If you family is anything like mine you have people coming in and out, a million schedules to keep track of and a pile of junk mail and school work ten feet high! I spend day 10 of the cleaning challenge cleaning out all the junk and building a workable family command center. So, what is a Family Command Center? It is a place to keep all of the family business under control. For us, a little corner of the kitchen worked best. The kitchen is bar far the most used room in the house, and a definite gathering area for our family.
This is the main area of our command center. On the counter top I have our Daily Routine Board, a holder for cell phone/charger, our marble jar (they are working towards a trip to yogurtland for good behavior 🙂 ), pen holder, a box for mail, and a napkin holder that holds items of attention. Hanging on the wall I have a ‘cork’ board to pin important items or flyers.
Located just underneath is the “Everything” Drawer, aka the junk drawer. I used a silverware divider and a couple other drawer organizers to house all of the little odds and ends that end up in the kitchen (batteries, tools, stapler, tape, etc.).
One of the things that bothers me the most in my kitchen is the kids’ homeowrk lying around on the counter. In the cabinet we now have a spot just for that. Each of the big kids have their own Homework Basket, they can keep their work in it and throughout the week pull out the whole basket to work on it. I also keep our Family Care binders here for easy access and the bottom shelf hold all the other school and office supplies such as crayons, paper, and packing tape.
And of course, no family command center is complete without a dry erase calendar! Unfortunately my kitchen wall isn’t big enough to hold this so I have it hanging on the back of the garage door. It works great as a reminder anytime we leave the house.
This isn’t part of the Family Command Center but I thought I’d add it here since we are cleaning out all of the paper clutter. This is how I store the kids’ artwork and school projects. Each of the have their own flat plastic storage box. They stack really well for storing and don’t take up much space.
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