Be Present... wherever you are...

When I first married my husband, he worked nights, and I was still a grad student. Routines were not important to us back then, but once we had our first son while my husband was working nights with no family close by, they became very important. We were not super strict about the timing of the routines, but we did do the same things each night to keep it consistent for Bubba. My husband stayed on nights for years, and as Bubba got older, those routines became more essential to keeping our home running smoothly and keeping Bubba happy and healthy. When we had our second son (almost 10 years later), we once again had to adjust our routines to include an extra person, new duties around the house, and my husband going back to nights. He is on a regular day schedule now, as am I; we have never been able to have such constant routines, and it has been awesome. 

Scheduling is important to making sure you can juggle work and home events without leaving someone hanging or not showing up for the people who depend on you.  We have a calendar on our phones that has everything that our family is doing or attending throughout the year as well as birthdays and other important dates.  This makes it easy to make plans, schedule work events, or commit to things without having to check in with each other. As things come up or are planned they go into the calendar so everyone is working with the same information.  We have a white board on the fridge that has the events for the week highlighted as well as the dinner plans for the week so that we know what's going on as we all leave home in the morning and get home in the evening.  This keeps everyone on the same page and helps make sure dinner is not delayed if someone gets stuck somewhere. 

Finding ways to effectively communicate with friends, family, and co-workers is a vital part of making life balance happen.  Using all types of communication helps to keep the wheels turning at home and at work. I mentioned our family calendar in Routines, but I also have a work calendar, and they are color coordinated so that I know which event is which. This helps me know who I need to be checking in with that day, and who is the priority during different parts of the day. I also have shared notes (we use the Notes app on our phones) with my husband that include things like Christmas gifts for our families, birthday gifts/plans for our families, holiday plans/schedules, to-do lists, home project ideas, etc. These allow us to stay up to date with each other even when it is not a current priority. This helps us stay on the same page with many big life topics.