This week I had the rare chance to pull out my sewing machine. It was great – the house was relatively clean, my older daughter was in bed, and my baby was sleeping soundly wrapped on my back. I made a sweet little cover for my small ‘mommy docket’ binder with some scrap fabric that I love.

Ahhhh… instant gratification…

Organized Simplicity

Recently I’ve been reading through Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider from www.simplemom.net. This book helps you make your life more organized by simplifying it, and it makes your life more simplified by being organized.  I suck at both, so this book has been truly helpful for me.

To keep life reasonably sane, Tsh uses a planner filled with docket sheets, which can be downloaded from her website. Each night she fills out the next day’s sheet, which includes space for:

• a to-do list
• the top three Most Important Things (MITs) <- any more is too demanding
• a rough schedule for the day
• an inspirational thought
• dinner and notes regarding its preparation
• a chart to keep a tally of how many glasses of water have been drank <- I’ve doubled my water consumption just so I can cross out the little droplets
• a spot for an exercise plan
• blog ideas
• general notes

I decided to give it a shot, and I soon found that I LOVE this system. Suddenly, I am so much less stressed!

Planning My Days

Normally when I go through my day, I’m trying to remember what needs to be done as I go. So I might have a spare half hour before my 3 year old River school lets out and decide to run to the bank. At the bank, I remember that I need to stop at the deli, but now I probably won’t have time to do that until after I’ve picked up my daughter. Then I have to drag both my girls into the deli and deal with a meltdown because I won’t buy River a Kinder Egg, which are kept just low enough so that she can reach them. The whole day goes on like this, and while I may get all my tasks done, I feel drained by the end of the afternoon. And that’s usually when River will remind me that I promised we’d go to the park. Ugh.

By filling out a docket sheet the night before, I can plan out how my day will go. I’ll see that I have a spare half hour and schedule a trip to the deli while River is in school, choosing instead to take her to the bank with me. Then I’ll pick the bank that has a play area to entertain her and is also close to a park that we like.

Either way, I do the same amount of things, but I feel so much less frazzled. Instead of trying to quickly figure out our next task on the run, I can happily check items one by one off my list.

My Personal Mommy Docket

I wanted a smaller sheet to carry around in my bag, so I made my own template inspired by Tsh’s pocket docket and put them in my new snappy binder.

Planning my days in advance makes them go more smoothly. Instead of trying to fit in what I can, I now spend some time picturing how I want the day to go. For example, I want to spend more time each day playing with my three year old, so I created a space for a play date, which could be anything – a trip to a park, a hike, a library visit, even hanging out at Ikea for awhile. When I choose an activity the night before and make it part of the plan for the day, it becomes far easier to do.

I also realized as I made the binder cozy that I absolutely love to create things but I rarely have the time or energy. The night I made it, I felt so satisfied. Now I set aside time each day to craft, and it gets written right into my schedule.

The best part of planning out my days is that I get to be intentional about how I’ll spend my time, and as I go through and cross things off my list, I know that my time has been spent well.