Let’s get started with the Step-by-Step Home Organizing Party!
The Vision: I would love for each of you to feel calm and organized. We want to help you create a generally clean home (not perfect!) that is an ideal environment for building a strong family, doing your most important work, and thriving in all areas. That way, your space will lift and support you as you face all the things that life throws at you!
If you’re interested in an overview of the nine steps we will be covering as a part of this party, come listen in to last week’s podcast. If you’re already a community member, you should have received your worksheet in this week’s newsletter. Otherwise, you can also get the worksheet to follow along and track your progress here: LearnDoBecome.com/party
Today, we’re talking about Lesson 1: Create Your Ideal Family Routine. By the end of this lesson, you will have a simple, doable family routine posted (and running) so that you can BREATHE and enjoy the rest of the organizing party.
If you already have a family routine in place—that’s great! You can either skip this podcast or scroll through to get more ideas and inspiration. (Maybe this will help you make any needed updates to optimize your routines!)
Before we dive in, I’d like you to do a quick assessment of where you are right now. And then at the end of this Home Organizing Party, you can take it again–see the progress you’ve made!
Home Organizing Assessment
Pull up a digital note or take out a piece of paper (this would be great to keep on the back of your Home Organizing Worksheet!) and rate your answers to each of the following questions on a scale of 1 to 5–with 5 being a high level of peace, order, hope, etc.
- What is your general level of peace and mental clarity?
- What is the level of order in your home right now?
- What is your level of hope and excitement about life?
Remember, the idea is not stress about where you are. We want to keep the focus on where you are MOVING, using this assessment as a baseline.
Routines List Criteria
Now, we’re ready to dive into creating your own Routines List. Here are four critical elements to a successful Routines List:
- It works for the whole family.
- It is so simple that everyone could memorize it.
- It feels 0% stressful. (Choose routines that lift you!)
- It leads you closer to the person you want to become.
When we created a Routines List for our home, we put in a very basic daily framework.

I combine this framework with my “Streaks” app–plus a few other routines that are already habits. You can learn more about this app in our podcast with Robin Long, linked in the resources below!

How to Create a Routines List
- Sit down and have a personal brainstorm.
- Discuss it with a family member who has the most desire to help or who has an understanding of the needs of the whole family.
- Share it with the entire family.
- Write it down and post it (or if it’s just for you, you could keep it digitally–just make sure you will be able to see it regularly.)
Things to Remember
It’s going to be a little like a puzzle each day. But what’s the purpose of a puzzle? To build the family and the family relationships.
This is your multiple-choice perfect day. Some days I get a lot of work done. Other days I am able to focus more on rest and replenishment. Looking at the day as something flexible helps me to feel complete by the time I am ready for bed–regardless of the specific activities that day held.
You build habits because you want to BECOME someone or something new.
Building better habits isn’t about littering your day with life hacks. It’s not about flossing one tooth each night or taking a cold shower each morning or wearing the same outfit each day. It’s not about achieving external measures of success like earning more money, losing weight, or reducing stress. Habits can help you achieve all of these things, but fundamentally they are not about having something. They are about becoming someone. Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.
p. 41, Atomic Habits
In Atomic Habits, James Clear also talks about how goals are great for setting direction, but systems are great for making progress. You don’t want to spend more time setting goals than you do figuring out your systems. Many people share similar life goals–and some accomplish them, while others fall short. The difference between the “winners” and the “losers” is having a system for making progress in those goals!
Okay, so now it’s time to access your Home Organizing Worksheet. Once you’ve finished the assessment and have your routines list written and posted, color in the block for the first lesson! 🙂
Then, come join us next week–we’ll be diving into Lesson 2: Put Out the Fires (and Take Care of YOU).
Related Resources
Step-By-Step Home Organizing Worksheet
Sign up at LearnDoBecome.com/party to gain access to each lesson as they are published and celebrate alongside us–we’ll give you the Home Organizing Worksheet to track your progress! Also, if you know of anyone who would benefit from these lessons, be sure to invite them to the party by sharing that link with them–the more, the merrier.

Related Posts
- Your Optimal Health Routine – with Robin Long and April Perry
- Clean Laundry and a Stocked Fridge: Our Family’s Routines
- A Fun, Logical Way to Set Up Your Routines List!
- Secrets to Your “Happy Success” List
- It’s About the FEELING We Create in Our Homes
Steps to Everyday Productivity Program
We are so excited to go into more depth on this lesson in our STEP Mastery group! So if you’re a part of our STEP Mastery community, be sure to watch for more in the Facebook group. And if you haven’t yet joined our Steps to Everyday Productivity community, we can’t wait to share more with you!
And if you’re looking to make some headway right away, join our free training! We’ll give you four steps you can apply today to get out of the overwhelm–and share more about our Steps to Everyday Productivity Program! Register here!

Thank you for this timely instruction. I homeschooled for 17 years and was very structured. It has been a long time since I had a schedule that works because my days were filled with helping everyone around me. Now with this pandemic, and so much time on my hands, I have felt lost and useless. I have started and finished some projects, but feel like I am getting nowhere. I am looking forward to a simple schedule that will help me feel accomplished and fufill the purposes that God has for me. Thanks again.
Thanks for offering this PARTY..looking forward to putting more structure in my day. As a retiree, with a long list of “need to do’s”, I struggle with …what do I do now. Just creating the family routine sheet for myself, has brought a sense of peace and an “A HA” moment.
Looking forward to the rest of the PARTY….Cheers
This was so Good!!!…. But, you always have great messages. Thank you.
Thank you, Nubia. So glad you’re here!!
I like the concept, but I know that our weeks are significantly different than our weekends. I am curious whether you have a separate sheet for that.
Thanks for asking, Lindsay. We don’t have a separate printable available for weekends but you could definitely create one! We’re so glad you’re here!
When I have tried schedules like this, a couple things trip me up: in your one hour “Dinner” block, do you include making dinner and cleaning up? No matter what I do, I have a hard time managing all that in an hour. If I cook in the block before or clean up in the block after, it sets those blocks up for failure, in a way, because they already have an automatic chunk out of them. Is one of your structured work time blocks dedicated (partly or wholly) to household chores–cleaning, laundry, bills, etc.?
Do you have a different schedule for weekends? I know it is meant to be flexible, but one thing that happens to me is that I will carefully craft an ideal schedule and immediately feel almost rebellious about it and want to ignore it. Other days, the spirit is willing but the body is unable and I just can’t. I get that you “adjust”, but how precisely to you make the adjustments? Do you write a “schedule-light” for those days or for any of those days individually? Do you just ignore the whole thing? Do you change some parts but not others? I’ve tried a lot of different tacks and just not had a lot of success and just wondered what it really looks like when used effectively. Thanks.
Great question, Michele! This particular schedule was created in response to April’s children being home from school due to the pandemic. As you’ve mentioned, you’ll want to tweak this to make it work for you. It may be helpful to remember to keep the time blocks long enough to get things done and general enough that one change doesn’t disrupt the schedule. The focus and length of the blocks could also depend on how many are in your family and their availability to help with specific tasks.
Having solid routines can be helpful as well. That way when you have an “off” day, you can take it easy and the rest of the week isn’t disrupted by that down-time. We hope this is helpful! We dive deeper into routines inside our Steps To Everyday Productivity (STEP) program as well. We’d love to support you there if it’s a good fit for you. Thanks for being with us!
I sat down this morning and put a few things on the Current Projects and Next Actions page. I could feel some tension lifting just from writing down the various next actions regarding my many spinning plates. I thank you for that. Looking forward to growing with L-D-B.
I printed out the printables and put them in a small three ring binder. I’m considering putting a few of the folders labels into tabs in the notebook as well for easy access on a daily basis. I’m still trying to figure how how to create my area on my desk. Right now, no room for cubbies.
Linda, you’re making great progress! Cubbies are an option for support materials but you can also use folders or boxes depending on the size of the materials you’re storing for your projects and routines. So excited for you!
I started tonight cleaning my office, my daughters started to get rid of clothing from the porch, and my hubby threw away papers from the office! I told them that I am ready for his change in my life! Trying to move forward and declutter! A lot more to do! but yeah us…good start, even though I felt that I needed to be more in control when my daughters were going through the piles of clothing. But I am trying to let it go!
Hi April,
The family schedule will never work for us daily. We have older girls going to college with different job schedules…that limit us to have a coincide work routine schedule. We might be able to do dinners together!
Hi Diane! Thanks for your comment. 🙂 This particular family schedule was created to help April and her family manage “at home learning” due to the pandemic. We encourage you to take the principles taught here and to apply them in a way that works best for your family. Reach out to your family members and ask them what would make the most difference for them so that you have time to connect and support one another.
We’re so glad you’re here, and we wish you all the best as you move through this journey!