Effortlessly organised? How?!

[1AngelicFruitCake]

Just thinking about a friend. Presents organised and wrapped ahead of a birthday/special event, child always has lovely looking shampoo at swimming (and presumably at home), cake donations to school in a lovely tin, child /they always have the right equipment for any occasion- picnic basket, snow boots and gloves, bodyboard. They have a healthy income so i know that helps but still! How?!

I don’t know either and continually strive for this though it still eludes me. My view is that preparing for things ahead is key rather than continually only having time to prepare for the immediate next thing. Eg prepare for Christmas now rather than in December when everything is full price and rushed. How this actually gets achieved is still a mystery.

What jobs do the parents do?
What support do they have either paid or from family?

Both work full time, have a lot of help and also pay for help e.g. cleaner.

Agree as well about being prepared! I must do better at that.

By being prepared.

I'm a completely lone parent with no support/help and I've always managed!

They just care about stuff like that. I do too. Kids clothes, nice gear, picnic blanket, cool bag, I like buying nice stuff for the children and me. I’m not super organised though, but I just care about that kind of thing, but I would never be organised in the sense that I wouldn’t batch cook, I wouldn’t book annual leave a long time in advance, I don’t do a well executed online shop. But if the school announced a dressing up day at school or if there was a party with a theme, I’d be all over it.

Phone reminders as well. All birthdays and events get stored in my phone.

I’m organised but I’m a sahm so I have a lot time. I think being organised saves time over all.

Not home made cakes organised but add cakes to the Tesco order for school fayre kind.

As soon as swimming stuff is washed and dried it goes back into kids swimming bags. Shampoo is just kids 3 in 1 swim stuff from Asda, nothing posh.

I keep generic wrapping paper in the cupbaord. As soon as kids are invited to a party I add it to the calendar and order some thing from Amazon or decide if cash is better and wrap it when it arrives.

For Christmas I follow a version of TOMM.

Placemarking... We are always the family at the beach carrying our bits in plastic bags sitting beside a gorgeous family with their lovely Kath Kidson bags, matching towels, parasol & picnic hamper.. Also leave the beach feeling so inadequate

Thank you for the replies. Nice to have solidarity and also to have those who can give tips!

What is lovely looking shampoo??

I'm always one of those mums that feels constantly unorganised so a bad person to ask... but yes probably planning ahead of time! And maybe not packing in too much to their lives?

I expect it’s very effortful not effortless!

It doesn’t come naturally to me either - I find it so hard though I would love to be that way! I expect it takes lots of systems and processes to keep it spinning.

Like I said earlier I’m not perfect but I find organised difficult so being disorganised means less time to try and get organised.

This thread in an amazing font of knowledge

www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5003333-tell-me-at-one-or-two-small-thing-youve-done-to-make-your-life-easier?latest=0

It's partly money. It's partly putting the effort where it counts. I read something once, possibly on style and beauty and definitely more elequontly phrased, but it was along the lines of that it takes the same amount of time to pull on scruffy clothes as it does to pull on nice ones. So make sure you buy the nice clothes, then that's what you'll put on. The same with the shampoo. Kid doesn't think "oh I will pack my nice swimming shampoo" - they aren't rejecting 3 different bottles of mediocre shampoo, they are just packing their shampoo!
I was brought up frugal - not really poor but sort of faux poor. We didn't buy craft materials for example, we had to use a cereal box. I can't fathom doing certain things the expensive way. No cake tins here, we've got an old Celebrations tub (probably wasn't ours when it still had the chocolates on it!) I think it is a mindset to not automatically use the cheapest option. I did buy a proper picnic blanket about 9 years ago when the kids were small and I feel so profligate when I use it! Some people are able to choose the fancy option every time - it takes a certain mindset as well as money.