I am a summer Grinch. I do not thrive in warm weather. I do not have the funds for extravagant vacations. Perhaps the thing I like least about summer is that my family’s sense of routine is disrupted.
My two kids, 10 and 12, are spending several weeks of the summer in day camp, but also have stretches where we have no commitments. I’m working from home as an independent journalist and also have a summer job at a new play festival.
A babysitter takes care of the kids while I’m at the theatre, which motivates me to keep the house at least a little orderly. But I was still struggling to come up with a system for keeping my home and sanity intact while the kids are home.
Turning to a business system gave me some help, and some hope, for a summer we could all survive.
I came across a new-to-me method of organizing our lives
I was researching ways to organize workflow online and came across the Kanban method. I was intrigued. I learned that kanban means “signboard” in Japanese and is a business system used by companies like Toyota (where it was developed). It helps manage workflow across multiple people in multi-step projects.
My background in teaching informed my decision to use this method since it involves “chunking” a project into smaller parts. Instead of the task “keep the house clean,” there are smaller actions like “wipe countertops” that are more specific and manageable.
Chunking is an especially good strategy for students with ADHD or other barriers to learning, and my kids fall into that category. I broke out the Post-It notes and got to work.
Setting up the system
After learning about how kanban can help people maximize their productivity, I made the unpopular household decision that we would be implementing the method this summer.
I had some trial and error while constructing my board. The first version was just putting sticky notes on the wall, but they kept falling down, so I pinned a bright square of wrapping to the wall. The sticky notes stuck to the paper better than the wall.
I put a solid piece of paper on one side to indicate the “done” section. Then, I assigned colors to each kid and designated a third color for activities that anyone could do or that they could do together, such as putting away clean dishes or playing a board game.
Courtesy of Laura Wheatman Hill.
It’s working
I have one highly independent, artsy middle schooler and one extremely energetic, very social elementary schooler, so I assigned them very different tasks to suit their own abilities and interests.
My older kid is writing a novel, so I made a sticky note for that activity. My younger kid is more into playing with the dogs, so I assigned that as a chore to him. I also gave each kid two 20-minute reading slots. I’d like it if my kids saw free reading as leisure time, but that’s not who they are right now.
While there are some fun tasks on the board, screentime is not. I’m not strict about screens, we all regulate with them, and I think some of the secret to my meager parenting successes over the years is that I allow a certain amount of screentime no matter what. However, once the allotted morning screentime is up, I expect kids to be doing work from the board. We all take a little screentime in the afternoon, whether it’s solo game time or a family movie, to decompress and escape the heat.
I considered assigning myself a color. I thought having a visual representation of all the tasks I do might give the kids some empathy for me and might inspire them to do their own part, but I decided against it for now. If I start getting push-back as the summer tips into its second half, I’ll reconsider. Who knows, maybe I’ll find it helps me with productivity as well.
While the kids were reluctant of this system at first, they got on board when they saw that each task took relatively little time compared to their expectations, and that they still had lots of time for their precious tablets.
