SURVIVAL TIPS FOR RAISING A LARGE FAMILY

Raising a large family can be a little tasking, but there are ways to make it all just a little easier.

Be Organized
This is one of the most important ways to efficiently manage a large family. You must learn to plan for everything around your family. All you need is 10 to 15 minutes to yourself to lay down a plan to help guide your family related activities, and this will do wonders in helping you sail through the day. These few minutes can be early in the morning before you get up from bed. A 'To-Do' list to prioritize your activities can help with this, and a calendar to keep track of everyone's schedules can also be priceless in helping to keep you organized.

Plan Your Meals
It's very helpful to put together menus (or meal plans) for a week, two weeks or even a month to help save a lot of stress in the area of meal preparation. Meal planning helps take away the burden of having to consider each day what the family will eat. With a good meal plan, all you need to bother about is how to get the ingredients for the meals you've already laid down in the plan. A meal plan also helps you shop efficiently for groceries, since you already know what you need, and it also makes it easier for you to buy in bulk, which saves you a lot of time and money.

Try To Avoid Clutter
Teach your children at a young age to keep their things organized. Your spouse should also try to pull their own weight in this area. Clutter is synonymous with large families and it can be extremely frustrating to have to clear it up all the time. So, getting everyone aware of their responsibility to keep things as organized as possible can relieve some of the stress in this area. Also, you should try to commit about 10 to 15 minutes of your time daily to just clearing things up in the house, to prevent them from mounting up into a clutter.

Make Time for One Another
Large families tend not to be so close-knit because there is usually a lot going on and family members hardly have time to just be with each other. Try to address this by making it a priority to make out private time for one another. Use these times to strengthen familial bonds and to get comfortable being around each other, to really know one another. Make time to be together and let it be clear that the time spent together as a family is the most valuable of any time spent.

Save Time and Money by Doing Things in Groups
Let your children share a bedroom, of course this depends on their number and on the size of the room. For example, five children can be split between five bedrooms. Plan your vacations as a group and take advantage of group and family discounts. Teach your children how to take care of one another, and how to manage portions like food portions etc. In addition, you can save time by grouping your errands so you can take care of as many things as you comfortably can within the same time.