Your Family - Working Together to Eliminate Stress

Have you ever wondered how it would be to come home from a long day at the office and be stress free. Does your arrival at home normally leave you feeling immediately stressed out, wishing that you could get back into the car and even go back to work where at least there isn’t arguing and chaos. If you have a family with school age children you may never think that is possible ever again. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is….

This will be the first two steps of our series that you can take in order to avoid stress and chaos upon your return home from work at the end of the day.
These tips are for families that have school age children that are capable to assist with daily activities.

First: Everyone needs to know the weekly schedule (who is scheduled to be where and what time). I would recommend a family meeting at the beginning of the week – Sunday evening – to go over the schedule. This should be posted on a calendar on the refrigerator for everyone to see as a reminder. This will also give children the opportunity to remind you of events that they may have forgotten to tell you about earlier and it will avoid the mass rush of trying to figure out who needs to be picked up when and most importantly, if you will need assistance from a friend or neighbor in the delivery and pickup of your children from their events. This gives you and your spouse (or significant other) the opportunity to share responsibility of the children and their activities.

Second: Everything that can be prepared in the evening for the next day should be done prior to going to bed. This could be preparing lunches or setting out lunch money, laying out clothes to be worn the next day, defrosting meat that can be put into the crockpot for the next evening’s meal, ironing, loading of backpacks, school forms signed, checks made out and anything else that you can think of. Being prepared for the next day will allow you to get a better night’s rest, wake-up without stress and begin the day with a positive attitude (which will set the tone for your entire day). The morning attitude and behavior sets the tone for their entire school day….why not make it as positive as possible?

These are two simple things that you can do to develop family routines that will help you avoid stress. Remember, it takes 21 days to form a habit and your children are looking at you to set the example so it is extremely important that you make a commitment to these changes.

Beginning to develop systems is also the beginning of your Home Organization and the avoidance of clutter.