HOW TO CREATE A FAMILY COMMAND CENTER
Updated: Oct 4, 2019
Do you struggle with coming and going from your home and the chaos of all of the bags, shoes and mail? In today's post I'm going to walk you through our three landing zones in our home.These areas help to keep us organized and it makes coming and going so much easier
By the end of this video you will walk away with key tips that you can implement into your space.
STEP 1: ASSESS YOUR NEEDS
Think about when you are coming and going from your home, what do you need to find a system or stations for? Do you need somewhere for you shoes, keys, bags, coats etc. Take out a piece of paper and write out all of your needs.
For our family we needed a home or system for the following:
- shoes
- keys
- bags
- coats
- charging station
- paperwork
- laundry
- extra storage
We specifically needed to come up with a solution as we do not have a closet near our garage door where we enter and leave our home.
STEP 2: FIND YOUR TRAFFIC PATTERN
Think about when you enter and leave your home, where do you naturally go? Are you leaving through your front door or your garage door? Where do you find yourself naturally putting your shoes or your mail? Take note of where you are putting these things and it will help you establish your zones. You could even sketch out a floor plan if that helps you visually see it!
STEP 3: GROUP BY CATEGORY
Go through all of your items that you determined in step 1 that you need to find a home for. Start grouping them by category, put all of your paperwork together, all of your shoes, coats etc. While you are sorting don't forget to only keep what you need. You want to only keep what is truly used or needed.
STEP 4: SET UP YOUR STATIONS
Once you have determined what you need to find homes for and where you are naturally putting things next you can start building your stations. Below are the stations that we have determined would work best for our family.
SHOE STATION:
I noticed that we naturally were leaving our shoes by the garage door so in order for us to have success in putting them away I decided to create a shoe station by the garage door. I found a shelf from Tuesday Morning and then white woven baskets from Target and designated a bin for each of us to store our everyday shoes. We do still keep our boots and special occasion shoes in our mini entryway closet bench but all of our everyday shoes are by the garage door in our shoe station.
HALL TREE:
My husband and I took an old door that we had and built a hall tree in an open nook in our kitchen. We added three hooks (one for each of us) for our coats and bags. On the bottom of the hall tree we have two bins from Walmart. One of them is just overflow for our occasional coats or extra bags like our backpack diaper bag. The other one is actually a laundry basket. I was noticing that we kept having a stack of dirty laundry by our basement door so I decided to just create a laundry zone to get it off the floor.
COMMAND CENTER:
In our kitchen we have a island area that made for a perfect spot for a family command center. I kept noticing that we would pile up mail and leave our electronics there for charging so I designated that area to serve those purposes. On our wall I hung a file sorter that I actually found in our attic. I painted it and added the key hooks to serve two functions.
Within the organizer it stores several files.
BILLS: Every two weeks on payday my husband and I have a budget meeting and pay all of our bills
ACTION: Anything that we need to fill out like stuff for school or healthcare items.
PRO TIP: If you are a visual person you might think about having a clip board system or some other organized visual way to display your action items/bills that way you don't forget about them in a file.
FILE: At the end of the month I file everything away in our file cabinet in the office
RECEIPTS: I store all of our important receipts for big ticket items categorized by purchase type
TAXES: Throughout the year anything that may deal with taxes I store in this folder that way when tax season comes along I have everything
If you are one who loses your keys often I would highly suggest having a designated spot where you put them when you come home. You might also look into purchasing a Tile, it is a small key chain that you put in your keys. Anytime you cannot find your phone all you need to do is to use your app on your phone and it will make a noise on your key chain and tell you the last known location.
I also needed to come up with a "junk drawer" replacement as we don't have one in our home. I found a divided organizer that holds our pens and pencils, eye care needs, and acts as a charging station for our electronics. We also have a small tray that my husband uses for his watch, work badge and extra accessories. Anytime I need to give him something I will generally leave it on the tray so he can grab it as he heads out the door for work. We also have a small jar for extra change.
On the wall I knew I needed some space to be able to display cards, invites and store offers/coupons that we wanted to take advantage of. I have a metal magnet board and a quark board to display these items.
I hope that you follow these steps and are able to establish some useful landing zones within your home!
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