Managers of Their Homes - A Review (So Far!)

I recently heard about a scheduling system by Steve Teri Maxwell called, "Managers of Their Homes."  I decided to give it a go.  I went to the website and gave them my $25.00 plus shipping.  I read the book.  It took me pretty much all week.  It is spiral bound with a bigger font and a lot of white space, it was easy to read, easy to follow, and was like having someone just talk to you about it.  It did help me to realize that I pretty much already live by a schedule.  It was not written down anywhere, but we basically do the same things every day, so putting together the schedule was relatively easy. 
The system works like this:  Read the book.  This would be an important step.  It explains scheduling and why you need to do it.  It has a ton of suggestions about scheduling your children and yourself.  It also has a chapter dedicated to scheduling infants.  I don't schedule infants and whole heartedly disagree with the notion, so I skimmed that part.  But, if you are like some of my dearest friends, and you want to know how to schedule babies, this would tell you how to do it. 

For me, there was nothing 'earth shattering' or life changing as far as new information goes, but there were some very practical suggestions and some much needed reminders.

After the book is read, you follow a few steps and fill out a couple of forms.  You will have written down for everyone in your home, except for your spouse, a list of things they do and things you would like for them to do and how long it takes to do it. 

Then you transfer that to a bunch of colored squares.  Each person has their own color.  Mine was golden.  :)  The squares represent either a half hour or one hour block of time.  You cut out the squares and sticky tac them onto the 'master schedule worksheet'.  It was fun!  It was like putting together a puzzle. 

I did all the scheduling work today.  Interestingly enough, my house near about fell apart while I was doing it because we were so far out of our normal routine LOL....  They do suggest that you plan blocks of time to do all this and NOT sit down for 4 hours at the kitchen table.....  Unless, of course, that is what you planned for. 

I am not overly concerned about the implementation of the schedule.  It is VERY close to what we do now.  The biggest difference is I have tried to make sure everyone will be purposefully occupied for the majority of the day instead of turning into vegetables in front of the TV.

I have also made sure I worked in blogging time, household management time, and school planning time into my schedule.  I previously just hoped to find a second. 

So I am committed to giving this a fair shake.  I am glad it is set up to where you can move around the blocks and rearrange things with out having to retype and reprint the whole thing.  I expect we will do a bit of that before we can make the "final schedule." 

If you are interested, this can be bought from Ebay or Amazon, but you will not have access to the support forums if you do.  The best place to get it from is titus2.com. 

This is NOT a paid review.  I bought this book with my own money.  I have nothing to lose or gain if you buy 1 or 100 or none.  :) 

Jessica


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