Over twenty-five years ago,  with four children eight and under, we learned the value of a timer. We began using them to teach our children time management. We would have them do various tasks and set the timer so that they could see how long things take when they really applied themselves. For example, in setting up their morning routine charts,  we would have them run and do each task that was going to be on their chart as we timed them, then when we made the charts, we would put the time that it should take (based on our timing session) in parentheses following each line item on the chart. (This also helped us to know what was reasonable to expect in a certain time period.)

We did the same things with chore sessions. We had chore sessions before each meal, and we wanted for each person’s chores to take roughly the same amount of time since we all worked at the same time on chore sessions.

We would also use the timer to show them how fast  Mom and Dad could get something done. I can remember one evening when the children were all dreading cleaning the kitchen after a meal. We had asked them what they wanted to do that evening after cleanup and family worship, and one of them said, “We won’t have time to do anything else. The kitchen cleanup will take forever tonight.”

The challenge was on! We told the children that even Mom and Dad, by ourselves, could cleanup the evening meal within ten minutes. They were sure that could be done, we rolled their chairs into a line, set the timer, and began the show.

They watched in amazement as the two of us left overs away, clear the table, rinsed dishes, loaded the dishwasher, wiped everything down, and swept the floor in under ten minutes. If I had been persuaded of the value of the timer before that night, our kitchen production sealed it for me.

Of course, we used timers for many daily activities in other areas too. They had math drill that had to be timed. They had various activities that were also based on time, such as entertaining younger siblings, silent reading, and more.

Fast forward several years later and you will find one of the greatest uses for the timer in our home: the blitz. By our definition, a blitz is a set period of time in which everybody runs around like maniacs and get a lot done. We have done them long enough to realize that when we all work our very hardest for a short burst of time we can get a lot done.

Usually in our blitzes we do not focus on cleaning but rather on decluttering, putting things away, and organizing. (When our kids were younger, it felt like we never got to the cleaning anyway with all of the picking up that always needed done!)

If you stop and think about what you are really doing when you have a blitz, it is kind of amazing. For us now, with two teenagers and two adults at home, a ten minute blitz means forty minutes of intense housework. Most of us nowadays seldom have forty minutes to just go through the house pick up, organize, put away, and  declutter. And yet, when the four of us have a ten minute blitz, that is exactly what we are doing. It is truly amazing what we can get done now in a ten minute blitz for adults.

To use blitzes with your family, you might start out with a five minute blitz. Make a game of it. Tell the children that you’re going to set the timer for five minutes and see how much of the toy room you can get picked up together. If you need to use rewards in the beginning, you could do so. I wouldn’t let rewards continue on, however, because picking up the house is something we should all be about all the time without any rewards or payment. But if you want to use rewards, be sure you only use a reward for intense, speedy work. In other words, do not reward them just for having gone through the motions of a blitz.

Here are some other blitzes that we have had through the years that your family might find helpful:

1. Five-minute before company blitzes

2. Fifteen minute kitchen blitzes (it is amazing how much you can get done in the kitchen with several people for fifteen minutes!)

3. Veggie cleaning blitzes… Sometimes it is easier to get kitchen help if they know that it will end at a certain time…

4. Dusting and sweeping blitzes – each person takes dusting rag, a vacuum, or broom go to different portions of the house and do those tasks

5. Five-minute “before chore” blitzes – this might seem a little bit unnecessary, but we often had quick blitzes before our chore sessions just to be sure that everything was picked up and put away so that each person could do their chores properly (i.e. the laundry person had all the laundry in the hamper; the sweeper didn’t have toys on the floor to work around, etc.)

6. Serving blitzes – a time in which everybody goes into somebody’s room or into a person’s job room for the day and cleans up for that person

7. Refrigerator blitzes – ten minutes with five people in a refrigerator can yield amazing results! One person throws away food and scrapes out leftover food, another washes the dishes, another wipes out the refrigerator, and another organizes the door!

8. Sunday night blitzes – we always liked to have blitzes before everybody went to bed on Sunday night to be sure that everything was ready for the next morning… This could be a cleaning blitz, an organizing blitz, a packing for the next day blitz, a laundry blitz, or whatever needed done.

9. Unpacking blitzes – we always set a timer when we first got home from a trip and set a goal to get unpacked in the laundry going in a certain amount of time. We always met our goal, and we were watching a movie or playing a game before we knew it.

10. Cooking blitzes – when I felt like I was getting behind in freezer cooking, we would often call a cooking blitz. For example, at the dinner table, we would announce that two people were cleaning the kitchen and the rest of us were going to be putting casseroles in the freezer. One person with start Friday ground be, and other chopping vegetables, we knew it would have four casseroles ready to go in the freezer and the kitchen with the clean for that evening’s meal.

I’m sure after reading through this list, you can see the many benefits of blitzes. They teach children how to work fast. They demonstrate good time management skills as the children realize how quickly things can be done. They teach family unity as we work together for a common goal. They help us get ahead when we are feeling behind. They give us a chance to teach children multiple skills in different areas of the household. They are pain-free ways to get things done – the blitz is over before you know it. And they give us more opportunities to be together both while we are working and with the time we saved by blitzing.

The post 10 Ways to Work Fast as a Family: (1) Timer Blitzes appeared first on Character Ink.

I am doing a new series on “back to school” (see the first post here), and as part of that, I am encouraging moms to learn some efficiency and organizational strategies to make the school year better. I look back on my thirty-one years of homeschooling so far and realize that each year, each season, each month was really another opportunity to add another skill, another layer to my organization, efficiency, and home management strategies.

Some of my ideas flopped terribly (the “no breakfast, just fruit followed by brunch” idea or the “lunches made up on divided plates using leftovers” idea—yeah, they didn’t work), but I was not disheartened. I guess I’m a little bit like Thomas Edison in that: “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”
“I have not failed fifty-four times in a way to make breakfasts and lunches more efficient. I have successfully found fifty-four times that didn’t work!” 🙂

However, many of my outrageous ideas were successes—and have given me tools to manage my home and homeschool that I have just loved!

So without further ado, I whet your appetite for the coming posts with this list of Ten Ways to Get Things Done FAST for Families…join us! And tell your friends about us. Coz school year 2015-2016 could just be the best, most organized, most heart-affecting year ever!

Ten Ways to Get Things Done FAST for Families

 (1) Have a timer burst
 (2) Institute a horizontal surface cleaning approach
 (3) Have a “dad in the driveway” blitz
 (4) Have at least two consistent chore sessions so that daily things are not always looming
 (5) Announce a “room to room” time
 (6) Make four of one entrée every week—makes dinner super fast
 (7) Have a “do your favorite task” time
(8) Have a “successful next day” routine at night
 (9) Call for two times your age sessions
(10) Instill an “I can do anything for five minutes” approach

The post New Series: Ten Ways to Get Things Done FAST for Families appeared first on Character Ink.