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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Family life can be chaotic— whether you have one child or five.
Organise Your Family will show you how to introduce routine, plan your meals and get the family finances in order.
Learn how to organise your family chaos and have time left over to actually enjoy being a parent.
Nicole Avery is the master organiser behind popular blog ‘Planning with Kids’, where she shares tips and tricks to organising the chaos of family life.
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Seitenzahl: 85
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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Organise Your Family: From Chaos to Harmony
Table of Contents
First published in 2013 by Wrightbooks an imprint of John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064
Office also in Melbourne
Typeset in ITC Berkeley Oldstyle Std Book 11/13.5 pt
Organise Your Family © Nicole Avery 2013
Excerpts taken from Planning with Kids, first published in 2011 by Wrightbooks, an imprint of John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Author: Avery, Nicole.
Title: Organise your family: from chaos to harmony / Nicole Avery.
ISBN: 9781118626528 (pbk.)
Subjects: Families.
Households.
Home economics.
Family life education.
Dewey Number: 306.85
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.
Cover design by Susan Olinsky
Cover image: © iStockphoto.com / milalala
Printed in China by Printplus Limited
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Disclaimer
The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.
About the author
Nicole Avery is the master organiser behind the popular blog ‘Planning with Kids’, where she shares tips and tricks to organising the chaos of family life.
Nicole is also a sought-after speaker and coach on areas from blogging and social media to home organisation and planning. She is mum to five beautiful kids.
Introduction
As a parent, I use planning as a safety blanket. When the chaos of daily life engulfs me, it’s the constant in my life that lets me weave my way through all the school runs, the after-school activities, the washing, the cooking and the cleaning required to keep family life ticking along.
When I explain to people that I wasn’t always an organised person, they’re often surprised. Believe it or not, I grew up as a dawdling, absentminded, tardy kid — a point often raised by my family and oldest of friends! It’s also amusing that my eldest son is just like I was — forever forgetting school notes, easily straying from a task and oblivious to the exasperation he causes me. At least I know it’s possible to grow out of disorganisation, because that’s exactly what I did.
When I was pregnant with our first child, I made plans to return to work after three months. Within a week of having our baby, I knew I wouldn’t want to go back to work that soon. Luckily for me, my boss understood and allowed me to change my plan and return to work when my baby was nine months old.
I did feel guilty going back to work, even though I knew it was the right thing to do for my family at the time. I worked for just over 18 months before I went on maternity leave again with our second child. At the end of my 12 months’ maternity leave in 2002 I had to decide whether I wanted to return to work or remain at home.
For the last three months of my maternity leave I became obsessed with deciding what to do. I loved being home with the kids, but part of me was scared of letting go of my career. What would I tick in ‘Occupation’ boxes? And how would I tell people what I did?
In the end, I knew we wanted to have more children, and I wanted to be at home at this stage of their lives. I moved beyond issues of title, other people’s opinions and, most importantly, my own fear.
Almost 10 years later I’m technically back in the workforce deriving an income from my blog www.planningwithkids.com and I can control the hours I work around my family. There are moments when I wish I had more freedom (for example, going to the toilet on my own) — where I imagine myself walking out the door in the morning, reading the paper on the train, having a lunch break and spending full days away from the kids — but I know it isn’t as simple as that. With working away from home comes the hassle of finding good childcare, the drop-offs and pick-ups, sick days, competing interests and worry.
If you’re returning to work as a new parent or just thinking about how this could be done successfully, the tips and routines throughout the book can help you organise your daily workload so that getting out the door for work will be more manageable. Streamlining your everyday household jobs and getting the kids involved in the chores will ease your workload and decrease the morning rush-hour stress.
What I have learned through the ‘working versus staying at home’ dilemma is that whatever choice you make, it’s important that you take happiness and wellbeing into account — not only the kids’ and your partner’s, but yours too. To take the best care of your family, you have to make sure you take care of yourself and are happy in what you’re doing.
In growing our family of five children, the adjustment from one to two children was the hardest. Learning to cope with a newborn while having a toddler around was quite challenging, especially as the baby wouldn’t sleep for more than 45 minutes during the day.
Throughout the first year of my second child’s life, I often felt out of control and disorganised. It wasn’t until I’d resigned from my job that I realised that to regain some sense of order and organisation I needed to apply the skills I’d used daily in the office to my family life. I couldn’t plan all the things a baby or toddler would do during the day, but there was so much around the home that I could plan and prepare for.
This was a big moment for me. Being home fulltime was my new ‘job’ and, just as I would have done in my old job, I needed to find ways of improving the organisation of daily tasks. I’d made a shift from considering myself as not having a job to making my role as a mother my job, using all the skills I had to make life easier and more enjoyable for my family and myself. My first project was to get the evening meals under control as 5 pm had become a time of day that I dreaded. An overtired baby, a toddler wanting attention and a meal waiting to be prepared was a stressful and regular scenario.
It started out pretty small: I created a spreadsheet with all the meals I liked to cook and which the kids would eat. It listed each recipe, ingredients and instructions, and I could quickly generate a weekly shopping list of all the ingredients I needed for the week. No last-minute trips to the shops with children in tow as I had a comprehensive shopping list to work from. This single change to my routine made a significant difference to how I coped throughout the day. Most importantly, it increased my confidence in my own ability to be able to do my ‘new job’. I couldn’t make the baby go to sleep exactly when I wanted to or make him stay asleep once he’d finally nodded off, but I could easily plan and prepare for the evening meals.
My second project was to ensure I didn’t become one-dimensional. Before I had children, I always had a number of interests outside of my work. I wanted to make sure that as a mum I could fit in time to enjoy interests outside of the home, so I set about doing this.
With the continuing support of my husband and two successful home projects, I had enough confidence in myself to know I’d not only cope with having more children, but I’d love it. And have more children we did! We’re blessed to have five beautiful, happy, healthy kids with whom we live in a state of organised chaos. There is roughly a two-and-a-half-year gap between each child and the next in our family.
With each child I’ve learned more about how to be a mother and more about myself. As our family has grown I’ve read books, attended parenting seminars, listened to other parents and listened to my kids to help me find the best ways of managing daily family life. I’ve also developed strategies and processes to help me cope more ably with the workload that comes with a young family.
