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Conquering The Chaos

A family with purpose is a family who strives to manage and balance their lives and who work diligently to prevent their lives from being controlled by outside factors. A family with purpose sets priorities and lives their lives accordingly.

Keeping Track of Party Invitations, Permission Slips, and Appointment Cards - If your house is anything like mine, you are inundated daily with a slew of birthday party invitations, school permission slips, and appointment reminder cards. Keeping track of them can be a challenge.

How to Use a Family Calendar - Family calendars are a great tool to help busy families stay organized and get control of the family schedule. The key is to be disciplined about using it.

Conquering Kids’ Clutter - Spring is almost here, and with it comes the urge to clean, DECLUTTER, and toss out — until the next year, when we start all over again.

Getting Back Into The Groove After a Family Vacation - Sleeping in, relaxing by the pool, spending quality time with the family, and having wonderful memories are all the great aspects of family vacations and frankly the reasons most families take a family vacation year after year. But with all of the great fun, getting back into the groove of things after the vacation can be a challenge.

Weekly Meal Planner - For those of you who subscribe to our free monthly newsletter, you know what a big fan I am of our monthly meal planner.

I’ve Become One of THOSE People - I like to pretend I’m laid back and easy going. You know the kind, the person that doesn’t sweat the small stuff, worry about deadlines, or doesn’t need a “do list” to get the most basic things in life accomplished.

Getting Organized for the New Year - Question: My family life is so hectic. It seems like we are always running and never have time to just relax. We really want to get better control of our lives, but don’t know where to start.

Parents’ Night Out - Getting away for a few hours with your spouse every so often is a definite must do, but actually getting out the door with your sanity in check can be a challenge.

How to Organize Your Family Games - For every parent out there struggling to organize (and keep organized) their family game closet , here are some suggestions:

More than 30 Days of Night - Top Tips for Avoiding the Debt Vampires this Christmas - For some Christmas can be more of a horror story than a celebration of light. It can bring a nightmare where every day seems darker than the next.

11 Quick and Easy Things You Can Do Right Now to Organize Your Personal Finances - Stay on top of your personal finances with these tips.

Debt Reduction Strategies - For many families battling debt is a problem. From braces, to daycare, to family vacations, families every day are struggling to keep up financially and are relying more and more on credit cards to help pay the bills.

Five Strategies to Keep Families Organized this School Year - Start the school year off right and conquer the craziness by establishing healthy habits, strategies, and routines that will focus and guide your family throughout the school year.

Back to School Strategies and Printables - Start the new school year off right with these back to school strategies and printables.

How to Fit Quality Family Time into Your Busy Schedules - If your family is anything like ours, you are running in a million different directions. Soccer games on Tuesday, PTA meetings on Monday, business trips on Thursday and Friday, and Sunday everyone collapses from exhaustion.

Did You Bring the Camera? - Planning a family outing this month? Here are some quick tips to help keep your family on track and make memories you want to remember rather than forget…

Holiday Survival Guide - When Andy Williams sang the lyric, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year”, he must have been joking. What with presents to buy, parties to attend, and cheer to spread, we often find ourselves wondering what the heck is so happy about the holidays.

Connecting with Your Kids When You Don't Have A Lot of Time - Is your homework finished? Did you make your bed? What do you want for lunch? Some days it feels like this is all I ever say to my kids. Days like these are enough to make any parent feel sad and insecure.

Parents' Night Out - Getting away for a few hours with your spouse every so often is a definite must do, but actually getting out the door with your sanity in check can be a challenge.

Organizing Your Shopping List - It never fails. I will be upstairs getting ready for my day and realize we are out of toothpaste or I will be sitting at work and suddenly remember we need to bring the snack for the next soccer game. And I always say to myself one of two things:

The Power of a Good Routine - For the most part, all of us have some sense of a daily routine already. Usually dictated by school, work, and extra-curricular activities, our daily routines at a minimum usually involve consistent schedules for getting ourselves off to school or work in the morning, dinner on the table in the evening, and into bed at night. But what many families struggle with is fitting in and remembering all the extra’s that go along with having kids, full time jobs, and outside commitments and obligations.

House Cleaning - The Thorn in Every Family's Side - Our house cleaning philosophy here at Families with Purpose is simple - clean it to your standards, minimize the distraction it takes on your family life, and don’t beat yourself up when it doesn’t get done.

Creating a House Cleaning Schedule - The key to keeping house cleaning from overrunning your family life is to create a plan consistent with your housecleaning philosophy and stick to it.

10 Things You Can Get Done in 15 Minutes - Got a spare 15 minutes? Here are 10 quick things you can do in 15 minutes that make you feel like you have accomplished something.

Managing Disruptions to the Routine - Because sometimes life doesn’t always go according to plan, it is important to understand how disruptions can impact your routine and how families can adjust when they do happened.

Anticipating Disruptions to the Routine - There are some days and weeks when I feel like I have gotten nothing done which I know isn’t the case because with four kids, a husband, and a job, I know I had to have done something.

How to Create a Family Travel File - You are thumbing through a magazine and find an article on a really neat fun place to vacation, or you are surfing the net and stumble on an incredibly fantastic resort. So you either rip the page out of the magazine or bookmark the webpage. The magazine page gets filed away in some drawer and the webpage gets added to the already thousand bookmarks you have created. A couple years later while cleaning out drawers or cleaning up your computer you find them and say “oh yeah, I forgot about this place.”

How to Choose the Right Planning and Scheduling System for Your Family - We get a lot of questions from customers and visitors about how to choose the right style of planner or calendar for their family. Gone are the days of one style fits all and parents today have a lot of choices when it comes to choosing a planning and calendar system for their family. But unfortunately, with the many choices also comes the potential for a lot of confusion.

Easing the Morning Rush - Back to school time is often a great opportunity for families to get a handle on their morning routines by minimizing the morning rush. Use these tips to help you get started.

Conquering the Chaos Part I - Taking an Inventory of Your Life - With the start of a new school year we thought it fitting to take some time to talk about how to create a family schedule and routine. Most families start out with good intentions to create a more harmonious family life by vowing to cut back on the running, stress, and general chaos of everyday life, and for a variety of reasons ....

Planning Your Next Family Outing - It never fails, we will be happily driving along for a family outing to enjoy some of the traditional fall family fun like a cider mill, corn maze, or just a drive to enjoy the fall foliage and one of us will inevitably ask “Did You Bring the Camera?“

How to Keep Track of and Organize Family Activity Ideas - Family activity files are a great way to keep track of all those clipped magazine articles, brochures, and websites, you have collected over the years in the hopes of having them readily available when planning your family outings and activities or when looking for some new family night ideas.