Do You Have a Backup Plan?

Planner from Erin Condren.com

In order for us to run our lives as smoothly as possible, we need a lot of things. Two of them are a plan and a backup plan.

In order to get yourself (or anyone else) out the door in the morning, you need a plan. You plan to get up on time, take a shower, get dressed in clean clothes, eat breakfast and so on.

But what if your normal breakfast is a bowl of cereal and you’re out of milk?

That’s when a backup plan comes in. Maybe you have some frozen waffles in the freezer or yogurt and fruit in the fridge. If you do, you’ve got an alternative breakfast and all is well.

Making sure you have something stashed away for just that purpose makes it a backup plan.

Take a look at your life and see where things tend to go off track. Do you run out of clean socks or underwear before you can do laundry? Do you run low on gas and money at the same time? Are there nights when dinner needs to be on the table the minute you walk in?

Once you have an idea of the kinds of things that tend to happen at your house, you can put some backup plans in place.

Maybe buy some extra socks or underwear and keep one aside in another drawer for when you need it.

Keep $20 in your car’s console or glove compartment for when you’re out of gas and cash.

Keep some pantry meals on hand. Spaghetti and a jar of sauce. A frozen meal you can microwave. If you’re really ambitious, make double of some of your dinners when you have time to cook and freeze half.

Oh, and here is one of my personal favorites: buy extra school supplies now while they’re on sale. Buy a lot. Your kids will need new supplies again in January when the new semester starts and they won’t be on sale then. So buy enough for the whole year and a little more.

Don’t forget things like poster board, markers, glue, and report covers.

Now take all of that stuff, minus what your kids need right now, and hide it from them.

Then when you get the inevitable “mom I need a report cover or poster board tonight” and it’s already 9:00 pm, you won’t have to drag yourself to the store because you have a backup plan.

Cool right?