The Art of Delegation

When it comes to organization and home management, lets just say that they are not my strongest points.

Over the years, as more kids and responsibilities came along, I have had to rely on the help of others to keep things running as smoothly as possible, be it cooking, cleaning, organizing etc.

Now, the thing is, you can have all the help in the world, but if your help doesn't know what you need them to do, its not going to be that helpful.

And so I have very slowly (and I mean, this has taken me YEARS) figured out the art of delegation.

For some of you, this may come very naturally. For me, it is something I have had to figure out.

A few weeks ago I had a friend helping me prepare food for a large Shabbos meal. She is actually a film director and lives in NY and was just visiting her family who  live here and was excited to help.

I set up a station for her with the food processor, different bowls, vegetables, a garbage, she had everything set up and I told her exactly what I needed done.

While we were cooking and chopping, she said, 'you know, you delegate really well!' I literally almost fell over, as this is something that has really not come naturally to me. It still doesn't. I always wished people who are helping me knew exactly what I wanted done without me having to show them.

But then I realized that I should take this new found art and use it in my day to day life.

Here are some great tips on how to master the art of delegation (whether you are delegating chores for your kids, cleaning help, cooking help, activities for your kids, any time you need to tell someone else what you need them to do for you)

1. YOU need to know EXACTLY what you want done. Write a list, in detail of what needs to happen.

2. Set it up for them. Whatever supplies are needed to get the job done, set it up.Try not to have anything around that is not needed.

3.Let them know exactly what is expected to get done. If you need to give a time limit, do so. Ask if your instructions are clear and if they have any questions.

4. Check up on them to make sure they are doing what you want. Mis-communications happen all the time. Just keep on top of things.

This can ALL apply to Homeschooling:

- Know exactly what you want your kids to be learning. Make your decision on curriculum for each child.
-Set it up for them, make sure they have all their supplies that they will need so there will be no interruptions.
-Show them what they need to get done and how much time they have to do it.
-Be there to help them if assistance is needed.

I hope this was helpful to those in a similar situation to me!

Oh, and one last thing- we had a plastic shoe box where we kept all our card games. It was always such a mess even if the cards were in rubber bands, the kids just didn't use them.

I was at Ross one night and found this Jewelry organizer and for some reason though it would be a good idea to keep their playing cards in.

It worked out so great! The kids actually play with the cards now that they can see what they have (I found 3 sets of Uno cards, who knew?)

So that's my two cents for the week!

Wishing you all a wonderful week,

Always, 

Kids Art Display & Lego Storage

A good friend of ours (who was homeschooled and just graduated from NYU) gave my kids her very treasured and very large Lego collection that she played with as a kid. 

Now there must be hundreds and hundreds of pieces of Lego and up until now we were just keeping them in a large storage bin that the kids go rummaging through to look for whatever it is they need.

My husband had this tool box and so we dumped out the entire bin of Legos on the floor and got to work. We (the kids included) put all the regular Lego building blocks back into the storage bin. We then went on to divide the specialty pieces into the tool box (windows, doors, Lego people, flowers, hats, tools, wheels, very tiny pieces and any other pieces that are different). 

 Its a whole new world for them now as they can see what they have and it works. I have seen numerous Lego storage idea's online (stored by color, types of pieces etc.) but I knew that when my kids clean up, there is no way they are sitting and putting each piece back in the right color box or whatever. So this works for us.

On another note, my daughter LOVES arts'n crafts. She LOVES drawing, painting, coloring, gluing, stickers, you name it. And I find myself putting her stuff all over the house and it is getting a bit much. 

So after much Pinterest searching and inspiration, this is what I came up with:

I took the empty wall in her room and using 2 wooden frames (without pictures or glass), a clip board and a piece of bamboo, hot glued regular wooden pegs onto them and voila- her very own art gallery.

Here's a closer look at the bamboo... it is very inexpensive where I live and we have tons of it around our house.

I have a busy week ahead, hope you are enjoying yours~

Always,

Parshas Yisro- The Luchos

Okay... I'm back with my baby wipes caps:)

This time, we made our own Luchos (tablets with the 10 Commandments)-

Here's what we did:

Took a piece of thick cardboard and covered it with this funky scrap-booking paper that the kiddos picked out.

Then glue gunned the wipe covers to the cardboard, 5 on each side:

Kiddos then decided what colors they wanted the cover of each cover should be and settled on a red and white pattern- their own unique creation.

My big guy then wrote Alef-Yud (for each commandment) on each paper and we glued them onto each cover.

Using 2 pages listing the 10 commandments from Parshas Yisro in My Parshah Reader, I made 1 copy of each. We cut out each one (one in English, one in Hebrew) and glued it inside the correct letter.

The kids really love opening and closing each one. Its great for discussions on each mitzvah. We might get more creative over the week and maybe add a picture in each one... but you can really add your own twist on this project.

And here's just a very cool thing we did that I wanted to share-

Using the tea cans from Starbucks, I covered them with different colored card stock, made a label, stuck it on and voila... some great quality storage bins that look really cute all lined up next to each other.

Just like the baby wipes, we have lots of these tea cans (we are tea drinkers in this house:) and they are so cute and so sturdy. Go us for saving the environment!

On a blog roll, so until next time~