Building a Daily Schedule--Appointments and Errands

In my first post on building a daily schedule from scratch, I talked about the events of each day that need to be scheduled to happen at the same time every day. But there are some events that will need to be scheduled on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.

Ideally, pick one day of the week to schedule all appointments on. Personally I hate going to doctor's appointments for the kids without my husband. Maybe I'm a wuss but I just hate it when they break out those needles and suddenly I see the smile fade from my baby's face as he realizes the nice lady who was playing with him a minute ago just jabbed him with a needle! The look of utter betrayal just kills me, so I like to bring my husband along to remind me that in 2 minutes the baby will be just fine and likely won't even remember :)

Picking one day of the week means you won't accidentally schedule 2 or 3 appointments in one week, thereby messing with your daily routine for half the week. It also allows you to build a time for appointments or errands into the day's schedule .

For us, Mondays are our days for appointments and long errands. We live one hour from the grocery store so this works best. I condense as many tasks into one day to minimize disruptions to the usual routine and save on gas. For example, tomorrow is Monday and we will be doing 2 doctor's appointments, a quick grocery run for produce, and hopefully have time to stop by Goodwill to drop off some donation items. We also use our errands day as our one day to eat out as a family.

If you have stores within a 15 minute drive I actually prefer setting aside a time every day for errands, appointments, outside play, library visits, and/or play dates. So maybe on Mondays from 10:00-11:30am you would go grocery shopping, Tuesday in the same time period do appointments, Wednesday go to the park, Thursday visit the library, and Friday do a play date. I like the option to get out for a short period best for a stay at home mom who gets bored at home all day (YES, you can admit that sometimes keeping company only with small people who think "Super Why" is the best show ever gets boring!) It's also nice if you get overwhelmed at the thought of a long outting with several small children.

Because errands aren't normally time-oriented like doctor's appointments technically they can fall under routines and that's just fine. Scheduling errands really works best when you can spread out your out-of-the home obligations. Since we do errands and appointments all on one or two days of the week we have more of a routine where we leave mid-morning, eat lunch as soon as we get to town, and then do appointments and then errands. So I typically schedule appointments for 12:30-1:00pm since then it doesn't interfere with lunch and naptime can happen afterwards.