Simplify Your Life With Home Systems! | Get It All Done While Saving Time & Energy!

We are stuck inside today on a glorious rainy day here at the farmhouse. We're loving all the rain we're getting right now. And I thought I would take the opportunity to talk to you more about home systems that we have created to simplify our life, honestly, to simplify my life as a mother. For anything from kids to laundry, to dishes, to bill pay, we're gonna talk about all of the things today and give you some ideas on how you can streamline your systems too. Welcome back, friends. It's Lauren with Rest-It-Cunny. If you're new here, hello. I'm so glad that you've decided to join us today. I'm excited to dive in and talk about home systems with you today. I get a little bit nerdy about things like this. I'm sure you have systems in your home, but you probably don't even think of them as home systems. But we are gonna just talk through some of the things in our home today. I am a wife, a mother of three, soon to be four, and a small business owner. I've owned my business for over 10 years now, and I have had to implement a lot of systems in my business, which has then inspired me to create more systems in my home to help streamline everything so that it makes it more manageable for me to stay on top of everything. Now, when I think of systems, I don't just think of keeping things organized. I think of how can I make this process easier? How can I simplify or streamline what I'm doing? So simple things, this is a little bit of a hack that I had seen, and I thought, I have gotta try this, but keeping your coffee maker close to your mugs, obviously, all the things in one place, and the water right there next to it so that you can use the hose to fill up the coffee maker. I always do keep my coffee maker close to the sink, but I hadn't really thought about the hose thing before, and I thought, well, I gotta try this. Now, I have a lot more home systems coming. This is just one little thing I thought I would try this morning because coffee is the first system of the day, oftentimes, and I just wanted to share that with you. Reese loves to make the coffee with me. With us getting ready to welcome this baby almost any day now, I know that either my mom or my mother-in-law will be in our home getting our kids ready and out the door for school, so I thought setting up a little bit more of a streamlined coffee station might be handy for them as well so that they can find what they need, and they're not looking around for my coffee pods that I had hidden in the cabinet. So this first system is just about keeping things simple, and that's what I think we need to think of when we're creating our systems. If there's something in your home that you wanna create a system around, think about how you can simplify it to create less steps for yourself, less friction, and then you'll have less excuses on how to carry out your habits. I have a whole nother video about habits, and we'll get into that later. I'll try to tag it at the end here, but first, I wanna talk to you next about our kids' ticket system and how we do rewards and chores and all those things. So currently, my kids are ages nine, six, and just turned four, and so they each have their own jar, and we call them the ticket jars, and they each have their name on them. They earn tickets for what they're personally working on, so they don't all earn tickets for the same things. My oldest gets tickets for doing his chores. He is in charge of several farm chores in the evenings now, whereas my middle child is, I'm having him focus mostly on reading, and then my youngest daughter has her own goals as well, but they're all very different, of course, and I feel like it's important to always focus on only one or two things for your kids at a time so that they know that that's what they need to focus on getting better at and improving on. So we earn tickets for extra things too. We'll negotiate if there's extra chores to be done. They can come to me and ask about doing some extra things around the house for ticket money, and then at the end of the week or the month, depending on how often I get to it, I change their tickets into quarters. We do quarters. You can do them however you want, but our tickets are equal to quarters, and then, as you saw there, they turn into cash eventually, and then we talk about the savings, and that's a whole nother topic, but something that's helpful for your kids to learn how to manage their money too. Another topic for kids is homework. So every day after school, the system is that my kids put their folder on the counter for me to go through so I can go through their papers. I have this little binder I've put together for my middle to be more of a study binder where he can go through his spelling words, and we can work on his reading and sight words and things that we need to review. I put this handy little thing in here. If you've ever seen these, they're really handy to have your kids trace their numbers because we're still working on proper form on things and making sure that his handwriting is doing well. We also have flashcards here in the back. So I put together this specific study binder around the things I really wanted him to work on the most, and then we do a four-day school week here, so on Mondays, I do a little bit of homeschooling with him. I have his spelling words ready to go and any worksheets he's gotta do. I use clipboards for this system for my kids, and they each have their own so that at the end of the day, they know I need to read this book or do this worksheet, and their clipboards need to be empty by the end of the night. Love to tell you, it's completely foolproof, and my kids never complain about homework, but this is real life. But I do love that the clipboards are a visual cue to them and to myself that that needs to be done. The next system I have implemented is a basket that I keep in my kitchen for all of the things in the home, the hub of the home, right? I've got some of those school things in the back of it. I've got a binder that's more of our home binder for budgets and bill pay, and all of the important paperwork that comes in. So this is where I find myself staying on top of the paper clutter. When mail comes in, I instantly put it in either my to-do pile, my bill folder, or it goes in like a time will tell folder that I empty out if there's any papers that I'm really unsure of. My husband also has his own clipboard, which I'm sure he just loves. I'm sure he's rolling his eyes at any of my systems, but it's, again, a nice visual cue for me to put things on Dan's clipboard that he might wanna review before I toss them or questions I may have for him. To me, having a clipboard in front of me says I have things to do and I want to get this off my clipboard. And once our clipboards are empty, it's like the best feeling in the world, but they're very actionable items that I keep on the clipboard so that we can get them done and get our clipboards cleaned off. I also keep a folder on my clipboard that's my completed folder. And every week I have the goal of emptying this completed folder. Oftentimes it's filled with bills and all of those mom things that we have to do. As you saw in there, I even had some Scout patches I need to put on my son's uniform soon. They've been living in there for more than a week, I'm just gonna tell you, but I need to get those things done. And then every week, this is the most important thing about habits or systems or anything, we have to schedule them in. They have to be part of our routine or we just let everything go to die in the bottom of the basket, right? So once a week, typically on a Monday, I will sit down with Dan and we'll go through things. I call it a money honey meeting. We sit down and talk about finances, we talk about the calendar, what the kids have coming up, what's going on at school, what we need help with, maybe our businesses, we really talk about everything. It's a nice management night for us to connect and figure out how to manage all the things. Now, some of you might be thinking my husband would never do that, but let me just tell you, I am obviously the planner in our relationship. He is not so much into keeping things as organized and like the calendar as pretty as I am, but obviously this is still something that's important in our relationship to be a part of a team. So I do most of my planning ahead of time. I have like bullet pointed the things I wanna talk to him about or I need his opinion on. And then I try to keep that meeting as short as humanly possible. Now, one thing I prioritize in my binder and in our meeting is date night. So I made this handy little chart that basically allows us to schedule when our date night is gonna be and whose turn it is to plan it. We just take turns every other month so that we can kind of come up with our own ideas. I laugh because we used to be so spontaneous, but you know, three, almost four kids later, it's kind of has to go on the calendar. We got a lot going on these days. And if we don't plan it, then I feel like we're more tempted to be like, well, I thought you were gonna plan something or I thought you were gonna plan something. So now we just have this handy little chart. And honestly, we have done a really crappy job this year of having date night. And it's not gonna get any better with number four on the way. But when we do prioritize that and use the chart, it is so handy. We also put who's gonna watch our kids. So whoever's turn it is to line up date night also needs to line up the babysitter. One last thing I will say about the keeping of schedules system is to use a digital calendar that's shared. I finally had to do this with Dan for all of his work travel, plus our kids being in school activities, extracurriculars and baseball. We're now doing so many sports and traveling around that I constantly have to be looking at the calendar to see what we're doing. So using something digital and sharing it is the best way to do that. I wanted to share this next system with you, not because I'm an expert at it whatsoever, but it's because it's new to me and I'm very intrigued by it. So if you look up cash stuffing, which is basically a fancy way of saying we use cash envelopes on YouTube, there are a lot of fun people to follow. But I recently was super inspired by the aesthetic dollar and I am saving up to buy one of her amazing wallets. But I wanted to get back to sitting some cash aside in envelopes and doing our budgeting in a very tangible way. I just feel like we've gotten away from this and I use apps to do our budget, but I just felt like I want to be able to tangibly set some money aside for things and see if we can get motivated to reach some of our financial goals a little bit more quickly by doing this method. Now with keeping the system simple, I am being very aware of what categories this would be harder in. For me, paying for gas and groceries with cash would be way harder than what I'm doing now. So those categories I do not cash stuff for. I just wanted to be clear on that part. Now for regular everyday to-dos and all of the things that come at us, I have learned that hands down the best system to have is to use a digital app for your to-dos. I use Google Keep just because I like that it creates a little checklist. I can put emojis in it, which is I'm a very visual person, and I can slide those tasks up and down. Now I also use another planner for work and some other task management tools, but for every day, if someone throws something at me, I can quickly jot it down and get it off of my brain and I know I can get back to it later. All right, my next system is meal planning. And back to those groceries, I find it so unfortunately very easy to order my groceries, at least some of the main things every week or every other week. I do a Walmart pickup because that's one of the only ones that's available where we live, unfortunately. I would love to have an Instacart or an Aldi pickup, but that's just not happening in our area yet. But my system always starts with going back to what we already have. So typically on a Sunday or a Monday, I will go through every little square inch of our kitchen. I don't write down absolutely everything we have, but I will put a star next to the things I want to use up. At the top of my paper, I'm always starting in the refrigerator. So I wanna keep the most perishable items top of mind. So I'm writing down things like the asparagus or fresh salad that needs to get used up so that we're not being wasteful of our ingredients. Obviously we have a lot of eggs right now, so that's a staple on our menu. But oftentimes doing this makes me aware of something I had forgotten in the fridge or that there's leftovers that could feed us for an entire meal, which doing this saves you so much money. So definitely it's just an extra step. Sometimes I dread it, but it's not like I write down every single thing, but I just kind of give it a bird's eye view of like, oh, we can have, okay, we have pizzas. Let's do a pizza night this week. I have some leftover meat in the freezer. Let's make spaghetti with that. I obviously have lots of freezer meals right now, all of those extra bags in the freezer. And then I head over to the pantry just to restock any of those staple items. Like we talked about in the last video about how I ran out of dried beans. I obviously had not been following my system very well because I forgot we didn't have beans at all and never ordered them. So it's nice to keep up on, especially like flour and sugar. You guys know I love to bake. So those things are always staples that I will restock. I'm just kind of going through drawer by drawer. And again, I don't get super detailed. I'm not like, oh, I have three cans of black beans and this and that. I just write down ideas. So that way I can go back to my paper and kind of draw lines and decide, okay, this would be a good taco night. This means I have enough to make like a spaghetti bake, but the only ingredient I'm missing is mozzarella. So then I'll write down those things that we absolutely have to finish out and round out our meals. And then it makes my grocery list so much smaller by using what you have. I know that sounds simple, but it's something we all fail to do at some point. I could probably talk about meal planning a little bit more, but one last thing I wanted to say is to keep a loose plan and always remember that it needs to revolve around your schedule because there are nights when you have baseball that you're not gonna be making something from scratch homemade. You might need to do some meal prep ahead of time. So always keep that in mind with your schedule, with that digital calendar, and your meal planning will be much more successful. Okay, still on the topic of kitchen systems, I wanted to hit on dishes. You guys know I like doing dishes on demand. That was one of my habits I wanted to do this year. And one of the ways I make sure that is successful is by keeping my kitchen organized and streamlined to the point where my drawers are maybe only even halfway full. Because if it's not easy to put away the dishes, then I just won't be as likely to do it or the people in my family won't be as likely to do it. I like to store things with the lids on and have like the idea that less is more in all of my cabinets. Okay, I don't think this would be a successful home systems video at all if we did not touch on laundry. You have to have a laundry system and it may be ever-changing like mine has been over the years. And it will change again for me soon when I have to implement newborn baby clothes in the system again. But right now I do a load a day and the goal is to put it away. I am not saying I'm perfect and I have not kept up with my habits as well as I would like to. I'm still human. But having a system in place where you have a standard of I would like to do a load every day, get it folded and put away, sets you up for success. And one thing I do to look forward to my laundry system is to fold laundry while I do something else enjoyable like listen to a podcast or watch my friends here on YouTube. So if you can implement something that you can look forward to, that's the way to do it. Now, kids clothes, I have tried to keep things as minimal as possible. I only keep out things that are for the season. Otherwise my kids will break out everything. We have this one big dresser in their room and right now I have all three kids in one for their everyday clothes. In the top drawer, I put their tops. In the bottom drawer, I put their bottoms and the middle is for underwear and PJs and all of those essentials. And then in the closet, of course, we have our nicer like church clothes or suits and things that we need to hang up. And that has really helped to simplify things. Now, the most important home system is to take care of the homemaker herself. So don't forget yourself because it's important to know what fills your cup. I love nothing more than having a good drink or a cup of coffee and sitting on my couch at the end of the day or at the end of the week and putting my feet up, especially right now. But I think it's important to know what works for you. Do you like bath time or long walks? Like what could you do to fill your own cup? Because it is an important system in your home to make sure that you're taking care of yourself and taking time to fill your cup. Now, I would love it if you would choose one system this week to work on, challenge yourself to simplify it and streamline it for your personality. Systems are ever changing too. I should also mention, I feel like systems that worked for me five years ago don't work for me anymore. And it's all about getting to know yourself and your habits. And speaking of habits, I'm gonna link to my other homemaking habits video that I have here. And I hope that if you're new here, you'll consider subscribing. I love talking about these things and I would love to hear from you in the comments below. Thanks for stopping by.