A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan

Inspired? Learn more about how you can join our team and support the Kiva organization.

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

2009 Family Easter and Lent Activity Packs Are Here

Our popular family Easter and lent activity packs are in!  Our family Easter and Lent packs are designed specifically for families on the go who are looking for simple quiet ways to celebrate the Lent and Easter season without the planning, running, and hassle. Each activity pack includes a 2009 Lent calendar, daily family devotions for Lent, family activity ideas, and puzzles.  Lent begins February 25th!

Save 40% on the Mom’s Family Desk Planner

Save 40%

Save 40% on the Mom’s Family Desk Planner.  Now only $7.80 while supplies last.  The Mom’s Family Desk Planner moves seamlessly from desk to purse and is indispensable for moms on the go (and what mom isn’t on the go?). Each handy week-at-a-glance grid features two columns, one for Mom’s schedule and one for the whole family’s schedules. In the back, Mom can record phone numbers for school, work, maintenance and repair people, and restaurants. Plus there are perforated grocery and “to do” lists, 150 full-color stickers, and storage pockets on the inside front and back covers. And, this being Boynton after all, the spreads are illustrated with a cast of lively, lovably charming animal characters.  The 16 month planner runs from September 2009 - December 2009.

Creating and Writing a Family Vision and Mission Statement

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us, to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.

 – Oswald Spengler, German Philosopher

Families visit our website everyday looking for practical easy solutions for conquering the chaos of their lives and we pride ourselves on giving our visitors what they need and want.  And even though we spend a lot of time writing about managing the daily realities of everyday family life, we also believe it is important that families take the time to define who they are as a family and what they want from life.  Because in the end, no daily routine, home organizing product, cleaning schedule or family calendar is going to give families true fulfillment.  Fulfillment comes from the relationships we build, the goals we achieve, and the character of our beings. So this is why we spend an equal amount of time teaching families to set family goals, tackle the yeah but’s, and write family vision and mission statements.  All of which we hope will help families and parents look deep into their lives and define who they are as individuals and as a family.

What is a Family Vision and Mission Statement?

A family vision and mission statement is an articulation of a family’s values, goals, and character.  Through the process of creating and writing a mission statement, families will define who they are as individuals and as a family, have a clearer understanding of their priorities, and hopefully gain some peace in having a plan.  Made up of both a vision, a visual depiction of your ideal life, and a mission statement, is the vision expressed in words,  both are designed to help you articulate what you want your life and family to be and keep you rooted in your priorities. 

Establishing a Direction - The Family Vision Statement

The first fundamental of defining who you are is to establish a direction or what we will call a family vision. 

 The family vision is a visual depiction of your ideal family life; a picture of what you see when you start with the end if mind.  What does happiness look like for your family?  What does your picture look like when all family members are fulfilled?  What do we want for our family and for each other?  What does success look like?  What does our vision look like when all needs are met?  It is through the process of creating a family vision that we establish the direction or map for our family.

Things you will Need to Complete the Family Vision

Markers or pens
A tabletop easel pad (check your local office supply store) or a notepad no smaller than 8 ½ x 11
Approximately 1 - 2 Hours of your family’s time

Things to Keep in Mind

• Families are made up of individuals with different needs and wants and everyone’s needs and wants need to be included.
• Children have needs and wants though they may not be able to verbally express them.
• There is no pre-set definition of family.  You will need to define what family is to you and who to include in the process.
• For families with both parents present, remember, marriage is an important aspect of every family and should be considered when completing the vision.
• Be honest with each other and yourself. 

Creating the Family Vision

Starting with a clean sheet of paper, ask each family member these questions:

What makes you happy?  What are those things in life that put a smile on your face and get you through your difficult days? 

For some this may be having family nights, children who don’t fight and are kind to one another, that first cup of coffee in the morning, playing with our friends, or going on long walks with our spouse.  After giving everyone a few moments to think the question over, select a family member to go first.  This family member begins by choosing a spot on the blank paper to draw a picture of what makes them happy.  Remember to refrain from judging.  Every family member has a right to their own thoughts and feelings and shouldn’t be judged for their ideas. 

After all family members have had a chance to draw out their ideas; it is time to move onto a new blank sheet of paper and the next question.

What makes us fulfilled?  What are those things in life that bring us the most satisfaction and leave us with the feeling of completeness? 

For example, this may be something like getting a promotion at work, volunteering our time at our favorite charity, learning a new skill, or watching our children accomplish new things.  For school aged children this may be something like getting good grades, scoring goals or hitting homeruns, or volunteering their time.  Preschool aged children may have a little difficulty with this question because it is hard for them to understand what it means to be fulfilled, so to help them try restating it for them in more concrete terms like what makes you most proud?  What things do you do that make you most want to tell mom and dad about?  What things make you feel most safe?  For children this age, a sense of fulfillment comes from some of the more basic needs in life; needs like love, safety, and accomplishment.

Now that we have tackled the things that make us happy and fulfilled, it’s time to move on to those things in life that we want.  Starting with a new sheet of blank paper, ask each family member

What do we want for ourselves and for our family?  What are our hopes, dreams, aspirations not only for our family, but for ourselves has well?

For example we may want to take a lot of exciting vacations as a family or to have a successful thriving business.  Or we may want to continue or grow our faith or maybe retire at the age of 55? These are the things inside of us we would most like to have in our lives.  This is your chance to include all of those dreams and desires that you can’t seem to fit into your current life or you are not sure how to go about realizing.

By the end of this first step in the process, you should have a completed family vision drawing encompassing the elements of happiness, fulfillment, and aspirations.  It’s time now to move on to using the family vision to create a family mission statement.

Creating a Family Mission Statement

A family mission statement is a verbal description of what you want your life and family to be; a priority list for your family and your life.  How are we going to live our lives?  What are we going to use to help us make major decisions?  What are our priorities?  Are we spending the majority of our time on our priorities or are we being distracted with things that aren’t important to us?  It is these life decisions a family mission statement can help answer. 

Finding the Themes

Begin by taking some time to look over your family vision drawing.  What are the major themes, overall ideas, and messages that come out over the 3 separate drawings?  Using a blank sheet of paper, write down the themes.  Themes will be different for every family.  An example of a theme that you may find is learning new things, being active in your faith, helping others, visiting and learning about new places, accomplishing new things, giving your best, being financially secure, and finding fulfillment in your professional life.  Don’t stop to edit or analyze just write them down.  So go through and look for the overall ideas and messages.  Write them down.  Depending on the ages and interests of your kids, this may be best done by either both or one parent and then reported back to the family at the next meeting.  These themes will be used to write the family mission statement.

Writing the Family Mission Statement

Now that you have your list of themes, it is time to write the family mission statement.  Once again, depending on the ages and interest of your kids, it may be easier for a parent to take the first crack at writing this and then share it with the rest of the family for discussion, agreement, and changes.  To make it a bit easier to write, we are going to write our family mission statement in 3 pronged format

To…. (Do something)

In such a way that….. (Quality of action)

So that…. (We gain these results or benefits)

Here is an example:

 To realize our dreams, goals, and aspirations as a family and as individuals in a way that stretches our intellect, enriches our Christian faith, strengthens our character, and enriches our family life. So that we are fulfilled, happy, confident, and always close.

The first part of a family mission statement should contain the action.  What is your family going to do?  What specific steps or actions are you going to make?  What are the specific efforts you are going to make as a family?  In our example the action is “to realize our dreams, goals, and aspirations as a family and as individuals”.  Another example might be “to treat each other with respect and love” or “to communicate more effectively” or “to learn new things and new cultures”.  Just remember to make it very action oriented - something that requires effort on the part of each and every family member. 

In such a way that….this is the quality of our action.  In what manner are we going to accomplish this?  In a way that gets us what we want no matter what?  In a way that nurtures our spirit?  In a way that gets us the fastest results possible?  In a way that is comfortable to all family members?  In a way that lets us be creative?  In a way that uses our individual skills and abilities?  In a way that everyone can participate?  In our example the quality is “stretches our intellect, enriches our Christian faith, strengthens our character, and enriches our family life”  So every action we take to “realize our dreams and goals” is going to be done in a way that allows us to learn new things, deepens our faith, makes our family life better, and makes us better people. 

The third part, so that, is where you capture the results of your actions.  What do you want to come out of all of this?  Strong independent kids?  Successful and happy parents?  Caring actively involved kids?  A better marriage?  A closer relationship with your kids?  In our example the results are “so that we are fulfilled, happy, confident, and always close.”

Once you have your family vision drawing and family mission statement completed, you need to find a few

Use your creative talents to recreate your vision drawing

central places to post them so that you remember to use them in everyday life.  You may choose to frame them, add them to your family journal, post them to a personal website, or simply hang them on your refrigerator.  If you are creative, you also might want to use your creativity to reproduce the vision drawing into something reflective of your talents.  For example if you are a painter, try using the family vision drawings to paint a new picture that can be framed above the fireplace.  If you are a graphic artist, try using your grapic skills to create a visual image to be framed or posted to a website.  Just be sure to post them in many spots and in central spots so that they remain the focus of your family’s attention. 

Good luck!

Conquering the Chaos Part III – Creating a Family Schedule that Works

Conquering the Chaos Part III - Creating a Family Schedule that Works

Congratulations on making it this far in our Conquering the Chaos series.  This is the final installment of our three part series and before getting into the details of making a family schedule let’s recap what we have done so far.

If you have followed along in Part I and Part II in our Conquering the Chaos series you should have the following things completed:

• An inventory of how and where your family spends their time
• A good understanding of the bottlenecks, habits, and patterns that are causing problems
• A list or understanding of things you want to change
• A list or understanding of the things working well
• What areas or activities are causing the most stress in your life as well as which areas are consuming the most time
• What areas of your life need more time
• What areas or buckets of your family life that are the most enjoyable
• A Family Life Vision - A well thought out articulated statement of how you want your family life to look and feel

We will use all of these things to create a solid family schedule, so if you haven’t already go back to Part I and Part II and work through them before continuing on with this segment.

Setting Anchor Points

To finalize your family schedule you need to begin by setting anchor points to your day.  These are the ideal start and end points to your day in which everything fits in between.  Using the family life vision you wrote in Part II as a guide, set an ideal start time of your day and an ideal ending time of your day.  For example, let’s say you would love to start your day no earlier than 6:00am and be in bed everything night with lights out by 10:00pm.  6:00am would be your start time and 10:00pm would be your end time and all the family life bucket activities need to fit within these two times.  These times are the anchors to your day and need to be realistic.  If you are unrealistic in setting these anchors then your family schedule will soon start to fail after implementation, so put some thought into them and be sure to keep in mind whether you are a morning person or a night owl. 

Establishing Priorities

Okay now that you have the anchor points to your day set, it is time to start establishing priorities.  This part may be difficult for a lot of people, but without it you will find yourself and family scattered and overwhelmed. 

Using the family life vision statement you created in Part II as well as questions you answered in the Family Life Bucket exercise, you need to go through all the family life buckets and sort them into three categories - High Priority, Medium Priority, and Low Priority.

High priority buckets are buckets in your life that mean the most to us or are “requirements of living”.  These are the things we do throughout our day that are either necessities for living like eating, showering, homework, or that are intrinsically important to our family.  These are the “must do’s” and “want to do’s” of your day.

The medium priority buckets in your life are the “should do’s” of your day.  These are the things that we may or may not enjoy doing, but have to be done to avoid negative consequences and to function normally in life.  For example, house cleaning for many people may fall into this category.  It isn’t something we must do to survive and isn’t necessarily something we enjoy doing, but if it isn’t done can result in unhealthy living conditions and distractions to the family life.  Other things that may fall into this category are things like laundry, bill paying, lawn work, or visits to the dentist. 

The low priority buckets of your life are things that are not critical to everyday living and you do if you have time or energy.   For some people this may be things like making beds, washing windows, or fixing a squeaky door hinge.   These are the buckets and activities that we will assign the least amount of time in our schedule. 

Creating a Family Schedule that Works

Now that you have all of your family activities and buckets prioritized it is time to put everything into a family schedule.

To do this you will need some type of blank weekly schedule and a pencil.  You can use our family schedule printable or create your own.  Just be sure to have one with all seven days and one in which you have room to write. 

To begin, start with your highest priority items and your anchor times and go through each day assigning a block of time for each high priority item.  Much of how you allocate time for each high priority activity will depend on the hard points in your schedule such as when school starts or when you need to be at work.  To avoid making this step too tedious, start by just blocking off chunks of time (see the weekend example in our printable) for each high priority item rather than trying to assign specific time slots.  Over time you can refine the schedule and make it more detailed by assigning specific time slots if you need them to help you stay on track.  Once you schedule in the high priority items, go through and fill in your schedule for the medium priority items and the low priority items.  When you are done you should have a schedule with time each week or day for each family life bucket on your list. 

Sticking to the Schedule

Now that you have your family schedule created here are some tips to help you stay on track.

• Post the schedule in a central location so that you MUST look at it every day.
• Add reviewing the family schedule to your daily routines.
• Work on anticipating disruptions and managing disruptions so that you can stay on track
• Don’t be afraid to change the schedule if you find something isn’t working. Most if not all families will have to make some changes to the schedule and this is okay!
• Use the family schedule as a guide and learn to be flexible when it comes to making changes and deviating from the schedule from time to time. Letting the kids stay up an hour later occasionally isn’t going to ruin the schedule just as long as you don’t let it become a habit.
• Practice delegating, deleting, and simplifying certain activities so that you can fit everything in at a comfortable pace.

Remember, there will be days where no amount of scheduling and planning will help.  On days like these, just accept the disruptions for the day while being careful not to use the bad days as an excuse to abandon the schedule.  

Good luck!