I’m following along with the Life Your Way Simplify for Fall Challenge. Six days, six areas of the home to simplify. Here’s what I’ve already tackled: clothing & laundry room, toys, kitchen and meal planning, bedrooms and bathrooms and paper clutter and budgets.

Before having a baby I loved making elaborate schedules.

Workouts, meals, hours for writing, household tasks, all of it was listed on a packed Excel spreadsheet that I printed out and posted on the refrigerator. I set the bar high. The goal was to be super-productive for 16 hours a day.

I always failed at these schedules. I’d last the first half of the week and then slowly do fewer thing until I was eating takeout and watching “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant” at 10:30 pm – well past the scheduled bed time for a 5:30am wake-up.

Having a baby kicked the scheduling bug out of me.

Simplifying our life made it so that it wasn’t necessary to have a detailed list of all that we need to do.

Things get done. We make it to appointments.

Sometimes we skip our morning activity if Henry was up late and slept in. Sometimes I let the recycling go a bit too long. Sometimes the laundry is in a big pile on the kitchen floor on a Friday afternoon and I just scoop it up and decide to deal with it on Monday.

Life happens. Sometimes we don’t check everything off our list for the week. It’s okay. The world keeps spinning.

I like our lack of schedule. But I feel that with some life events and some new recurring writing deadlines I need a bit of the scheduling bug back.

Work Schedule & Routine

My work days are numbered and my list of projects is long. Henry will start going to extra daycare in September so I can put more time into a book I’m writing and keep up with freelance work.

I’m earmarking Mondays for freelance and book, Tuesday for blogging and book and Thursdays just for the book.

Is there such a thing as maternity leave for a self-employed writer? Sort of.

In early December I’ll wind down my freelance writing and either publish my book if it’s ready or put it on hold for a few months. I have an idea for a series I would like to run on this blog and hope to get a bunch of posts/interviews completed before December. While this blog won’t be offline there will be fewer posts for a few months as we get to know our new addition.

We’re extremely fortunate that my writing income isn’t needed to pay bills. Right now my income doesn’t factor into our monthly budget – it’s sent back home for extra mortgage payments.

I hope to take a few quiet months and then start back at work when the new baby sleeps. Please send me a good sleeper this time!

Blogger friends beware: I’ll be hitting a lot of you up for guest posts and interviews for my maternity leave. Happy to do post swaps too.

Home Schedule & Routine

Chalkboard, weekly print out or shared Google Calendar? What do you use to keep track of family routines and schedules?

So far we haven’t really needed a family schedule. We’re not that busy. I put appointments in my calendar on my iPod and the rest are so routine I don’t need a reminder.

I’d like a better visual for Chris and I to reference. Something in the home that we can tweak each week as things come up. Something Chris and my mom can reference in the weeks after the new baby arrives. Something that shows the days and times Henry goes to nursery, the drop-in we go to on Wednesdays and the class we go to on Fridays.

I’m testing out using this weekly printable calendar from Life Your Way and looking at chalkboards. Any ideas for me on simple weekly calendars you like and use?

Simplifying has created more work for me.

I’d like to say I’m done but, really, I’ve created more work for myself. My clutter eyes are open and I want to tackle our living room next. And I have lots of fall out tasks from simplifying. A trip to donate clothes and toys is in order.

Anyone else prepped their home and selves for fall and back to school?