How can I run an efficient home? Introducing my newest online course!

This week is focused on the home, and whether we like it or not, we are all homemakers.

If we live in our own home, if we're renting a home, whatever it might be, even if we live in university accommodation, that space is your home, and we have to look after it and make it as homely as we possibly can and make it work for us.

I have always loved homemaking and I learned an awful lot from mum. She was an incredible homemaker and taught me masses. But in my later teens, every summer, probably for about five years, I went to work for a family in Italy and I learned lots from them.

I was predominantly looking after the children, but I learned lots of different aspects of homemaking from them. Then I actually quit university and I ended up nannying for another family for a year. Their mother wasn't very well, and I was really thrown in at the deep end. All aspects, the cooking, cleaning, food shopping, children, you name it, I did it. I even organised dinner parties for them and got really, really into cooking as well. So those skills really set me up for having our own home and our own family.

So, I'm going to talk to you about a few of my golden rules to homemaking!

Preparation

I'm a Girl Guide and I'm proud of it, but honestly, it's set me in excellent stead. I may joke about my Girl Guide motto, "Be prepared," but it does make life so much easier when we are prepared and when we are organized for whatever it might be. Whether that's being organized and prepared for the following day or for the week, just taking some time to make those preparations makes life so much easier.

I make sure that everything is prepared the night before. I make sure that the kitchen is organised, that it's wiped down, and that everything is in order. If you're prepared for the next day, then you're setting yourself up for a good start. If you're starting on the back foot, for example there are dirty dishes and chaos and everything's out of control, it's going to set the day up in a bad, bad way and you're always going to be trying to catch up.

So being prepared say the night before, or on the Sunday for the week ahead makes life much easier.

Organisation

Preparation and organisation go hand in hand. Plan your food, plan your meals, just make an effort to be organized. I always keep a list on my fridge so when we're running low on something or when we've run out of something, it's written on the list. The children and Simon now know that if they've used the last of something, put it on the list because trust me, when you get to the supermarket, you won't remember all of those things! It's just a little thing, but it makes life so much easier.

The next thing is making sure everything has its own place.

I've talked about this before in a previous YouTube video, but if everything has a home, then life is so much easier. For example, the kitchen scissors, make sure that everybody knows where they live.

That way, if somebody asks, should they need to, you can say it's on the second drawer on the right-hand side, or it's in the larder, second shelf down in the basket labeled pasta You do need to ensure that everything is put back in said place. This is so unbelievably important because then you don't spend hours tidying up and you can say to whoever it might be, "You know where that lives, put it away." Job done!

I also make sure that I have a notebook by my bed.

So, if I wake up in the middle of the night and I think of something, I just jot it down because when it comes to the morning, you won't forget it.

Invest in a task book.

They're just brilliant, and not expensive! You can get them anywhere, and mine is just entitled 'Things to do today'. I write my list down, tick it off, and by the time you've got to the end of the day and you've looked at your list you can see "Yes, I've done it." It's such a good feeling.

Time management

So, we have talked about preparation. We've talked about organisation. We have talked about the golden rule of everything having its place and we've talked about lists, but something terribly important is time management and how you manage your time. The more efficient you are with your time homemaking, the more time you have off to enjoy the things that you want to do, like getting out in the garden or going for walks. If your home is run efficiently, you have more time, which I think is really important because I love having time for me. And loads of people say, "Charlie, how do you manage to do all the things that you do?" Well, I just try to run as an efficient home as I possibly can in order to do that.

So, having talked about all those different aspects, I'm really excited to tell you that, finally, the Efficient Home Course is here!

It has been in the pipeline for a very, very long time, and I am super excited about it.

There are two course options. There is the three-week course, and then the four-week course which includes a week focusing on families and children, which I know doesn't apply to all.

Within the course, we will be covering a lot of the things that we've talked about today, but so, so, so much more and we will be going into a lot of detail. You will have access to all of my resources. My cleaning schedules, my recipes, my batch cooking, time management systems, all sorts of things, freezer diary, you name it. It is in there!

I will be live twice a week in a super friendly exclusive Facebook group to answer questions and to help in any way. These lives will be saved both on the Facebook group and uploaded to Teachable, so don't panic if you can't make them!

You will have all the week's content delivered to you via Teachable and you can work through it at your own time. I know we all have busy lives, so I've made the course in such a way that you can just dip in, dip out for the week!

The course starts on the 1st of March and lasts for three weeks or four weeks, if you've enrolled for the extra week. It is packed full of so much useful information and I am on hand to help you through it and just help you make life that little bit easier!

Enrolment is officially open, so click below for more information or to join us!

Click below to enrol in the Ask Charlie - The Efficient Home course. https://ask-charlie.teachable.com/p/ask-charlie-the-efficient-home

Click below to enrol in the course with the additional ‘Family Time’ week. https://ask-charlie.teachable.com/p/ask-charlie-the-efficient-home-family-time

Wishing you a really, really happy weekend, sending lots of love, and I will see you again next week.

Love, Charlie x