Spring is always a busy time of year.  For us it always hits in March!  I begin coaching high school tennis, my husband begins practicing for Awana Games (he coaches a church competition) and two of our kids get ready to begin spring sports.

I normally handle the brunt of our family scheduling, I am sure it has nothing to do with my love for color coded calendars!  Anyways last year, I had a huge Mom fail!  In March it is always Mornings with Mom at the kids school.  It is the day where all the moms come up to the school and eat breakfast before school starts.

So of course, with our busy schedule, I totally forgot the date and pulled up to the school right before the bell rang.  I started noticing all the cars at the school and wondered what was going on.  Then we realized what morning it was and everyone in the car went silent.  I turned around and saw my son and daughter begin to tear up and in a brave voice say…”it’s ok Mom!”  They hopped out of the car and in the most disappointing way a child could walk, traipsed into school.  It was so sad, I felt awful!  I took them out for donuts the next morning, but it just wasn’t the same.

So this year I want to plan.  It will make everything run a little smoother, allowing me to hopefully remember all the little details!  Once I entered the schedule for the next two months into my phone calendar, I was ready to pick out a few things to prepare ahead of time!  Here is the list I came up with.

What To Plan Ahead Of Time?

1. Meal Plan

I normally meal plan anyways, but not multiple months at once.  I actually sat down and planned out meals for two months and put my grocery list together for March!  Even if you don’t want to meal plan for every month of the year, if you know that you have an incredibly busy month ahead….plan your meals!!  It will help!

The biggest thing to remember is your meals have to fit your busy schedule or they won’t work.  If you need to eat quickly before you head out for the night, prep your meat ahead of time.  I actually wrote in the small margin what meat I could prep at the beginning of the week. This will save us a lot of time each night.

Meal planning is such an important step to help a busy month run smoothly.  For me, I have practice until 6 pm every night.  My husband does an awesome job of getting dinner ready…but I like to make it as easy as possible on him.  We do a ton of crock-pot meals that I can throw in before practice, then when I get home everything is ready to go.

Never prepared a Monthly Meal Plan?  No worries….CHECK OUT THIS POST

2.  Freezer Meals

To help take it one step further, I have decided this year to make up a bunch of meals ahead of time.  I actually have never done many freezer meals, but this will make dinner time even easier!  I looked at my monthly meal plan and picked a few meals I could make up ahead of time.  The freezer meals I chose to make are Lasagna, Wet Burritos, Chicken Tetrazinni, and Baked Ziti. ***Update: make sure to add extra sauce when you freeze meals.  The sauce gets soaked up a lot more when you freeze them.

Finishing all these meals was so exciting!!  It will be so helpful to have these meals made up so my husband can just throw them in the oven.  I ended up making a double batch of Lasagna and Chicken Tetrazinni.  Overall, I made 6 freezer meals and also cooked some extra chicken up for next week.

I used stackable cooling racks to place all the meals in the freezer.  It was perfect so they don’t get squished!

3. Prep School Lunches

For school lunches, I try to always make them the night before.  It definitely helps get the morning off to a better start.  However, I always see these really awesome posts on Pinterest about how to make school lunches easier.  So I thought why not try something, if I make it convenient…the kids would probably love to make their own lunches.  In a couple weeks after a day of double practice and getting up at 4:15 am, I’ll take anything that makes life easier!

I have a couple bins, but need to pick up a couple more to get all the school lunch items prepped.  Then at the beginning of each week, I will have to refill the bins.  The bins will be labeled proteins, fruits/vegetables, snacks/treats, and drinks.  I also came across a great list from Passions for Savings with some new fresh school lunch ideas!  CHECK HERE POST OUT HERE!  It is easy to get in a rut with school lunches, making the same thing over and over.  This list had some very easy and practical ideas for lunches, I will definitely be using some of these.

I will have to keep you posted on how my school lunch prep goes. I will put updates on my Soon to Be Charming Facebook page, check it out at HERE!

4.  Chores

Chores is something we have in place; however, sometimes it goes by the way side.  Consistency is the key and I love the chore sticks that we have in place for the kids.

Missed It?  Check out my post on DIY CHORE STICKS HERE.

When everyone has a busy schedule, it takes everyone (not just Mom and Dad) to keep the house clean.  So staying consistent and having the kids help keep the house clean with chores is another important step.  Getting in the habit now, will help everything continue on when we get busy!

5. Schedule All Your Bills

The beginning of the month is always busy.  I prepare the meal plan for the month, the budget for the month and then have to do all the grocery shopping.  Thankfully, I already have my meal plan and my grocery list made.  If you really wanted to save time, you could also order your groceries online and have them ready to pick up on the first day of the month.  I may just do that for April when everything is in full swing.

Something else that might help is getting all your monthly bills scheduled ahead of time.  It is one less thing to think about in the midst of a busy schedule!  One more thing to take off your mind.  I also will be planning my budget for March and  April ahead of time.  This will save a lot of time, it may need a few tweaks, but a majority of it will be done.  After all of your meals are planned, some put in the freezer and your bills are scheduled to be paid…..now you can sit back and relax!

OK, maybe not quite, but I feel like I did a ton of things that are going to help our busy schedule.

So why do all this?

For us, we try very hard to protect our family time.  We don’t let our kids do more than one sport at a time and we value a lot of free/play time.  As a mom, home is my base.  I love having my family as my first priority.  With the opportunity for me to coach, I knew it would be a blessing and yet a challenge for our family because of the time commitment.  Last season went very well, but I knew I could do more to help manage our time.  This year I really hope these few things will give us more time together, even with a crazy busy schedule!

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Together let’s save our sanity and enjoy our family time!!!  Thanks for checking out my post!