Help me prepare my house...going back to work after 8 years!

[BeccaGrace]

I've been a work at home mommy for 8 years (I'm a paralegal and my employer lets me work from home with flexible hours). I was recently hired as a teacher's aide at my girls' school as a second job. It's great because I work the same schedule they do (holidays and summers off) and I can still do my other job at night. I'm not worried about the extra 25 hours of work, I'm more nervous about keeping organized, cleaning the house, planning dinners and making sure our schedules run normal. There were days last year where we were running around in the morning looking for a missing shoe or when I realized I had nothing defrosted for dinner -- and that was when I was home and could run for the store or forego a shower in the morning to make sure the kids were ready!

Can everyone offer me some tips during my last week before school starts to have good routines up and running so that I can get both the girls and I ready to head out in the morning and so evenings will run smoothly and I can get it all done in less time?

All tips will be GREATLY appreciated

(PS -- I do Flylady (www.flylady.com) for cleaning routines already and have spent the past month nesting to get the house really organized and clutter-free to start off on the right foot!)

 

[barkley]

i'm still at home (retired) but because dh, dd, and ds all attend different schools with different scheduals i decided i had to get it in gear and realy get organized these past few weeks-here's a few things i did:

got a peice of magnetic paper and made a week calendar for the fridge (just shows the days of sunday-saturday, no dates)-assigned each person a post it color and put a post it on for FIXED activities/obligations. so for dh it shows his class sched, for ds his occupational therapy, dd her volunteering day....that way at a quick glance i can remember what's happening on a given day of the week.

got everyone's school calendars and put them into my personal calendar (i'm still of the stone age and use a spiral bound i carry in my purse)-that way when i'm making hair, dentist, doctor....appointments i don't fowl up and create a conflict.

we keep a large wicker laundry basket right next to the door (and the coat rack/hall tree) we exit each morning-when anyone comes in coats/shoes get put on the hall tree and ALL backpacks and school items go into the basket. when people need stuff from their backpacks they retireve it but it goes back into the basket for easy retrieval next day. when i drove the kids to school i kept a large plastic container in the trunk area-backpacks and school stuff went into it so we were'nt digging around in the car to find stuff.

for meals (and i used this allot when i worked f/t)-get in the habit of preparing extra. if you are making a lasagna on the weekend-make an extra and freeze it. learn to use your crockpot (and if you have one your breadmaker)-set out beans to soak the nite before and you can throw them in with the seasoning and veggies so that dinner is done when you get home (our bread maker has a timer so we would set it to be done right when dinner should be served). consider pre-prepping some food items. ground beef can be browned and then frozen into zip lock bags (easy to flash defrost if you forget to take them out the nite before). you can toss this into a pot of pasta sauce, use it to make brown bag chili (start to finish-30 minutes), make quick tacos, enchiladas, burritos (i always keep tortillas on hand and a couple of cans of ench. sauce). last week i roast 2 chickens-we ate one and i deboned the second. the deboned chicken is in a zip lock in my freezer to use to make either chicken salad for lunch sandwiches or chicken and noodles one nite for dinner.

one of my biggest 'flake out' issues is with school lunches-kids forget to tell me that they want cold lunch (realy something they can microwave) until morning. recently i've started making double batches of dinner items that i know they like for lunch and stashing smaller containers away in the freezer. that way i can grab a frozen container of hamburgar helper (ds's fav) in the morning and just put it in his lunch box (he sez it's always defrosted in time for him to microwave at noon). i've also taken to buying the snackie and beverage items in larger quantities and putting them into a large bag in my pantry (i take the individual items out of the boxes)-then the kids can just grab 2 or 3 to go with whatever i've done for their lunch entree (for veggies or fruit we keep the individual containers in the fridge and they know those are for school lunches only).

last but not least-i spent the better part of 2 days cleaning and reorganizing our home office. i did a search and destroy mission over the entire house for school/art supplies and put them in labled containers in a closet. that way when the kids have project type homework or claim to have run out of the 10,000 pencils i've already sent to school with them i'm not stuck having to run to the store. i also set up a 3 ring binder with dividers-each student in our household (dh included) has a section where all the 'administrative' stuff goes (stuff the kids school, teacher sends home for us parental units). i've gotten into the habit of immediatly 3 hole punching and putting stuff into it when it hits the door. that way i'm not scrambling and wasting time to find out what the new policy is on this or that.

 

[NHdisneylover]

It looks like your girls are still elementary aged. When my kids were that young we made felt hanger covers labled with the days of the week from Family Fun:
http://jas.familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts?page=CraftDisplay&craftid=11610
On Sunday we would check the weather foracast for the week and fill the outfit hanger s for every day that week (down to socks and underwear). We could be sure DD had pants (no skirts) for gym days, scout uniforms for the correct days, etc.

We do something similar to the PP in the entry. At our house each child has a basket in which all shoes go in as soon as they come in the door. Over each basket is a set of four hooks, one each for: backpack, raincoat, light jacket and heavy coat. Above the hooks is a shelf on which sits lunch boxes and a small tote with hats, mittens and scarves in winter. That way everything is right there and easy to find for each child. The rule is all of these things go onto the hoooks/into the baskets or totes as soon as the kids come in the door.

For lunches: my kids have never eaten the hot lunches (they do not like them). I try to make as much as possible the night before and just put it all in the lunchbox with an ice pack in the morning. The kids know it is THEIR responsiblity to make sure they have their lunch box (and to check that the food got put in).

For dinner: the PP had good ideas. I agree that using a crock pot is really helpful. Also, be willing to eat fairly simple meals some nights (grilled cheese and soup with carrot sticks is FINE).

I hope that you find you enjoy your new job

 

[powellrj]

Once you get a routine, you will be fine, but the first few weeks will be hard.

Do everything you can the night before. Have backpacks packed and ready, everything signed, clothes laid out with coats and shoes.

I always make little baggies when I get home from the grocery store with all the lunch items like veggies and snack items. That way I only have to grab the little baggies to pack lunches.

Cook as much as you can ahead. Right now I have a pork roast for pulled pork, sirloin tips for beef and noodles and cubed steaks cooking in my crock pots. I also put steaks and chicken in marinades for grilling. My veggies are cleaned and in bags. If you have dinner already made its not as tempting to use drive thru during the week.

Put your bills on auto pay so you don't have to worry if you forget something and get really good at multi tasking. We always made dental appointments together so I only had to go once and DH and I get our cars serviced at the sametime so we drop one off as we pick up the other one. You will find what works best for your family. I also got good at doing things like Christmas cards as I was watching someone practice something!

Good luck, once you get your groove, things will get easier.

 

[sunnyday123]

this may be the most helpful thread ever!

 

[marshallandcartersmo]

Great thread OP! I just started back to work 2 months ago after being off for 8 years. It's only about 25 hours a week, but it really is a big adjustment!
I'm struggling w/dinners too, and cleaning on the weeknds, frankly SU!@S. But having money to actually pay on some of our bills is a nice change .

 

[BeccaGrace]

WOW! Thank you for all of the amazing tips! I' m going to try them all -- thanks so much for taking the time to respond

I am really excited for my new job and I think once I get into a routine everything will fall into place. It's just always scary to start something new when you have been doing things differently for so long. You all helped to put my mind at ease Thanks!