Setting Goals for Your Home

When it comes to setting goals in the new year, many people set personal goals – eat healthier, exercise more, sleep more, watch less tv, etc. But have you considered setting goals for you home?

I consider these personal goals as well. Our home is our environment we spend time in. I like to have my home organized and tidy so I don’t have to stress about one more thing! I have thought through my process and have steps to help you set goals for your home this year (and you can set them whenever you want! – there’s no rule goals need to be set by January 1).

1. Assess the Last Year

Whenever you’re setting your goals, look at the last twelve months. Think about your home.

What has been working well?

These are the things you have already been doing that work well in your home. Have you been meal planning and eating out less already? Awesome! Keep doing that. Do you clean up the kitchen the night before and enjoy waking up to a clean space? Great! Keep it up! Make a list of things you already do and how they make you feel. If it’s working for you, that is something you’ll want to keep doing.

What isn’t working?

These are the things you want to consider changing. In our house, my children were coming home from school and leaving their backpacks on the ground. After playing after school, eating dinner and doing their bedtime routine, I would come downstairs and then have to empty their backpacks for them. This is not working. The last thing I want to do at the end of the day is something my children could have done earlier! This is our big thing I set out to change with our home this year.

2. Set Your Priorities for Your Home to Help Set Goals

After reviewing your last year, think about your priorities for your home. What is most important to you? Here are some examples for priorities in your home.

• Having a clean home when you wake up in the morning

• Being able to find all your belongings

• Having less visual clutter

• Getting your children involved in chores and routines

• Creating a calm environment to come home to

• Having meals together as a family

• Having home cooked meals

• Have a more sustainable home

Then, within each priority for you, set some goals. For example, if you would like to have meals together as a family, think about how you’d like that to happen. Does it matter to you if your meals are home cooked or do you want to focus on sitting down as a family? Those will create different goals. For one, your goal could be to cook a certain number of times a week. For the other one, your goal could be to have dinner as a family a certain number of times a week with takeout. There’s no right or wrong goal, it’s just what is important to you and your family!

You could also have a combination goal of having a home cooked meal together as a family twice a week – just make sure your goal works for you and your family. For our family, my goal is to cook dinner at least four times a week. Because when I cook dinner, I eat dinner with the boys. My husband joins if he’s home from work by that time, but that is not always the case. That works for our family. I have noticed when I cook, I sit with them. When I don’t, I cook them something, they eat, and then my husband and I eat later. When this happens, I don’t always sit with them and they typically eat less dinner. For me, the goal of cooking dinner causes many other things to happen, like eating together and my children trying new foods.

3. Rank Your Goals

Once you figure out your goals from your priorities, rank them. You want to decide which is the most important to you. Again, there is no right or wrong answer here. Just consider what is most important to your family. The reason for ranking goals is to determine what you want to work on first.

For our home, I think about things in terms of months. I try a new goal each month, until I’ve reached all my goals. This way, I am not overwhelming myself by trying to accomplish everything all at once. I tackle one goal at a time and start the next one when I feel comfortable with the first. When you try to start everything all at once, you can get burned out. You want your goals to be completed or become habits, not abandoned after a few weeks.

For our house, the most important thing for me is that my children start to help out around the home. I do a lot for them, but I want them to start helping out. So, my first goal is to get my children involved in household maintenance and chores. This will make it easier for me as I now have three children and I am the one in charge in the afternoons!

4. Break Down Goals into Habits and Routines

Once you have your goals ranked, you want to determine the habits and routines to support these goals. You can either do this for all your goals, or if you’d prefer, do each goal as it approaches. I have noticed that many goals having to do with the home take habits and routines to help accomplish them. These are the kinds of things that keep your goals intact and help you continue to keep your home looking and feeling as you want it to. I think these are best explained through examples, I have two for you!

For the goal of getting my children involved in household chores, I first made a list of the chores I want them to be in charge of. My boys are 2 1/2 and 5, so I wanted to think carefully about what they can do. The main chores I want them to do are clean up their toys and put their backpacks away when they come in the door.

We do have a routine for cleaning up toys, but I’m not always consistent with it. I like them to clean up an area when we’re done playing there. When it’s lunchtime, we clean up the playroom. Depending on their moods, either they clean up right away or I coax them to clean up. My five year old understands he cleans up what he plays with. This helps him with ownership of his favorite toys. My two year old is hit or miss (because he’s two), but generally I help him clean up. They have both realized when we work together, it gets done faster!

The routine of coming home from school is newer. I have tried it in the past, but again, I am the one that needs to be consistent with it. What I have decided to do this year for them is make checklists. My eldest loves checklists and enjoys checking items off when they’re completed. I thought through what I wanted done and made a checklist for him. My two year old doesn’t understand a checklist, but I created cards for him to complete with pictures to help (I saw this on Instagram and I wish I remembered where I found it!). This way, he knows what to do without my prompting. I spent about a week helping him through it, and now he understands how it works. I just make sure everything is set up for them when they get home from school!

And, the last item on their lists is snack, so they know they can’t get a snack until they complete the other items prior – taking off their shoes and putting them away, putting lunch and snack on the counter, and hanging up their backpacks!

When it comes to setting goals for your home, you want to make sure you’re prioritizing the most important goals for yourself. I set goals for our home just like I set goals for my business!

Do you need support with any of your goals? Click below to set up a free consultation to see how I can support your goals for your home this year!