Scheduled realizations

I have always thought of myself as an unstructured person. I don't really love "having" to do certain things at certain times. I have always liked to have a very loose schedule where there is lots of time to do fun things as they come up. I mean, we usually have breakfast, lunch and dinner at certain times. Of course we have to ben places like school, church, dr appointments and such at certain times. But I like being able to run to the park just because we don't have anything else planned and it would be lots of fun, or having a picnic outside for dinner just because, or dropping everything to run to a friends house for a play date or baking day. However, this type of lifestyle, really hasn't been working for me lately. I was starting to feel like the house was out of control, the kids weren't learning anything at all about cleaning and life was, well, unscheduled (although there were lots of things "scheduled").
My husband, on the other hand, is very organized and scheduled. He sometimes gets frustrated with my randomness but is always kind about my lack of organization. So, when I got frustrated with myself, I turned to him....probably bad timing for him since he was trying very hard to study for a test and he came through for me. I know he has talked to me about this many a time but it finally clicked this time and I really feel like things are turning around here.
So, here is what finally works for me:
I got a planner....just a plain, ordinary daily planner. I scheduled out the basic jobs that need to be done each day, such as: Monday is my baking day and I try to get the kitchen cleaned while I'm in there making a mess (now that really doesn't make sense but it ends up working for me), Tuesday is my errand day, etc. I DID NOT write specific times for these things to be done, just that they need to be done sometime that day. I also told myself that as long as those jobs got done that day, I could not freak out about what didn't get done because there would be a day to get to it. I still do quick pick-ups everyday but I don't have to feel bad about not cleaning the bathrooms on Monday because they get done on Tuesdays.
So far, this seems to be working for me. I know....you are all going, DUH! I guess I am just really slow at figuring my life out. On the note of learning about myself, I found a really great blog that has so many insights that really make me think about being a mom. You should check it out. I guess as a final note, THANKS to all of you who have visited my house in its messy state or been subject to my randomness and are still my great friends and are good inspiration. I love you all!