Back to School Systems

How do you clean your house?  Do you move from room to room finishing one before you move onto the next or do you wash all the mirrors and then wipe down all the counters?  Either way, you have a system.  You have decided either consciously or unconsciously to clean the house in a certain way. Arriving at the system that works for you is often not a conscious thought process, however if we make it a conscious process, we can make all of our routine tasks easier.  Getting ready for school in the morning is no exception. It some houses it looks something like the picture above!

Now as back to school rapidly approaches…systems and systems thinking are incredibly important.  What are your getting ready for school systems? What are your child’s systems?   I know we still have another 6 days left before the actual first day of school, but thinking about your systems and how you might want to change them over this weekend will make ALL 180 days easier…I promise. 

The first step is to think about what your end goal is. Do you want kids fed and at the bus stop by a certain time? Do you want to be out of the house with enough time to stop for a coffee?  Do you need to get the kids dressed and to the babysitter by a certain time? It does not matter what the end goal is, but it is important that you define it for your family.

Next, look at what does work in your morning routine.  Why are those tasks easy and routine at this point? What system do you have in place and why does it work for you? Maybe getting your kids dressed is routine because you have always picked out clothes as part of your bedtime routine so that there is no discussion in the morning.  Maybe it is making lunches because you lay out the “fixings” and each kid takes what they want.  Whatever system works in your house…be proud and pat yourself on the back.

Now the hard work, was does not work so well in the morning at your house?  Where do you find yourself about to pull your hair out in the morning? These are the places that need new systems.  When I was a kid, my parents built a new house. When they designed the kitchen, they had the garbage then the sink and then the dishwasher all in a line.  My mom’s thought was that we could scrape, then rinse, then put the dishes in the dishwasher.  In theory, this was a great system.  However, no one unloaded the dishwasher so dishes piled up in the sink on a pretty regular basis.  This system was broken.  You want to pull your hair out when the system is broken.

Replace the boiling point moments of your morning with new systems. In elementary school, remembering which specials were on which days was a challenge for me. I almost never remembered to wear my sneakers on gym day and I am positive I never returned a library book on time (unless it never left school). So when I did remember I would call my mom or dad in a panic and BEG them to bring me the art assignment I left at home because I did not remember it.  A simple system would have been to have a note card on the fridge or the back of the front door to help me remember my library book or my sneakers.

Follow through for two weeks.  Keep up with the new system for two weeks. The reasoning behind this is twofold. The first is that by doing it for two weeks, the system becomes a routine and you no longer have to think about it.  Secondly, in two weeks you will likely see some of the chinks in the armor of your system.  Places where the system is working but not quite as well as you wanted it to. 

After you two weeks are up, evaluate your system. What parts are working? What doesn’t? Fix the minor broken parts and then CELEBRATE!  With some minor tweaks you have likely created a little more order and peace in your morning and really who doesn’t like order and peace.