Organising a big household /me full time in work

[Knomester]

I have always thought that I'm fairly organised, but I am completely in awe of you all!

I love the idea of photographing everything. I can see that our current stick it on the fridge with a magnet method won't hack it for much longer...

[sillywoman]

Some great tips here, but as a family of 6 with both working full time (including some looong 14 hour shifts for me, and weekends too), no au pair, no cleaner & in fact no other help at all, the one that rings most helpful for me is Bawdy -nan's. Let stuff go. And in fact, when stuff starts to get missed or school things get forgotten it's amazing how quickly the children learn to become more organised and take responsibility for ensuring that important stuff doesn't get missed. It's a good learning curve for both them and you to learn to let stuff go and NOT micromanage.

Also, as Convex says, the thread on mumsnet is brilliant.

[edanna]

Great thread. I've got a long way to go on the organisation front. But something I've recently started using is trello https://trello.com - it can be used to manage quite complex projects but I really just use it as a to do list - you can have different boards so I have one for work and one for home and the iPhone app is v easy to use so if I suddenly remember something I need to do I quickly add it as a card on my phone - you can drag the cards up and down in order of priority or onto a different list eg 'done' or whatever works. It's free and IMO more reliable than emailing myself about stuff.

[verds]

My mum worked full time when I was at school and she taught me some very important things:

Get up half an hour before the children to get dressed and do your hair and make-up (this was the 80s and high hair was tres important!)

Never bake

And she always used to have a G&T while she was cooking the dinner!

Only now do I understand how much she did while we all loafed around being teenagers asking how long dinner would be.

[canela]

I am in awe of you ladies!!!

I think I am fairly organised bar the house. Have adopted the philosophy of fluid "inboxes" that was in the Guardian a few weeks back, i.e. an untidy top kitchen drawer is actually an inbox of things coming and going, ditto a laundry basket full of clothes waiting to be folded and put away.

Can't afford cleaner, too knackered to do FLY lady (who incidentally sent a friend of mine a bit mad for a few months), plus OH is a messy git and there is no way I am cleaning up after everyone all the time. So "inboxes" it is for us....