Although we school at home, the older three kids are playing sports with the local school this year. After taking last year off (one glorious, simplified, re-focused year of ZERO extra-curricular activities!), we got back into football, volleyball, and basketball full throttle. However, this time I’m coordinating the sports solo…with only one car to share between two drivers…so it has required more organization and pre-planning than any of our previous years of sports.
Here are some of the things we do to stay sane and organized while everyone heads in different directions:
1. We calendar…and then calendar again…and then check the calendar. As soon as the season starts and the schedule is finalized, I write down the who/what/where/when of every single game and practice on the family calendar. If anything changes, the kids know to put it on the calendar immediately or it doesn’t exist and Mom is not liable!
2. We coordinate once a week. Every Sunday evening, we get out the ole’ calendar to coordinate the use of our car, look ahead to arrange any rides or babysitting, and make decisions about what games Mom will be at. Our family is almost always involved in at least 2 teams at once — some years up to 5! — and games are frequently at the same time HOURS away from each other. So. It is a fact of life at our house that we can’t be everywhere at once…so we plan ahead, as a group, and everybody always knows what is going on and feels supported even if their game isn’t the one I could attend that day.
3. We pre-plan snacks…this is possibly one of my best parenting hacks ever… First, we get a bunch of semi-healthy-ish individually wrapped snack items (granola bars, seaweed, trail mix, popcorn, etc.). Then we sort them into separate, labeled ziploc bags for every kid, every game, for the whole season. All the bags stay in the pantry and the kids just grab out the one they need on the day they need it. I can’t tell you how much more smoothly game-prep goes with this simple trick! I haven’t had to worry about all the travel snacks getting eaten at home and not having any left when we need them or the kids blowing all their money on nachos and pop at gas stations. All taken care of!
4. The kids wash uniforms as soon as they get home from a game. We have WAY too much laundry at this house to let stinky sports stuff stockpile in the laundry room. As soon as the kids get home from a game (no matter how late), the uniforms, socks, etc. go straight into the washer, and are hung up to dry on a rod right above it until the next game. Nobody ever wonders where their stuff is, and nobody is ever frantically washing smelly stuff right before a game. And as a bonus, my laundry room rarely smells like feet or sweaty teenagers!
5. We have go-to dinners that anybody can easily make on short notice. There are a lot of days I would concede to Arby’s after several hours of wrangling kids in the stands… but we live somewhere with exactly 0 fast food restaurants or grocery stores. So, we have several easy meals that can be ready in 15-20 minutes and prepared by nearly anyone in the house (even my 7 and 10 year olds can make these with little instruction). Lately we’ve had meatball subs (dump frozen meatballs and a can of spaghetti sauce on the stove…20 minutes later put on rolls), breakfast-for-dinner, or just good old sandwiches and chips.
6. We try to respect the pre-game. Since I never played sports, pre-game rituals always seemed superstitious and unnecessary to me. However…now that my kids are getting older, I can see that some of them like/need a pre-game ritual to help them get their head in the game. For example, one of my kids listens to certain songs on her ipod and drinks apple juice before every game. Whenever possible, we try to keep the couple hours before a game low-key and let the kids do what they feel they need to do to prepare (and keep the apple juice stocked!).
7. We debrief after every game. Whether we were able to watch in person or not, we let the kids just…talk…after every game. Usually this is a combo of going over the technical stuff on the phone with Dad, telling Mom all the “stories” (good and bad), and comparing notes with the siblings who played at other locations. This has become a simple, but critical post-game ritual for our kids to be able to process a game and then move on.
What tips and tricks do you have for staying organized during sports seasons? Let me know in the comments!
Feeding Giants 