I’m curious when you hear the words home management what comes to mind? Probably things like cleaning the kitchen, doing laundry, staying on top of the daily influx of mail + other paperwork...etc.

You’d be correct but they don’t make up the whole puzzle.  

Despite each of these things being crucially important to creating a beautiful, tidy home, each of these things is only a small piece of a much larger puzzle that keeps your home looking great working well + feeling like a million bucks!

At Elegant Simplicity, we believe home is everything you need + nothing more. So to us, home management becomes more about actually identifying + then creating organized systems designed specifically for each area in your home to ensure that the needs of you + your family are always taken care of.

Life can be overwhelming! We know this because despite being a supermom, we’re complex human beings, boo. Moving at warp speed, going a hundred miles a minute we all have a thousand things that we need to get done that are all equally important, right?

Well, even though you’re one of the most powerful supermoms I know, eventually you’re gonna hit a brick wall. This is why we need a proven process + a simple easy to follow system that helps manage our homes in a way that’s innately intuitive to our everyday habits + routines. 

Because as Gretchen Rubin puts it, “outer order leads to inner calm.” 

When it comes to home management it’s all about having systems in place that with a little effort we can rely on + confidently trust that they’re going to work seamlessly. Because life is short my friend +  when it comes to how we spend our time it’s a choice. And it’s my professional recommendation that “your time should be spent doing the things that matter most in life with those we love, cherish + adore.”

Not wasted shuffling things around, looking for things that should be easy to find or getting frustrated by the constant flow of clutter, or wasted buying things we know we already own but can’t find. That’s insanity!!!

So, where do we start? I thought you’d never ask :)

What Is Home Management?

Before we get too far along — home management is all about nurturing + taking care of the things that are high priority + most important to you + your family.

Things like cleaning, decluttering + staying organized to remodeling your kitchen, designing your living room, or building the home of your dreams. 

Home management is looking at your home + your everyday routines as a whole. Then taking the necessary time to create a plan for how you want to live there. It’s not only about how space should look + function that’s important but it’s also how you hope to feel when you’re at home.

• Earthy, elegant, effortless

• Calm, comfortable, confident

• Simple, relaxed, pulled together, intentional

You see, if you’re always looking at your home through the lens of fragmented bite-sized pieces (like remodeling just the master bathroom or only organizing your home office) you’re never getting a clear vision for how you want your entire home to look, feel + function. In other words, you’re selling yourself short because you live + use your entire. home.

Now I know this is something that not everyone loves to hear –– but it’s true! And to help get the ball rolling in the right direction because at first, it can seem overwhelming, we divide home management into 5-main categories around your routines.

5 Home Management Categories

1. Cleaning + Laundry

2. Decluttering + Organizing 

3. Shopping + Cooking

4. Scheduling

5. Remodeling + Designing

Regardless of who does the heavy lifting, you + your loved ones or someone you hire to help you do these things — you want to create a home management system that helps you look at your household as a whole + fully visualize how your home can work best for you.

Why A Home Management System Matters

Personal story, whenever I’m talking to my mother-in-law + she says “humor me for a minute” it makes me smile because the wisdom she’s about to bestow on me  I know is going to be life-changing. You see, whenever my mother-in-law says “humor me” she’s actually encouraging you to take a leap of faith + trust her intuition + then she proceeds to tell you why *wink!* 

So with grace + gumption, I’m asking you my friend to “humor me” for one moment + I’ll show you exactly why having a clear vision for how your home is managed really matters.

It’s really easy to visualize what happens if no one cleans right? But what happens if your home doesn’t have a strategy for dealing with incoming paperwork — not just important mail like utility bills but things like schoolwork, permission slips, papers for work, receipts, information from doctors visits, estate planning documents, or tax information...etc? 

I’ll tell you what happens, it piles up + creates an overwhelmingly stressful home environment. A little pile here, a small stack there which eventually lead to a huge collection of paper pile-up wayyyy over there... Do you see it?  Through the door, into the office, on top of the desk, in the closet, on the floor + in the overstuffed drawers — catch my drift!

And it’s not only paper clutter that needs to be managed, what happens if no one goes shopping for groceries — eventually, will there be any food left in the house? Or better yet, what happens if everyone goes shopping for groceries + now we have a ton of food to store? Is there a strategy in place for keeping an organized pantry or refrigerator? If not, I can promise you that while some of that food will get used, a lot of it will go to waste. And who enjoys the conversation you have with dear hubby when one of you is throwing money out the window?

Ok — you can be done “humoring me” now! 

You see, home management matters because it’s an organized system that’s designed around your routines to help create a home with everything you need + nothing more.

And it not only ensures what is important to you has a place in your home but it also helps to keep things from getting deprioritized, overlooked, or worse forgotten.

The Trickle-Down Effect

A few years ago, Harvard Business Review (HBR) wrote an incredible article about the trickle-down effect of good + bad leadership. Truly, it’s fantastic + well worth your time.

In it, they refer to a study done by UC San Diego that shows happiness is contagious. If you have a friend who is happy, you’re 25% likelier to be happy. And the inverse is true as well. And so they wondered if the same would hold true when it wasn’t peering to peer but rather for those in leadership positions + how it might affect their employees in the workplace. 

What they found in layman's terms is that if you’re a great boss who leads with positivity, high energy + words of encouragement it actually impacts not only those directly below you but it trickles down to even their team.

So — what the heck does this have to do with home management? Well, take those scenarios from above where the systems around home management are non-existent + ask yourself:

• What does this do for me? How does it make me feel?

• How does this affect my marriage or my relationship?

• What does a lack of structure in my home do to my kids? What does it make them feel? What lessons are they inadvertently learning about home?

Studies like this one from HBR show that it’s incredibly likely that the stress, overwhelm + frustration you feel is in fact also present for those who live in your home with you. Let’s lean back on that quote from above “outer order leads to inner calm” because while you may be the matriarch of the family, it’s not all about you boo. It’s about creating inner calm for everyone in your home + designing organizing systems that are intuitive to each of you so that home management is something that you embrace doing.

3 Tips For Developing A Home Management System

There are a couple of things to consider when developing a home management system. 

Incorporate Everyone

Everyone who lives in your home should be included. In our house, we include Brooks who is 3 so every week when our produce is delivered he has slowly adapted to the idea that he helps us clean the produce, dry it + put it in the refrigerator.

The important part is you not only create routines but you involve them in the decision-making process as well. For him, he has a shelf in our pantry that he goes to for his “healthy snacks” and when we’re making our grocery list we get his input. He loves it! And it’s been a telltale sign that exactly what the UC San Diego study found — happiness is contagious.

If you have older kids — balancing their bank account or learning how to cook is a huge part of their development. By doing it together + making it a part of your home management system you’re instilling in them a sense of accountability that’s necessary to be successful in life. Early on they may see it as you telling them they have no money for gas or they can’t go to Chik-fil-A *wink* but over time, the skill set they’re learning will be invaluable.

Create Todo Lists, Checklists + Calendars

Home management is about accountability — to yourself, your family + your home. At Elegant Simplicity, we make home management incredibly fun + also a heck of a lot easier by creating to-do lists, checklists + calendars for our clients.

What you want to do is think about all the things that you do over + over again. Then, divided them into categories:

• Daily todos 

• Weekly todos

• Monthly checklist

• Quarterly checklist

• Annual checklist

And what you find is that when you break up everything you have get to do it’s actually a heck of a lot more manageable when you put it on the calendar. 

Paper or Digital — both work

We work with a ton of tech-savvy clients who love to integrate technology into their lives. From apps like Asana or Monday.com to Todoist + Cozi Family Organizer, if organizing calendars, to-do lists + habit-changing routines is more fun + easier for you through an app — game on.

But if you feel like a simple checklist is more your speed then — no problem. 

The important thing is to use it + if you’re not using it, ask yourself why. And make the necessary adjustments.

And my friend, if you loved this blog post you’re absolutely going to go nuts for our FREE 4-Days To A More Beautiful + Functional Home video course.

You can also check out our amazing FREE resource library + if you’re looking to start your home management organizing journey, book a FREE 30min. Clarity Call and… let’s chat!