Home Management Journal - The Master Schedule

Today I would like to begin a series detailing my own Home Management Journal, or HMJ. My HMJ is made of a 2 inch 3-ring binder, and currently I have 12 sections, though these are a work in progress and change regularly. When I started putting together my journal, the first thing I realized that I needed was a Master Schedule to keep my days on track. Let me say right up front that I DO NOT follow this schedule exactly as written out everyday!! This is more of a "If Everything Went Perfectly According to Schedule" schedule. This Daily Schedule represents what I am currently striving for in organizing my day.

I keep this schedule in the front of my journal and try to look at it first thing every morning as a reminder of how I would like my day to flow. Currently I have a baby who is still not sleeping well through the night, so I am not waking up anywhere close to 5am, but I use to before he was born and I am starting to wake a little earlier each day to get back to that time. Right now I am getting up at about 6:30am when Kaylee wakes up, so I am not getting breakfast with DH at all and I have a condensed morning routine, having to make up for it at night. My quiet time is at the kitchen table after Kaylee has finished eating and gone off to play, and baby Matthew sleeps in the bouncy at my feet. I try to pick up on the schedule at 8am when I bring Kaylee back to the table for some learning activities. For this season in life that happens to be following The Letter of the Week Preparatory Curriculum. Break time is when Kaylee gets a snack and watches a cartoon while I feed the baby and check email. Following this, I have set aside a block of time everyday to complete different tasks. This idea came from Kim at Large Family Logistics, and for anyone wondering how to organize and schedule your days while involving your children I highly recommend reading this blog. She has much experience and practical advice to give to mothers & homekeepers, no matter how many children you may have. I really liked her advice of setting aside each day of the week to accomplish various tasks, and I will talk more about what I do on these days later. The remainder of the schedule is pretty self-explanatory and is more-or-less followed, with the exception of the evening routine which in not being completed because I am still struggling with spending too much time vegging out in front of the TV after dark! What can I say, I am a work in progress.