What's Not Working: Family Command Center

Happy Monday!

We had the best weekend: lots of family time, a sweet little party to celebrate our twin boys and then a very lazy Sunday. Pretty perfect, if you ask me!

Back today with one of the many updates we've made recently. I've mentioned before my desire to streamline our routines & organize our space, so we have more time to do the things we love.

Since A started nursery school in September, one thing we needed in our lives was a "command center". A place to display A's artwork, a place for a calendar, and somewhere to keep the temporary paperwork that needed to be signed, or read, for school.

I wrote about how we deal with our mail now here, and have another post ready for how we now handle the never-ending paper piles... but all the school paperwork was a whole new challenge.

While I will never give up my paper planner, the one drawback with it, is that it lives in my purse... and our school schedule needed to be out in the open. Between my parents, C and myself, there are 4 people who need access to important dates. Things like "Orange Day" and "Pajama Day" have to be noted, since whoever is bringing A to school that day needs to know what to dress him in!

This is what I came up with rather quickly:

The side of our fridge was the best "central" location we could find. Using some magnets, a monthly calendar & pen holder, we've managed to streamline all A's school stuff.

Every night, I go through A's bag at the kitchen table. Any newsletter updates get added to the calendar, along with any deadlines for returning forms to school, and those forms get added to the fridge. Artwork gets added as we have room (and no, I haven't figured out good way to store all this artwork for the long-term!). We've also started adding our weekly menu to the calendar, as well as any vacation days that C or I have scheduled.

The family command center has only been in use for 4 weeks, but I can honestly say it's made life a lot easier. C and I don't have to try and remember what we're having for dinner each night, and we all know what events are coming up at school for the month. And I have a feeling as things get a little more crazy (read: 3 little boys under 3), having a place to communicate our schedules will be very helpful!