Today, I’m back and talking about three things I’m doing to simplify our summer this year. It’s easy for the summer to slip by, so I wanted to be intentional about making the most of it. I only have a few summers left with my daughters, and while not every moment has to be meaningful, I do want to have a simple enough summer that we have time to enjoy the important things!

If you prefer to watch this as a video, you can check it out here—–> https://youtu.be/cOg2Wmib40M

Show Notes:

A few things I talk about in podcast (some of these are affiliate links which means I make a *small* amount if you purchase through my link….thanks for your support!):

Kids Cook Real Food eCourse

Summer Bucket List Printable & Customizable Chore Chart (these are available FREE to email subscribers. Just sign up for my weekly email below this transcript or on the right-hand side of the blog, and you will receive access to them once you confirm your email)

Thanks for taking time to listen to my podcast. Please subscribe and leave a review if you find it helpful! 🙂

Amazing Mess Podcast #4 Transcript:

Simplify Your Summer with Kids

Hello, and welcome back to episode number four. Today I will be talking about three ways to simplify your summer. (I did want to let you know that I originally recorded this as a video in my car so the audio is not fabulous. I did try to make it a little bit better, but it is not as high of quality as I hoped, but I hope you are still able to get the main points.) 

A couple of weeks ago on my Facebook page, I posted a quote that was from Jessica Scott, and it said something about how you only have 18 delicious summers with your children, and this is one of them. That should give you perspective is basically what it was saying.  And that really went crazy {on my facebook page}. I think we all want to be intentional with our summer, but we don’t always know how, or if you’re like me, you’ve kind of let things go crazy in the summer…like one year I let my girls sign up for so many things. It was really out of control. This year I really wanted to simplify. What I really wanted this summer was to be intentional!

My word for the year that I chose back in January is simplify. I don’t know if you ever choose a word for a year, a year or not, but it’s a great practice. I’ve done it for maybe five or six years, maybe six years now.  It really just helps me to focus in on this one word and helps me shape my goals for the year. I chose the word simplify, so I came up with three things that I think you can do to help simplify your summer with kids:

1) Choose a Word for the Summer

The very first one is to come up with your own word for the summer. So I have the word simplify for my whole year, but I was thinking, well what if I just have a word just for my summer? What do I want to accomplish this summer? What does that look like? And so I chose the word memories because I only have a few summers left with my oldest daughter, and I really want to make some memories. Using that word is helping me to shape my goals for the summer.

I think it’s a great idea just to choose word for the summer and then use that word to help you shape your goals and make some decisions about what’s most important. We can’t do everything in the summer, and I always have these grandiose plans. I’m an idealist…you may have figured that out by now! I just can’t get it all done, so I am choosing just a couple of goals. One of my goals is to do some things on our bucket list. I don’t want to do a billion things on a bucket list like I’ve tried to do in the past. Our bucket list this year is just Post It notes. I asked the girls what they wanted to do, and they wrote a few things down. That’s all our bucket list is. In the past I have done this bucket list printable that you can go download on my blog. If you go to AmazingMess.com, you can get that there. It’s just a little bucket list and you don’t have to fill everything in. My hard part was figuring out how many spots {to include} because I don’t want people to feel like they have to do 20 bucket list items. Right….because that’s a lot. Maybe just a couple per kid or let them choose something and then go for that. Use your word to let it shape your goals for the summer.

2) Streamline Home Management

What else? My second thing is streamlining home management. It’s not my favorite thing, but I’ve learned to do it because it has to get done. But the simpler that I can make things in the summer the better, I think. One of the things is menu planning, I think menu planning is essential pretty much all the times of year.

In the summer if I can just do crock pot meals and instant pot meals, things from the freezer, freezer, cooking, all of that kind of stuff, to just make it as easy as possible. That’s kind of my goal with that. The other thing is (yay!) my girls are old enough that they are each taking one night per week, so they are making meals one night per week. They’re coming up with the recipes and the ideas, and I’m helping them buy the stuff and get it. Then they are in charge of that evening’s meal. And it has been fabulous, because three times a week I don’t have to do the cooking and it’s lovely. If your kids aren’t that big yet, I’m sorry. They will be soon, I promise!  If you really work with them on their kitchen skills {they will be able to help you prepare meals}. I highly recommend the Kids Cook Real Food ecourse. It’s fabulous. It will get them started cooking, and yeah, it’s great. I will link to that in the notes below.

What else? There are chores…chores are an important part of our day. My girls are old enough that they mostly know their chores and they do them. It’s not that big of an issue. But when they were younger, we did have like a checklist. I think a checklist is awesome, because they can go through, check off what they’re supposed to do, and then, and only then do they have electronics time. Otherwise they’re asking you all the time, can we get this out? Can we look at this? Blah, blah blah.

I also have a chore chart that is customizable. You can fill it in and then even laminate it, put it on the fridge or whatever, and they can mark off when they do their jobs. I had very basic things like make your bed, brush your teeth, brush your hair. Also things like read for an hour or read for 30 minutes or whatever it is you want to add here. You could add that for your summer list, and then they need to finish all of those things before they can get any electronic times. So there you go. Right.

Number three, no, let’s go back. Decluttering is another home management thing {to do}. In streamlining your home management, decluttering is huge in helping you clean less. I know that sounds terrible, but I really don’t like to clean! I try to get rid of as much stuff as I can so I don’t have to clean it. That’s true. That’s absolutely true!

I recommend starting either in the bathroom or in the living room to kind of build up momentum if you’re just starting. The decluttering process is really helpful. I mean in the bathroom, you are  basically throwing away things that have gotten stuffed back in drawers that shouldn’t be there.  It’s not quite the emotional attachment that you’re going to run into for some other decluttering things that you need to do, so it’s good to start there and kind of build that momentum up.

3) Give Yourself Margin

Number three is to give yourself margin. Give yourself margin and build in some downtime during your day. Having a built-in afternoon rest break is how we’ve done it in the past, because our mornings are usually full with activities or whatever. Then in the afternoon, we just kind of chill…we have an hour to two hours where it’s just go in your room, read a book or listen to an audio book. It’s just your time to rest and relax, and then we go on with the rest of our day.

I also think building in margin as far as not over-stuffing your schedule, so that by the end of the day you just feel ragged. And then you’re like, what even happened during this day? There is kind of this balance. There’s a push and a pull between having structure and then being free…because that’s kind of what the summer is about, right? But kids still need some structure. But we also want them to have time to explore their interests and do whatever during the summer. You know, those “lazy days” of summer. The more margin I give us, the better it really is.  I feel a lot less grumpy when there’s more margin in my day, so I highly recommend adding some margin to your day. Adding a little rest break in the afternoon is also a good idea.

Those are my three tips for simplifying your summer. Let me know in the comments below, if you have any other ideas that you like to use to make your summer a little more simple and a lot more fun.

Thank you for listening to the Amazing Mess podcast. I hope that you have a great day and go out and make some memories with your kids!