Yesterday, we photographed our last 2016 wedding. We love photographing weddings together. I have told Michael many times that I am not sure if I would love it as much (and I’m sure I would have missed those 19 Saturdays at home MUCH more) without him as my main second shooter.  But it leads to some schedule complications, as you could guess.  Last year, our main complication was figuring out how to make church a priority when Sunday is our only real day each week to run errands (which usually involves a bit of a drive when you live in the country!).  We haven’t necessarily solved that this  year, but have prioritized getting E1 to Sunday School because we know how much he loves it.  And even more so, we believe it is so extremely important for him! But E2 is a little young to go yet, so it splits us up as a family a bit to make it happen. By the time all the morning activities are done, it is time for lunch and naps- and 3/4 of the day is gone. So it makes it pretty tricky on those wedding weekends to organize Sundays, our one weekend day, and get what is needed done. And that is one of the reasons I am so ready for the schedule shift in our off season!

Today, we found ourselves stumped this morning about whether we should take E1 to Sunday School, or go couch shopping in town. That was our debate. Now, friends, obviously we know that Sunday School and church need to win out!  But in the hustle and bustle of life, when we knew there wasn’t time for both, this schedule sometimes makes us choose between two things.  In this situation, Sunday School won out.  But whether it is Sunday School or something else (which is my main point here!), we struggle quite a bit with prioritizing what we have to do. In my last Marriage Mondays post, I wrote about struggling to prioritize our KIDS above all else, or our MARRIAGE above all else. But what about when it’s smaller decisions?  How to schedule our days, who is going to cook (ok let’s be honest, that is Michael 99.999% of the time, for all of our sakes!!), and what house fix up tasks need to be done first…I feel like 50% of our communication is setting these basic day to day details!  I am grateful for our off season because I know that having 2 weekend days will ease some of this…but I also know that there is never enough hours in a day or days in a week to get everything done.  So I wanted to share a couple of small filters we use when making the smaller day to day decisions to help us- even though some mornings, like today, we are still stumped about Sunday School or Couch Shopping!

3 tips for organizing your family tasks

1). We filter through timeline.  This becomes most important with errands or house tasks.  There are certain jobs (like cleaning up the garage so we can actually, oh ya know, park our cars in there) that give themselves a timeline- like weather! So now that it is colder out and the cars might have frost in the AM (and since we never have an extra moment in the AM to get E1 to school and Michael to work on time!), the garage cleaning and organizing task came to the forefront the last month- even though the basement work from last spring/early summer is still not 100% done.  But now that the cars can park in the garage, we can go back to the basement trim, painting a few final doors, etc.  So if the timeline of my mom visiting again soon necessitates that we get the door re-painted and back on the guest bedroom…that is the next task!

2). We filter through finances.  We have been doing a little re-decorating in our living room after living with just one couch and a small chair over the past year. We liked the way it looked and felt in our space- but as we become more involved in our community and as I meet more and more mom friends, it is hard to host people really in any situation without enough places for people to sit! So one of our tasks is to get some new living room furniture- hence the couch shopping! But we also know that we aren’t in a place financially where we would likely pull the trigger on that today- so Sunday School wins out, because that is something that matters today!  We LOVE looking at houses and furniture and cars for fun (which makes us sound really lame!!)- but we also know we don’t buy those things very often ;-), so our minimal errand running time can’t be spent on that if that isn’t where we are at the moment (unless we have a little free time after a date night- and then you might find us trying out couches and tables!).

3). We filter through quality time needs. Sometimes, after our busy weeks and being gone at a long wedding on Saturday, our kids (or us!) just need some down time together.  That might mean we get groceries at a less desirable, but much closer place. Or it might mean we go to the park instead of running errands.  Usually we can tell when they need a little more down time and together time vs run around time…and we try to predict that for each other too (like when Michael took both kids with him this AM to Sunday School and gave me a little work time when usually one of us is with each kid).  I don’t always do the best job predicting this for him, but I try for it to be one of my filters.  But we know that sometimes we just need easy days at home, even if it means giving up some things we felt like we need to get done. And I encourage you to be willing to take that time for your family too if you need it!

What are your tips and tricks for managing the small day to day decisions in your marriage and family?

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