This week has been a crazy week in the Getting Organized series.  (Most of them will not be quite so full!)  But I’d like to share one more thing before we move on — I’d like to give you a closer look at some of my task cards.

My “periodical task” cards seem to have disappeared, and I will have to track those down.  But I’ve taken some pictures of some of the others, to give you an idea of how I use them.

Daily Maintenance Cards

First up are my daily cards.  This didn’t come out very clear (‘though you can make it slightly larger by clicking on it), but I’ve taken the cards off the ring and laid them all out so you can see them.  There aren’t many cards on this ring, but you can see that what is on here is mostly the daily routines we talked about.  Each routine has its own card, except for the morning, which didn’t fit all on one card, so it’s divided into sections (kitchen tasks, bathroom tasks, and general “getting started” tasks).  The final card (which continues onto the back) shows the basic weekly breakdown and my rotation, so I have an overview of the week’s plan at a glance and can see where today fits in.

One other thing the astute observer might have noticed is that certain items are highlighted in red or yellow.  This is the result of a step that I didn’t have time/space to mention when dealing with all of the routines in the space of a week, but which I highly recommend — identify your essentials.  There are some things which absolutely must happen, no matter what.  Even if everyone is sick, the family still has to eat, for instance, so meal preparation has to happen (at some level, even if not the “normal” way).  Then there are what I consider second-tier tasks.  They’re almost essential, and make a huge difference to keeping things going, but if you missed them for one day, everything would not fall apart.

It’s good to indicate these in some way so that when life goes crazy, you can still see what has to get done.  (Or the person filling in for you can see what’s essential.)  Some people make a separate list of these items.  Personally, I find it a little overwhelming to have yet another list.  (And I’d lose it before I needed it, anyway. 😉 )  I prefer to just mark these items on my regular list as red (utterly essential, must-happen-every-day) or yellow (must-happen-if-at-all-possible).

Weekly Cards

The second “set” of cards (maybe I should call them a “series” of cards) is the weekly cards.  There is a ring for every day of the week except Sunday, and I store them each in whatever location they’re most likely to be used in.  Kitchen Day cards hang inside a kitchen cupboard (and so do Errand Day cards, since we typically use the kitchen door for leaving the house).

Cleaning Day cards are hanging on nails in the laundry/utility room (along with some others I’ll explain these more thoroughly in a moment), as are the Laundry Day cards and Garden Day cards.  (This picture can be enlarged a bit, too.)  Hmmm…the Cleaning Day cards seem to be missing from their hook in this particular photo.

Office Day cards reside on my desk, along with the Daily cards.  (And it looks like the Cleaning Day cards snuck in with them!)  This is not my desk, by the way.  I just spread them out here so you could see the stacks.

For Cleaning Day, I actually have a total of 5 sets of cards, though.  Remember how I said that I divide my house into zones for cleaning, one zone per week?  Each zone has its own cards.

So I have:

1. A ring of cards with the every-week cleaning tasks.  (And a card at the back reminding me to do the other set of cards for the week.)
2. A ring of cards with the tasks for week 1.
3. A ring of cards with the tasks for week 2.
4. A ring of cards with the tasks for week 3.
5. A ring of cards with the tasks for week 4.

Some of these are “duplicates.” For instance, “dust cobwebs” may show up in all four rotational decks.  That’s because whether I’m cleaning the living room or the bedroom, this needs to happen in that space.  So each week I would grab the Cleaning Day ring and the appropriate ring for the week and work my way through both stacks.  (Again, in theory.  I am in no way claiming to be consistent at this.  That’s the idea, though.)

A Closer Look

Let’s take a closer look at the Garden Day cards.

If you look closely, you’ll see that some of the cards in this deck have numbers in the corners.  That is because these are tasks that don’t need to happen every week.  The numbers indicate which week(s) in the monthly rotation they should be done.  (My weeks are also color-coded, as you can see from the weekly zone chart on my daily ring, and the covers of the zone cleaning decks.)  Some only need to be done once, and some take place every other week.  The ones without numbers are weekly tasks.

This kind of reminder is not uncommon in my card decks.  Just as the weekly cleaning set has a card reminding me to do the zone cards for the week, so this one has a card reminding me to complete the appropriate seasonal cards.  (Easier to do when I know where they are!  Obviously I haven’t used them in too long.)

And, finally, here you can see a few of the cards that are actually preparation for the following day.  (They are also color-coded with red and yellow for essential and almost-essential tasks.  These specific ones could, of course, fall by the wayside if we were sick and not going to church.  But if Saturday just got crazy and we needed to do the bare minimum, getting church clothes ready and packing up the diaper bag would be essential tasks that still needed to happen.)

Why Cards on Rings?

Cards on rings are not the only usable format for these lists, obviously!  Some of you will find that something else — like a simple list on a piece of paper in a notebook — actually works much better for you.  And if that’s the case, that’s what you should use.  Do what works!  I, personally, like these for several reasons.

• Having one item per card enables me to focus on one thing at a time, without getting overwhelmed by the whole list.
• But having them grouped together on rings means the whole list is there.
• Because they’re on rings, if a task needs to be added or removed, I can do that fairly easily.
• Because they’re on rings, if I rearrange the order of “days” in my week, I can take off the “prep.” tasks and move them to the new proper day.
• They’re small and portable and because I’ve laminated them they’re pretty sturdy and able to be wiped off.

It took me a little while to get them all set up (I printed them on cardstock, cut them apart, then laminated them with laminating film made for 3×5 cards and punched them), but I’ve been using the same sets of cards for years — because they’re easy to tweak if need be.