5 Effective Ways to Make The Most Out of Your Family Time

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Do you consider yourself a busy parent? How about your partner? Do you find yourselves not having that much family time with the kids? If so, you need to focus on sparing some time for your family to bond. 

A lot of parents find it hard to balance work, family, and household chores, but that doesn't mean it's not doable. You just need to do lot of organizing and time management in order to go from to-do lists to actually doing what you listed. Cooking meals, going to work, and doing the laundry may be essential things that you need to do because it is your responsibility as a parent to do so, but this will also cost you the time that you could be spending with your family. 

To help you out in balancing your time for work and family, here are some tips that you can consider applying in your schedule.

• Think of your to-do list thoroughly

It is important for busy people to have a to-do list and have a schedule for everything to stay organized. You can always divide your list into three categories: don't, delegate, and do. You will always have a thing or two that you need to do first above everything else, may it be on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. If there's one thing that you think you can't really do, cross it out right away. Go through each item and ask yourself what are the benefits, advantages, and disadvantages if you do this certain item first or last. One trick in doing this is thinking if this is a priority or not. 

• Use what you have

You need to be resourceful enough for you to balance everything and keep it in place. If you happen to have a babysitter for your kids, ask them to prepare dinner, pick up the kids' toys, or just restock stuff around the house. Coordinate errands in the family if you can. If there are members in your household that have spare time in their schedules, you can always ask them help for errands, such as paying bills. You can also assign tasks to your household members for you to have a time for yourself or time to do other stuff. 

• Get the kids to do stuff

Folding the laundry, sweeping the floor, or watering the plants are just simple things to do that you can assign your kids. Chores should also be given to children, not only to save you time for yourself, but for them to learn as well. Again, this is a two-way thing, and everyone can benefit from it.

• Lessen time-wasters

If you're always on the go and you tend to misplace stuff, it's high time for you to make a more organized system of where people in the household should put those things. An example would be car and house keys. Allocate a place where everyone can remember to put the keys so that if anyone looks for it, they will know immediately where to find it. This reduces the time of looking for the keys and even avoid morning stress and frustrations.

• Exercise your technology

Technology is everywhere nowadays and it's important for us to maximize it, even at home. You can always do your schedule with a virtual organizer or even sign up for a city e-mail and text alert for updates regarding the weather or transportation delays. You can also program important dates within the family just like school or sporting events, family get-togethers, and more for an organized flow of activities.