Keeping organised while working and schooling from home {AD} – Mummascribbles

AD – Gifted items – We were kindly sent a selection of products from Viking Direct for the purpose of creating this post

The last few weeks have seen a whole nation of people trying to work from home, teach the kids, entertain the kids, and attempt to keep the house in some form of cleansed order. And it has not been easy. We have all been winging it along the whole way haven’t we? I have found it incredibly hard to give my all to everything. The blog, my VA work, my new work as an Independent Tropic Ambassador, getting Zach to do his school work, and finding age appropriate things for Oscar to do too. It has been a bit of a struggle to say the least. We have had good days and bad. Good weeks and bad. I know when to ease up. I know when to have a day off from learning. I know when to let them be free.

But this situation is ongoing. While many parents across the Country are deciding whether or not to send their kids back to school, I don’t have that choice yet. Zach is in Year 2 and Oscar is in Pre-School, so neither have been called back to school. This means that for the time being, we are all still going to be learning and working from home. We have done pretty well overall and I have certainly learnt some ways in which to stay organised so that any schooling/working is a success. Here are four ways to keep organised while working and schooling from home.

Know what you have planned for the day with both school and work

I find that if I am not prepared ahead of time, then the day tends to go a bit awry. If I have planned, worked out what school work there is to do, get it all set up and printed out, and know what I need to be working on, then the day tends to go much smoother and we are all far more productive. The days when I have woken up without any form of lesson plan has ended with us barely doing anything, me losing my temper a lot, and a lot of shouting between us.

Have the right equipment to hand

If you are constantly having to find things for you all to use, then you are going to be wasting precious time. Our dining table in the front room has been where we have been doing all of our school work and other work, and I always make sure we are set with pens, pencils, and any other equipment we need. I find myself stapling a lot, hole punching a lot, sticking a lot, and using a ruler a lot. The stuff is either easily accessible on the table, or a couple of steps away on the actual desk. Having everything within easy reach makes it all far easier when it’s needed. And probably the best thing I ordered from Viking Direct was a sellotape dispenser. Life changing!!

Utilise notebooks for all

I am of the opinion that you can never have enough notebooks, but boy have we been using them the last few weeks. Zach was originally working from a non ruled exercise book that we had got from school ages ago, but it was very thin, very quickly ran out of space, and I was forever having to draw lines. When Viking Direct asked me if I wanted to work with them, I immediately realised that I could ask for some more notebooks which I was having trouble finding anywhere else. So I soon had 3 big Pukka Pads in my hands. I had allocated one of these for Zach and his school work, he claimed another one when he started writing a story, and then I have a spare one which might now belong to the other half as he too is working from home for the forseeable future. I did also grab special notepad for myself which has since been allocated as my Tropic Ambassador notepad, so that I always know which one I have all my notes and information in.

Know when enough is enough with schooling and use that time wisely

It is impossible to do this whole schooling/working thing perfectly. We are all in extremely weird circumstances right now and along with none of us knowing what day it is, we also don’t know what is going to hit us each day. I felt pressured at the beginning, into trying to keep the kids aligned with what I wanted them to do, but I found myself getting really irritated when they weren’t playing ball. I soon realised that trying to keep them motivated when they had done enough, or just weren’t in the mood, wasn’t worth the hassle. Instead, I tell them they are done, send them off to play together or watch TV, shove the kettle on, and try and crack on with a bit of work while they are preoccupied.

So these are the things that I have found work best for trying to do all the things. As I have been writing this, the kids have been playing in the den that I made them, changing in and out of their various costumes, and I have managed to tap, tap away. But then it is half term, so life is a bit easier!

Also, as I have been writing this, the education minister has suggested that there is a very slim chance that all year groups will return to school by the end of term. So some of us could be doing all of this juggling a while longer!

How are you finding the whole home school/working from home combination? Do you have any tips to add to those I have suggested?