It happens without fail: a new rhythm begins, and our whole family spins out a bit. New rhythms like the start of the school year, the end of a school year or a new schedule of sports practices throw us all for a loop for a few weeks.
The big transitions are the toughest ones. When someone starts school for the first time or when life changes significantly as it did for everyone last March, it can be incredibly difficult to get your bearings and begin to feel like you’ve adapted to the new rhythm, the new routine.
As we prepare to begin the coming school year, some families are returning back to the classroom for the first time since March 2020. Some activities are resurrecting after more than a year off. And things won’t look exactly the same because we aren’t exactly the same. So, it’s more important than ever to prepare yourself for a smooth transition as much as possible.
Here are the five things that I’ll be doing to help smooth the path to creating as peaceful a transition into the new routine:
Meal Planning
When things begin to get stressful in life, one tremendous way you can anchor yourself is to pre-plan the things that you can plan for, like your meals. Every day, your family has to eat three meals, and that’s not changing.
When things are going smoothly, I can shoot from the hip on what we’ll be eating for meals, but in times of stress, it can be a comfort to know what’s for dinner and that you have everything you need already in the fridge ready to go. Moreover, it makes you far less likely to opt for convenience foods that might not provide the nutrition you’re looking for when you want to feel great.
Systems for Stuff
Few things stress me and my husband out as much as piles of clutter with no place to go. When you have kids in school, there’s an influx of papers to accumulate in your house, plus a myriad of other random accessories to their school things.
Before the school year begins, figure out a plan for where things go when they come in the door: backpacks, shoes, jackets, papers, lunch boxes, water bottles, etc. Not only will a good system of bins, hooks and cabinets help to tidy up your space, inherently reducing stress, it will also make leaving in the morning far easier because your people won’t be running around the house looking for misplaced items.
Delegate
As a working mom, I learned a long time ago that I might be able to “have it all” (that’s an article for another day), but I can’t do it all. Not even close, actually. So, as the schedule ramps up, find ways to delegate tasks you don’t enjoy doing or don’t particularly need to be the individual who does them in creative ways.
Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.
For our family, that looks like grocery delivery and housekeeping that comes to do the deeper cleaning in our home every other week. Other, even more affordable ways to delegate include ridesharing with friends for pickups and drop-offs, chore assignments for your family or revisiting how things like laundry and dishes are split between you and your spouse.
Digital Calendar
This is a must for our family, as both my husband and I work full time, we manage childcare throughout the week, along with the kids’ activities and a few of our own. We have shared Google calendars where we pre-fill in things like days when school is closed, gaps in childcare, important dates, etc. Then, as things come up, we add those to the calendar as well.
Every weekend, we’ll take a look at the week ahead and talk about who’s picking up the kids on which day, anything out of the norm that might have been overlooked by the other and what we need from the other. It allows us to commit to things on the spot, because if the calendar’s free, we’re free.
Scheduled Mornings
This is going to be a new system for us this fall, but I feel really optimistic about how it will help. I find the morning to be incredibly stressful, so I’ll be figuring out a morning schedule that will include when each person needs to be awake at the latest, what they will need to do to get ready, and when we need to be out the door for each place people are going.
Late at night, when I’m going to bed, I struggle to remember what time we need to be awake when we’re in a new rhythm, and I stress about being out the door on time. Identifying who needs to be where and when ahead of time will help alleviate the pressure on my groggy mind and, if we find we need a little more time, it can easily be adjusted.
Above all else, have grace with yourself and your family as you begin a new rhythm. The beginning of the school year can be stressful for everyone, but in time you’ll adapt and things will feel normal again.
