Creating a Family System and Command Center

by Camille Walker

I have been wanting to share my family system and command center for a long time, and then I had a baby. Ha ha! He is 9 months old now, the sun has come back out and I am feeling like a brand new woman. Let me say for starters that I think a command center is awesome! It is the hub of the family happenings, the shoes, the bags…the STUFF. I would be lying if I said that it doesn’t look like a hot mess most of the time, but I have developed ways of managing the family chaos that I really love and I am excited to share them with you today!

creating a family system and command center

HAVE A DESIGNATED SPACE FOR YOUR SHOES/JACKETS/BAGS.

I was thrilled when we moved into this house because it was equipped with a designated place for our bags, jackets, and items right inside the garage door. The bench is super handy for putting on shoes and it even has a space for shoes below the bench. I found this long open rack from a “going out of sale” craft supply store and converted it into a space to hold our shoes.

If your home doesn’t have a space built into it like this, create your own! Even a small shoe rack and hooks on the wall can be done relatively inexpensively, I love this shoe bin, and these hooks.

LABEL BASKETS OR BINS FOR EACH FAMILY MEMBER.

When things started getting a little too messy I created a basket for each person so that the shoes were kept together in the same space. These white bins are from the dollar store and I printed out our names and taped them on. I wish I had a labeler, because I am nerdy like that, but the paper and tape works well too. It is so much easier to have your child put things away and find them again when they can use their own special bin. I have my eye on the label maker, I am ready to go crazy labeling stuff all over the house!

There are six of us in the family now and we have outgrown this system, so I am considering some major Marie Kondo efforts, and also thinking about putting some units in the garage from Ikea that attach to the wall. For now, this works well, and I think I will just try to limit the number of shoes that are kept in this space. Ha! Who am I kidding? Most of the time the shoes that are flowing are mine! That is another post for another day!

KEEP EVERYTHING WITHIN REACH.

Even though we had these amazing hooks I found that my children were never using them! Grrr. I would ask kindly, beg, yell, nothing seemed to work. It wasn’t until I took a step back to realize they weren’t using it because they couldn’t reach them easily and if something isn’t easy when it comes to putting things away it doesn’t happen. Just last month I hung up new hooks that were lower, just their size, and they are using them waaaay more! Not 100% of the time, but it has increased the cleanliness of our command center by at least 50%.

Make sure that you find the stud when hanging up hooks so that you are minimizing the possibility of the hooks being pulled out from your wall. It should be able to bear heavy back packs and coats.

Head to the full blog post to see more tips!