The Dream: No more piles of completed (or not completed!) school work. No more wondering what’s for dinner. No more lost invitations, flyers and other pieces of mail. No more wondering who has sharing day at school or who’s day it is to bring class snack.
The Reality: Our customized Family Command Center can do all of this and more. Let’s be honest…keeping track of everyone’s schedules is difficult, especially when there is more than one child with multiple school assignments, after school activities and various appointments. There are so many ways to going about keeping a family calendar accessible for everyone. One of our favorite ways to do this is with a central Family Command Center. This is an area of your home that houses the calendar, menu board (for meal planning…If you don’t do this already, you should! More on that later!) note boards, baskets and other items to keep track of your family’s activities and paperwork.
We recently completed a command center that included all of these items. The calendar, menu board and note board are Style + Dwell originals, but you can make your own if you have a Cricut or other craft cutter.
Using any blank space in your home, you can create a Family Command Center. This can be in your kitchen, mudroom or any other space your family frequently uses.
Menu Board: Our acrylic menu board is perfect for planning out the week’s meals. This not only helps you plan out your shopping trips, but eliminates the constant “What’s for dinner mom?” questions. Try planning out your week every Sunday. We promise it will make your week run a lot smoother. Fun stickers and clings can be used for for a more fun visual.
Acrylic Calendar: We love using these types of calendars. Not only are they reusable and totally customizable, but they are beautiful as well! We recommend using wet erase markers to color code each family member’s schedule. We also love using reusable stickers and clings to make the calendar fun and allow the little ones to recognize images of what they have going on that day.
Using our acrylic calendar, you can color code each child’s schedule with wet erase markers and reusable stickers.
Magnetic Board + White Board: Wedding invitations, birthday party invites and other important paper need a safe home when they come into the house so they don’t get lost. If you have a refrigerator that has panels to match your cabinetry or a stainless steel one that isn’t magnetic, you need something that is! I love this magnetic board and attached a small white board for my running shopping list. Using a magnetic marker organizer keeps your pens and markers in easy reach.
Wall Mounted Organizers: We gave each child their own personalized organizer to drop “to-do” items. When the kids come home from school, they empty their bags into these wall mounted baskets which allows us to go through them keep important papers such as permission slips and homework items visible.
Personalized homework drop zones for each child
Note Board: Sometimes you don’t have a singular wall to house all of these items. We love our wall mounted acrylic notes board to write down important reminders. We have this one set up over the kitchen desk. Add a couple plants and voila! Cute and functional.
