Y’all are making this series everything I dreamed of and more, so please, keep chiming in! To catch up any new gals: Nancy Ray and I are writing an eight-part series every Tuesday in January and February covering “how we do it” in eight different areas: the rhythms, habits, and routines that help us get things done and make the space and time for what matters most. You can read more of the backstory here.

Today’s topic is organization in our homes. With each post so far I’ve shared a few general thoughts before diving into specifics, and today, I wanted to start with the concept of emotional labor. Have y’all read some of the essays that have circled in the last few months? (This was a big one.) They’ve seemed to really resonate with people. Here’s an excerpt in case you’re not familiar:

Then I tried to gingerly explain the concept of emotional labor: that I was the manager of the household, and that being manager was a lot of thankless work. Delegating work to other people, i.e. telling him to do something he should instinctively know to do, is exhausting… He restated that all I ever needed to do was ask him for help, but therein lies the problem. I don’t want to micromanage housework. I want a partner with equal initiative.

Bearing the brunt of all this emotional labor in a household is frustrating. It’s frustrating to be saddled with all of these responsibilities, no one to acknowledge the work you are doing, and no way to change it without a major confrontation… It is difficult to model an egalitarian household for my children when it is clear that I am the household manager, tasked with delegating any and all household responsibilities, or taking on the full load myself.

Here’s the thing: I am unequivocally the household manager in our home. I also don’t find this to be particularly onerous, unreasonable, or unenjoyable. To me, it makes sense that one person would be the point person for information, household organization, and task assignment. And in my marriage, it makes sense that it would be me — because I naturally enjoy it more than John (one of my StrengthsFinder strengths is Input, so I like knowing all the things!); because I work fewer hours than he does; and because I mostly work from home (so it’s easier to do things like call for an appointment over lunch without needing to find a private space from coworkers).

Perhaps I’m happy to be the manager because my work in that role IS seen and appreciated. Perhaps it’s because my husband not only willingly chips in whenever asked but also takes initiative. Perhaps it’s because I’m a realist. Mostly, though, I think it’s because I consider it a privilege. I have exactly the family I’ve dreamed of, and I feel so lucky to be able to take care of them in a million small ways every day. It’s a privilege to help our family run smoothly as a wife and a mama. In a way, it’s been what I’ve been waiting for all my life.

I also want to acknowledge that if you are the household manager but DON’T enjoy your role – perhaps because you’re not appreciated for it, or you’re working more paid hours than your spouse – I hope that you can find a solution that works for your marriage! Just because women most often take on this role doesn’t mean that they HAVE to by natural law or that it can’t be split more equally. The most important thing is finding a solution that works for everyone.

Okay! Enough with the philosophical :) I thought I’d start my tactical tips with cleaning and a few basic household routines, since y’all were intrigued by my claims in my first post! As you’ll see below, we do clean, just perhaps not as often as most people? I don’t know, y’all tell me how we stack up! :) Here’s our typical schedule:

Daily:
Unload and load dishwasher
Wipe down kitchen counters
Tidy main rooms, including processing mail (after June goes to bed)
Pack lunches for the next day

Every weekend:
Wash sheets and towels
Vacuum
Sweep and mop floor (with our Braava!)
Make menu and grocery shop

Every month:
Clean bathrooms
Deeper kitchen clean (microwave, stainless steel, cabinet fronts, etc.)

Seasonally:
Various deep cleaning chores

John and I split these chores — we sat down and divided them up together equitably, based on our preferences, and we are always responsible for the same ones. I think knowing firmly who does each is key, because (in general) we just do them without nagging each other.

Other than sheets, we do laundry collaboratively during the week on an as-needed basis. I know it can be a headache for some people, but it just doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal for us – we just throw it in at some point in the evening whenever needed and tag-team moving it through the cycle of folding and back into the closets.

Another big part of keeping our household running smoothly is FOOD! I’ve written about meal planning before, but thought I’d offer an update since things have changed a bit since that 2013 post.

On Friday evening or Saturday morning, I sit down and plan out our meals for the week. Since our default is to make dinner at home, we first look at the calendar and figure out whether there are any days we know we’ll be dining out (maybe dinner at a friend’s house, or a day where we’re running around and don’t have time to cook). We also check to see whether we’re expecting guests any night. Once those are marked on the planning doc, we start filling in meals for the other nights. We pull ideas from Pinterest (meal boards here + here), from our collection of cook books, family recipes from my Kitchen Diary, and from my master recipe list on Google Docs.

Once we have our meals planned and they’re on our Lindsay Letters calendar, I put together a shopping list with any ingredients we need plus anything we’ve added to Alexa’s shopping list during the week. Though we used to shop at various stores in pursuit of the best deal, we’ve opted over the last year to only shop at Publix, which is maximally convenient but a bit more expensive. (We also were just gifted a Costco membership, and so have tentatively dipped a toe in there.) I usually shop during June’s nap on Saturday afternoon, though not always, as you can see below :)

Aside from these two big systems, what about the little random things that keep our household running smoothly? Here’s a list in no particular order:

1. I purge my clothes regularly while brushing my teeth. Yes, you heard that right :) While brushing my teeth, I choose my and June’s clothes for the next day, and that gives me time to consider what in my closet I haven’t worn in a long time. I know this sounds weird, but it works better for me than wholesale purges every few months! Less pressure if I’m only retiring one or two things at a time :)

2. We keep a donation box readily available. It’s in our bedroom, and any ready-to-be-retired clothes go straight into it, as well as any other unwanted clutter that needs to head to Goodwill. Once the box is full, I put it in my car!

3. I’m not afraid to re-gift things. This is not a source of guilt for me! It’s possible to genuinely appreciate a gift and also genuinely know that your home is not the best home for it. I only want to keep the best, the favorite, and the necessary (in the words of Emily Ley!), and to help do that, I freely let things flow to other loved ones. We have a spot in an upstairs closet where we keep these items, and regularly shop it for birthday, baby, shower, or “just because” presents.

4. With our cars, everything that goes in must come out. John is far better at this than I am, but the goal is that every time we get out of the car, everything that’s not supposed to be in there comes out with us: trash, water bottles, receipts, gloves, etc. This is an easy way to keep our cars clutter-free!

5. Our air filters come automatically. FilterEasy sends us two new filters every quarter at prices and quality comparable to buying at the store. We’ve always bought the super strong ones to keep dust and pet hair at bay, so this is an easy hack for something we were already doing. Bonus: they’re a start-up based in Raleigh! :)

6. Our frequently-used products are on stand-by. In addition to Alexa mentioned above, we have a few Amazon Dash buttons placed around the house for easy reorders: razor blades in a bathroom drawer, rinse aid under the kitchen sink, and Chlorox toilet wand refills in the bathroom. This is the future, people.

7. We store lawn care info in a Google Doc. It’s an easy way to track things like when we reseeded our lawn, how many bags of mulch we used, and when things germinated. I’d love to start another one where we can keep snapshots of the info cards that come with each of our plants!

As with all of these posts, I feel like I’m just scratching the surface – so if there’s something you’re curious about, don’t hesitate to ask! Otherwise, I would love to hear your thoughts on our cleaning rhythms!! I have the sense that other people clean more often, but perhaps that’s not accurate!

P.S. Don’t miss Nancy’s post here!

The rest of the series:
Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Personal Lives: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Work: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Relationships: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Kids: Em’s post and Nancy’s post

Affiliate links are used in this post!

I’ve mentioned a “Life List book” a few times now (in my January goals post, most recently), and thought some of you might be wondering what the heck that is!

I first spotted the idea on Valerie’s blog, and instantly fell in love with it. As someone who is goal-oriented and experience-driven, I never want to skip over the beauty of trying something significant for the first time, or accomplishing something for which I worked hard! The Life List Book helps with that – instead of adding more to your bucket list, it’s a way to record and celebrate the amazing things you’ve done in your life.

To get started, I purchased a simple chambray journal with lined pages. Then, I just started writing! My Type A side hesitated, wanting all the things to be in chronological order, but I forced myself to just dive in.

Among the items I’ve included so far: “Married the love of my life,” “Birthed a baby,” “Camped overnight on Cumberland Island with wild ponies,” “Hiked the Mist Trail in Yosemite,” “Worshipped at Hillsong in Paris,” “Scored an 800 on the verbal portion of the PSAT” (#humble :)), “Hosted an adventure dinner party,” “Played Gollum in a middle school play” (yes, that happened), and “Saw a live taping of The Martha Stewart Show in NYC.” Who knows what could be next?!

Now that the initial backlog is recorded, this little book sits on my bedside table for easy access whenever I complete a goal, hit a milestone, or have an experience that feels especially meaningful. The first 50 items only took up six pages, so surely I’ll have room to record seventy more years of my one wild and beautiful life, right? :)

A question for you: I’m not in love with the title “Life List Book,” so I’m curious if anyone has a better suggestion? I’m thinking something with record, but not sure…

Friends, I am so excited about this series!!! I loved hearing your guesses — everything from another round of Marvelous Mama to an extended personal finance guide (both of which sound marvelous, by the way) — but dare I say what we have planned is even better…?

A month or two ago, I was searching on Nancy’s blog for something when I stumbled upon the “organization” series she wrote in 2014. I remembered loving the posts when they were originally written, but as I re-read them, it hit me how much her life had changed in the last four years! I thought about how I would love for her to revisit the same topics, and then realized that they dovetailed perfectly with the most-requested topic from my reader survey last year: rhythms, habits, and routines. How do I make space and time for what matters most in all areas of my life? How do I get things done? How do I do it???

Well, I most certainly do not have all the answers, but one thing I have been given is a confidence in the decisions we make for our family and a willingness to share them. So here we are! Nancy was totally game for a revisit when I proposed the idea to her, and what I love most about this is that throughout this series, you’ll get to hear from two people who have similar hearts but different ways of living them out. There is no one right way to do things! Instead of a prescription, we hope to offer you inspiration, ideas, tools, tips, and encouragement. I am so excited. I also have WAY too much to say on each topic and am already having to rein myself in, ha!

Let’s start at the beginning: with time.

Readers who’ve been here awhile know I’ve written about this topic before, and I would definitely encourage you to check out those two posts! The most important takeaways: I have a permanent moratorium on the phrase time is flying by, the response busy but good, and anything else that sounds remotely similar. I also have learned to embrace this paradox: time is both precious and plentiful. To have as much time as I need for the things I want, I must be ruthless about not filling time with things I don’t care about or that aren’t a priority for me.

So let’s start there. What do I NOT do? Here are a few from a very long list of things. In general, I do not…

— Paint my nails
— Browse in stores or go to the mall
— Wash my hair every day
— Clean (well, I do clean – ha! But I pretty much do the bare minimum and let the rest slide.)
— Tidy (again, I do this – but there are MANY days and hours when things are NOT in their proper place.)
— Sell clothing I’m getting rid of (I just donate it.)
— Scroll on Facebook
— Get together with girlfriends (except for Articles Club and a neighborhood book club)
— Switch my accessories (I wear pearl studs and my wedding and engagement rings and that’s it.)
— Own a dog
— Volunteer
— Text (pretty much only with my family and only in reply to texts sent to me)
— Curate my Instagram (I am a stylist by trade – if I spent more time on it, it would look different!)
— Binge watch TV shows

Are any of these things bad? Not at all. But in a full season, I have to say a firm no to good things to make way for better things. (Things like puzzles with June, prayer, making dinner for my family every night, reading, weekly calls with my sisters, evening walks, writing on EFM, and SLEEP. I love sleep and get 8-9 hours every night.) I look forward to doing some of these things in other seasons. Your list might look very different from mine, but it’s important that you have it.

An integral tool for helping me prioritize my time and clarify my yeses and nos: PowerSheets. Y’all have heard me talk about them extensively at the end of each year and in my monthly goal posts, but they deserve a mention here, too!

As for how I organize my time from day to day, I am a paper calendar gal. In fact, I am an old-school paper calendar gal: I use an *original* Simplified Planner, purchased in 2012, which is really just a pretty blue binder that I fill with printable monthly calendar pages. And yes, though bulky, it travels to and from work with me every day I’m in the office! :)

Why paper? I want to see every event on every day of the month at the same time. So much of what I’m scheduling needs to happen in relation to other things, and I hate having to click back and forth between days or switch between the day view and the month view so I can see every event happening on a certain day.

You can read more about how I use my Planner here.

A Lindsay Letters Creatives calendar is the newest addition to our home, and I think it will become increasingly important as kiddos grow and our schedule gets more complicated! It hangs in our kitchen, and at the beginning of every month I transfer over from my Planner events that affect both of us as well as our meal plan for the week. We’ve only had it for a short while, but so far it has been super helpful to get John and I on the same page!

A final tip: there is NOTHING in my life that makes me feel more like I’ve wasted time or that I don’t have enough time than scrolling on social media. Nothing. If your schedule/life feels out of your control and you spend any amount of time on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, that might be a good (though hard) place to start. More about this and my social media boundaries later in the series :)

Friends, I hope this post was helpful for you and that you’re excited for what’s to come!! Don’t forget to read Nancy’s post here.

How do y’all manage your time? Are you a paper or electronic calendar gal? What do you say no to? I’d love to hear!!

The rest of the series:
Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Personal Lives: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Work: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Relationships: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Kids: Em’s post and Nancy’s post

Affiliate links are used in this post!

What a year, friends. I’ve shared along the way, but it has been an interesting one – probably the hardest of our life together. We weathered major change; we had an unprecedented string of large, unexpected expenses; we got yeses when we wanted nos and nos when we wanted yeses; and most bitterly, we lost our beloved cat Jack.

But as I sit here, I can only end the year feeling richly blessed — a daughter of the King who has been given good things in abundance. To start, my husband is healthy, my daughter is healthy, and our families are healthy. I could stop right there, and that would be enough. It really would be.

But there is so much more, and it is one of the delights of my life to share it with you all. So here we go – some of our favorite moments of 2017, in our lives and on the blog.

In January we celebrated June’s birthday with a kitty-themed party for family and friends! Her birthday prompted a post that meant a lot to me, reflections on our first year together. John and I also celebrated our twelfth dativersary. I plowed through books this year and began including what I was reading in my monthly goals posts. On the blog, I shared June’s buffalo check nursery and the first Marvelous Money post of the year, on making trade-offs.

In February I stepped outside my comfort zone and invited ten neighborhood ladies over for a Favorite Things party. It was a success, and kicked off a year of settling into our community and gaining friendships, for which I am so grateful! I shared one of my favorite posts ever this month, as well as 31 ideas for winter meals (I’ll be referring back to this list in the chilly weeks to come!). I turned 30 and shared 10 hopes for the next decade.

We broke ground on our long-awaited backyard renovation in March! We picked berries and enjoyed being outside, including on a beloved hand-me-down set of wheels. I shared about taking ballet again and paying off our mortgage early.

In April I spent my first night away from June, on a work trip to Alabama and Mississippi where I got to hug two familiar faces! We celebrated the resurrection of our Savior as a family and June was a natural at her first egg hunt. I am SO pleased that I finally got it together and posted my first of several Triangle guides: Durham!

Our backyard project wrapped up in May and we have been enjoying it ever since! I know I owe you an official reveal – hopefully coming this spring! :) At the end of the month, June got to travel with me to Charleston for another work trip, and in June, we logged our fifth camping trip with the Rays!

In honor of Mother’s Day, I wrapped up the first installment of my Marvelous Mama series with the best addition yet — my own Mom. We also filmed June in June: Volume 2 (even cuter than Volume 1, somehow!), and I shared our five must-have baby registry items, a simple trick for developing habits, and wisdom from my Dad.

June participated in her first parade – our town’s Fourth of July celebration – the next month, and we of course also celebrated one of our favorite summer holidays, Cow Appreciation Day! I shared seven tips for new college graduates, a post I loved writing.

The highlight of July was without a doubt our trip to Michigan. We visited John’s family cottage near Traverse City along with 25+ other Thomas family members, and it was the most fun. We were on the water all day, and the cousins (young and old) had a blast!

Just three short weeks later, we made another epic road trip, this time to my family’s cottage in Maine! To be honest this trip had its challenges (ahem, someone I won’t name inexplicably waking up for 2-3 hours every night…), but we were so grateful to be with family in such a treasured place! I wrote about a simple but impactful house contentment hack and John’s 30th birthday book.

September was a full month! We rendezvoused with my family again in Asheville over Labor Day weekend, then celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary with a day at the zoo and a dinner out, just the two of us. I made apple cider scones to celebrate the first day of fall, and we flew to Providence to celebrate one of my best friend’s weddings! I wrote another favorite post from the year: five intentions for our next five years of marriage.

Our ray of sunshine completed a successful first round of trick-or-treating in October (and I congratulated myself on my first semi-homemade costume!). In November, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of Southern Weddings, the anniversary of June’s baptism, and John’s Christmas present (early!) by getting away to Charlotte for the night to see Jim Gaffigan! Our first night with both of us away from her, thanks to my parents :) I shared 26 ways to save money, 10 great dinners for new parents, and all of the articles we read in Articles Club this past year.

We returned just yesterday from our Thomas Christmas celebration in California, and now have a few quiet days at home before going back to work in the new year. We’re heading out for our end-of-year celebration dinner soon, and I’m looking forward to finishing up my PowerSheets prep and setting my goals for the year over the next few days. I’ll be sharing more on Monday, so keep an eye out :)

I am so grateful for this year we’ve had, friends, and I am truly so grateful for all of you. I often stop to think how crazy it is that such smart, kind, thoughtful people come hang out here and have stuck around for so long. It is one of the biggest blessings of my life to share with you, and I am SO excited to continue doing so in 2018. I think it’s going to be a good one :) In fact, I know it is, because in the second week of January I’m kicking off a nine-week series with Nancy. It is centered around the most-requested topic from my 2017 blog survey, and I think you will love it!! Can’t wait to share :)

2016 year in review
2015 year in review
2014 year in review
2013 year in review
2012 year in review