This week is the start of an acceleration into the holidays and through the end of the year. No one is given space to breathe enough to relax and enjoy the celebrations of the season.
The hectic pace has been felt by our household, now made of four related adult members. We haven’t yet adapted to the néeds of four adults during regular times, and now the season of speed comes on apace.
So we initiated a new strategy. Monday morning was the first of initially daily household meetings to organize and assign household tasks.
An online spreadsheet, consisting of multiple tabs, is being created to capture the tasks and their frequency necessary for the maintenance of our lifestyle, along with the assignment of each task to the appropriate parties for efficient and consistent completion.
Tasks that will connect us all to employment and encourage appropriate external interactions for the maintenance are also being added and assigned. Some of those will lead to jobs and tasks of as-yet unknown schedules that will require further adapting.
One of the core yet often unplanned items of daily household function is meal preparation with corresponding grocery shopping. Meal times have too often been browsing pantry shelves overstocked in some items and understocked in others.
The son has been stepping forward with meal suggestions for a day or two ahead, with approriate thawing and meal times. The hope is to extend that into a family meal plan for the week coordinated with the grocery shopping list and adjusted for unexpected sale purchases.
The real test of the process is whether we get buy-in from all the adults as adults and an equitable contribution of suggestions, efforts and employment to fund the structure.
It will be interesting to see whether the internal or external efforts are the more difficult, per individual and group.
At The Rainbow 