know to use the lists so they can fill them up with stuff they need.
Plan your meals
Gather your family around the kitchen table and plan out your meals. You should do this on the weekly or monthly basis. See what works best for you. Once you made a meal plan, make sure to finish it with creating shopping lists. You can also create a master meal plan which will ease up the whole process, and you won’t need to have frequent family meetings on that issue.
Color coding
If there are more than five people at your house, make sure to use colors to identify which items belong to whom. If you assign a color to every family member, you’ll be able to see which one didn’t pick up the towel after a shower. Everybody needs to do their jobs in order to keep the home chaos-free.
Place for everything
If you want to keep order in your home, you’ll need to create a place for everything. Of course, your dishes, home supplies and clothes already have their place. The issue may emerge when it comes to baseball cards, building blocks, crayons and other playing items. Make sure to build boxes specialized for particular items and instruct your kids to use them after they’re done with playing.
Keep up with decluttering
As hard as you try to keep your home clean, some amount of clutter must occur. Because of that, experts from Supercheap Self Storage Solutions in Geelong recommend decluttering few times a year. Clean all of your rooms, closets, and drawers. Include the whole family in this action and decide which items should be put in a yard sale and which ones can be donated to charity.
Stick to routine
Make sure you have working routines and systems at your home. For example, once your kids enter a house, they should empty their school bags, put their books in the place, hang their coats and organize their shoes. In case you see that one or more areas in your house need to be cleaned often, sit down and make a system that will keep them organized and clean.
Use totes
If you have a lot of places to be and a lot of activities to do, make sure to create totes. Those can help you on the road since they’ll be packed with all necessities. You can fill up totes with water bottles, snacks, swim suits, towels, you name it. In case your kids are going to spend a night at grandma’s, you should have a prepared tote as well. This is a simple way of packing and will meet all needs.
10 minutes rule
Gather your family and introduce them with the new rule. Every each one of them should take 10 minutes before bed and get prepared for the next day. They should get their outfits ready, pack for school and check their lists for tomorrow. Of course, they should pick up their dishes, toys, and games which are scattered all around the house.
Conclusion
As you can see, having a big family shouldn’t be a that hard job to do. You just need to do some planning and make sure everybody stick to it. You and your spouse should take most of the house related work on yourselves, but don’t forget to include the kids as well. That way, they’ll learn to be responsible and organized. Go ahead and start planning.
Author BIO