A few weeks ago our little family had one of those weekends where everything felt chaotic and stressful. Our kids were acting out. Mr. Peas and I were not responding to the chaos in a positive, healthy way. Clutter and toys were everywhere. We desperately wanted to do something fun to celebrate the arrival of fall, but we literally couldn’t get our act together to make that happen. We were anxious about everything from money to jobs to potty training to meal planning to holiday travel and more. It was clear things needed to change, but I had no idea where to start and spent most of Saturday yelling at my family (which I am of course not proud of).

We spent a lot of time that Sunday thinking about our family and our home – what was going well, what wasn’t, and what we could do to make things better. Although this is still very much a work in our progress, Mr. Peas and I came up with this 4-step plan to try and restore the peace in our home.

  • Create a realistic budget and stick to it.

Money can be so stressful, but I am starting to realize it doesn’t have to be. I often fall in the trap of thinking we’ll never have enough money to accomplish all of our financial goals, yet when we do have money I stress about what to do with it. We have made budgets in the past, but I always overcomplicate the process by creating detailed spreadsheets that are impossible to maintain and reconcile on a regular basis. This time we researched budget softwares, picked one, and are doing our best to actually stick with it. We are working on a realistic plan to accomplish our financial goals, one by one, taking the time we need to do so.

  • Write a family mission statement.

This is probably the step I am the most excited about. I’ve been reading about family mission statements for awhile, but we’ve never actually sat down and tried to write one. Last week we did, and it was a very interesting exercise. I did not want our mission statement to be full of cliche sayings and inspirational quotes (not that there is anything wrong with them, but I really wanted to be thoughtful about what is important to our family and find our unique way to express that as a mission statement). We are still working on the final version, but I already feel like we have a clearer vision about the type of home we want to build for our family (has anybody else read that great article that went viral on Facebook a few months ago about building a home your kids want to come home to?).

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  • Declutter our stuff.

I can deal with sticky floors, crumbs, dirty toilets, and unbathed children. But I cannot deal with piles of stuff. And our family has reached a point where we have too much stuff. It’s everywhere – on a good day, I am spending too much time trying to take care of it; on a bad day, I felt like it was suffocating me. So we made a decision that some of our stuff had to go (if not permanently, at least into a closet or better yet a black trash bag hidden in a corner of our basement).

  • Set up zones for play, creating, and relaxing.

I spend a lot of time moving toys, books, clothes, and art supplies from where they end up to where they are supposed to be stored. Decluttering is great, but we want our home to be a cozy place with plenty of things to play and create with and books to snuggle up with and read. Our kids also stay home with a nanny, so we can’t just get rid of all our stuff. I did realize, however, that we can create zones for different activities and types of stuff. The first project we tackled was dedicating space in our main living area for a creativity center. And we have plans to create zones for physical play in our basement and more creative/ imaginative play in our guest bedroom. We also rearranged the setup in our bedrooms upstairs, so that toys are not separated by who received them as gifts but by where logically it makes sense for them to be played with.

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I am happy to report that our plan seems to be working. Everything hasn’t magically improved, but our house does feel more peaceful. I think the biggest thing is simply having a shared understanding about what we need to do to move forward and having an executable plan to do that. As I alluded to above, I have a tendency to fall into the trap of having an all or nothing mindset – if I can’t do or accomplish everything, sometimes I won’t even try. I’m slowly, grudgingly learning that doesn’t work when you are trying to raise kids, have a career, and take care of your self. I am hoping to blog about each step in our 4-step plan in more detail over the next few weeks. In the meantime, please share what things you are doing or have done to restore peace in your home. Has anybody tried to write a family mission statement before?