Family Control Center

I never realized the amount of paperwork we would have to handle at our home. Mail and school papers were taking over our house, and we had to fix it! It was one of our 2018 goals to come up with a solution, but what is the solution? We needed help, but had no idea where to start!

Enter the professionals! Organization and finding solutions are gifts that people have, enter our good friend and fixer! I fully support everyone utilizing professionals when they need help! It saves time, money and sanity! 🙂

Identifying the problem

Our mail kept on getting dumped on our kitchen island and we never wanted to go through it. When friends came over, we would just grab all the mail and throw it in a drawer or closet….the worst! I know. #cluttermess

Finding a Solution

Not the easiest, even though it sounds easy. Organizing paper is a huge under taking but coming up with a system that works is the larger issue. My husband and I hate dealing with paper, so we had a huge pile that no one want to deal with. I am not going to spoil all of Katie’s fun, but she was able to identify that paper was a huge issue for us, and she had a solution! We enter our house through our laundry room, so this was the perfect place for our “Home Control Center” or drop zone.

In talking to Katie about our issues, we also needed a place for our family calendar. She had her hands full to solve our daily problems!

Family Calendar hanging on the wall of our laundry room, along with clipboards to organize each family members paper work that needs action.

Personal Solutions

The most wonderful part about working with “House of Merit” was the ability to have a personal plan to solve a huge problem in our house. Follow along with her Instagram @houseofmerit. I think we can all agree sometimes in a relationship it takes a third party to help resolve/solve issues. My husband and I didn’t want to solve this issue, but Katie was able to provide simple, concrete and helpful suggestions to our problem. Really a win, win, win, if you know what I mean! All professionals are not created equal, but there are so many great professionals out there that can help you customize a solution for your stage in life. I loved being able to talk to someone who has dealt with similar issues and has solutions that work! We can try things on our own, but that is what got us into this pickle to begin with, so professional help was needed!

Issues to Solve For

  • Paper (mail and kids school papers)
  • Family Calendar for EVERYONE to see
  • System to keep all of this managed (the biggest challenge)

Our Final Space

Calendar for keeping everyone in the family on the same page, along with clipboards to organize papers that need action. We also keep a running list of anything we need to buy on the right hand side.
I bought mine at Michael’s, but they are sold out of this exact one.
Mail drop basket is on the shelf on top of our Washing Machine, and our package’s are dropped on top of our washing machine.
Mail basket, no matter who gets the mail, it is easy to drop off in this basket. We have reoccurring dates on our calendar to go through the mail. This is helpful to make sure it is action-ed on, and we don’t get a huge pile again!
We utilized clipboards for each person in our house. Each person has unique paperwork that needs to be dealt with, so this is an easy way to have a stack and remove off the wall at once to manage. During normal times, the kids paper work from school would be on their clipboards, but for now we are displaying art work.
I used command hooks to hang everything, so when we don’t need this set up anymore it is easy to remove.

Shopping List for Project

Items we used for our home command center, click through links to purchase.

Whiteboard Calendar (similar style)

Clear Clipboards

Command Strips

Dry Erase Markers

Mail Basket (similar style)

I can’t tell you how excited this “new” space is for our family! It has eliminated stress by not having mailed piled up and we can’t find papers. Everything is organized and easily aces-sable!

No matter the home issue, don’t leave an area that creates stress in your life!

-Amy

2 Comments

  1. So, you’re a few months into this. how’s it working for you? I’m curious to hear what is working and if you’ve found the need to tweak anything.

    1. We are still loving our control center! I wish we were not living through a pandemic but the only change we have made is adding a chore chart for our kids!

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