2022 has arrived! It’s time to start getting organised for school, meal planning and activities. To celebrate and prepare, we’re covering some simple ideas to help you get planning and organised this year, so you can spend more leisure time with loved ones, relaxing or participating in activities you enjoy.
Maybe you made a new year’s resolution, or simply wish to get organised. You can use this post as a checklist to cover all items, and if it seems overwhelming, try checking off one item each day until they’re all complete.
Lessons from last year
What did you learn from last year? Covid-19 Has changed the way we live our lives, our activities, how we travel, buy groceries and more. What are the key areas of organisation for your household? Some key areas for improvement I personally discovered was:
- Food and shopping organisation. Click and collect had to be planned in advance
- Kids activities, planning at home activities
- Housework roster – more people at home throughout the day means more housework
What are yours? Make them a priority and start working on them first.
Lunch and dinner meal prep
Start a rotating weekly menu of school and work lunches and dinners.
Time investment
1hour
How to
- No need to purchase any new cook books, there are myriad free tried and tested recipe resources and meal planning ideas out there. I personally use taste.com.au as the recipes are tested, and you can sort by ingredients, tastes and many other preferences to get the recipes you want.
- Use the ingredients list to create a weekly shopping list.
- Add your meals to your magnetic weekly meal planner and place on your fridge for easy access.
Tip
I like to leave one evening meal open so we can order take away, eat out, or just have something simple like jaffles.
Keeping the kids occupied
Spending one hour on the weekend researching and planning for kids activities helped me bust the boredom of holidays at home and weekends without the usual social activities.
Below I’ve listed some resources with lots of free templates and ideas for craft, games, learning and more.
- https://www.twinkl.com.au/
- https://australian.museum/inside-out/homeschool-resources/
- https://www.sportaus.gov.au/schools/active-at-home
Housework
More time at home means dirt, grime and general clutter builds up faster.
I discovered a roster alone was not enough and went back to basics with creating storage boxes with labels to categories the toys, items and owners.
Kmart has plenty of cheap storage bins that can easily be decorated or left plan and stacked for additional storage.
Summary
Today we covered some simple tips to get you started on organising for the new year. A small time investment now will soon become your new routine and give your more free time to spend with your loved ones or doing something for yourself.