Creating a New Routine After the First Day of School

All in all, though, he's been thrilled about school and enjoying his new teacher and classmates. He's been fortunate enough to have some friends from his first-grade class in his new second-grade class with him, so I know that's helping. But the boy is a social butterfly--he makes friends so easily wherever he goes. 

Still, I know that my son has inherited my anxiety, including its unnecessarily high levels in times of excitement or fear. Seeing these signs present themselves in the days before school started, I thought back to my own childhood and how I felt before school. Why was I having these increased fears if I already knew the school and had friends?

What would have helped me in those first few days of the school year when everyone was learning new names and seating charts? Both my mom and dad were super supportive and gave a ton of love to me and my siblings. But they were also working parents with a lot of other super important and time-sensitive things going on during my childhood. The more I reflected, the more I thought about how it may help Ky to have something from home in his bag. After all, he spent basically the entire summer with me and his sister. Going from 24/7 mom & sister access to a full school day without us was bound to produce some shock.

So, I decided to utilize meal-prepping to make Kyrie's afternoon snack for the week instead of tossing in something store-bought. I'd had a recipe for 4-Ingredient Banana Oatmeal Bars saved for some time.

They were so easy to make and did exactly what I was hoping they would do--they provided comfort for Kyrie. He raved about the bars and asked for them every day. I think they were a huge help in reminding him that he would be back home soon.

It's important for me to note that, at the moment, I'm unemployed. Unfortunately, I was laid off from my remote job back in March 2023. So when I say I was spending nearly every waking minute with my kids–I mean it! And this was something new to me. From before Kyrie was even born, I had always expected that one part of the day would involve me working and the other part of the day would be spent with my husband and kids. They drove me crazy about once every hour. But I relished the time. 

With Kyrie back in school, my days didn't really change much because I was still cooking, cleaning, and momming.  But I did find myself occasionally looking around the house in between tasks trying to think of things to do. There wasn't any math for me to check, answers for me to give to any questions, or paint and markers to clean up. Of course, I had the baby with me. But I also got used to having my little man with me. 

Old habits die hard, though. And I found myself tapping back into that working mindset of needing to structure my days. I’d finally gotten a routine mostly down by the time the school year started. So, while still seeking employment, I’m at that weird point of recreating my new schedule. I tend to get overwhelmed pretty easily, so one of my absolute favorite platforms I’ve been using to data dump all of my tasks is one called Goblin Tools. 

The website is free to use, and the app is just a dollar. I got the app, preferring the convenience. It’s been great for me to have all of my to-dos in one place. And it has this amazing breakdown feature that helps you organize a task into a step-by-step process. You can adjust the level of detail needed (referred to in the system as the “spiciness level.”) and even reorganize, add, or delete steps.

Though the app is a huge help, it doesn’t have automation in the sense of setting up recurring tasks. Yes, I know I can use my calendar or another separate app for this. But that adds to the number of platforms that I have to remember to use and eventually update. So, instead, I stuck with a method that has always worked for me with setting up recurring tasks: a dry-erase calendar.

I started by breaking things down into categories:

Cat 1: daily tasks (or every other day, if applicable)

Cat 2: weekly tasks

Cat 3: monthly tasks*