I am often frustrated at the end of the month because I have so many things on my "to do" list that are not scratched off.
But even more than incomplete projects or tasks, I sometimes feel that, as a family, we're not being intentional enough about developing the personal qualities that we want to develop in each other.
In today's post I want to share another part of my kitchen command centre, that has made a difference in how I feel throughout the month, and especially at the end of the month.
This is our Monthly Family Goals page.
You can see it's in the top right corner of our command centre, above my son's routine page and just on an angle above the hanging folders. {Sorry for the poor lighting... I just realized tonight that I hadn't taken a picture of our February goals page yet!}
Six months ago we started doing two things to try to be more intentional about communicating with each other as a family and setting goals for the month ahead.
First, we started having family meetings at the beginning of the month. We reflect back on our favourite parts of the previous month and look ahead to the coming month. And we set goals together.
We talk at each meeting about how we did with the previous month's goals and the kids like getting to "grade" us on how we did with our goals.
At the end of our monthly family meetings we try to have some sort of celebration (a special dessert or breakfast, an outing as a family, or a favourite activity).
The second thing we did was write those goals down so we could look at them throughout the month. We're doing much better at achieving our goals now that we can see them every day!
Here's a close-up version (with the kids' names deleted).
With it being Valentine's this month, we're focusing on love, and better ways of expressing it to each other. Our family is not perfect and we struggle sometimes to love each other in the best ways possible. These goals really help with that.
I think it's cute the goals my kids come up with. Anyone else have a child who is addicted to Doc McStuffins? My daughter is creating her own "Big Book of Boo Boos" :)
Our monthly family goals page has evolved a little over the last 6 months, but the basic idea has stayed consistent.
This is just a page for family goals, not my own personal and professional goals. This way everyone gets to contribute and be part of helping our family grow closer.
I've created a printable for you for February so you can set goals for your family this month. It's not too late :)
You can just print it out and write your family's plans and goals. I put mine in a dollar store frame that matches the ones I used for the kids' routine pages. I just swap it out each month with our new goals page.
I'll add a new printable each month, usually near the end of the previous month so you have a few days to print it out before the month starts :)
Here are a few tips on setting goals:
- Keep them simple
- Make them realistic
- Let your kids suggest their own - you might be surprised what they come up with!
- Put your goals page in a visible place so you can refer to it regularly (this will increase your success in achieving them)
This is the fourth post in this series on my command centre. If you haven't seen the first three parts, here they are:
Stay tuned for posts about our calendar (you can see a bit of it in the above picture), weekly plans (these help us achieve our monthly goals), and our storage for the kids' school work and art work that we keep!
In the meantime, if you're looking for more ideas for a command centre, you can check out the command centres post I wrote as part of the 31 Days of Organizing Tips series or my Entryways, Drop Zones & Command Centres board on Pinterest.
Do you have family meetings? Do you set goals with your family? Please share your ideas in the comments so we can all be inspired by you!
Happy organizing!
I link up at these great parties - Check them out!
