Summer is quickly coming to an end, and here in our house preparing for the upcoming school year is taking over our daily life. With one kid starting middle school and one starting high school we have had quite a few school activities to attend even with the start of school a couple of weeks away.
I realized rather quickly that I was going to need a new way to keep up with the kids new day to day activities so I decided to create our very own family command center. We had always had a white board calendar on the wall in our kitchen but that was about it. I'd been wanting to add some color to the walls in our home as well so by creating this command center I was going to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
( I forgot to take a before photo so here’s a photo of Conner with our old setup behind him😂)
My kitchen has a bit of a weird shape to it and I've always found this one part of it difficult to use properly. There really isn't enough space to add a kitchen table because it is a bit narrow and doesn't allow enough space to walk through. We had thrown a bakers rack on that wall to hold extra water and coffee cups but otherwise it wasn't used and it really bothered me!
First thing I did was remove everything from the walls, including the bakers rack. I convinced my hubby to go to Home Depot with me to pick up some paint and supplies. I chose a light blue color for the walls in hope that it would brighten the kitchen a bit as our counters and cabinets and floors are all pretty dark in color. It took me longer than expected to paint the walls simply because we have so many light switches to paint around!
Once the paint was dry it was time to create a functional command center. I spent some time looking for inspiration online and drew out a sketch of what I had in mind. At first I considered getting a whiteboard calendar for each family member but quickly realized that would most likely be very confusing to keep up with so I stuck with our original calendar. I added a wire tray underneath the calendar to hold dry erase markers, pens and pencils.
I also had this cute, butcher paper roll that had originally been put on the wall too high for me to reach that I had intended to use as a grocery list. That has now been put up where I can actually reach it and write lists and notes on it.
I chose to repurpose the kids daily school schedule chalkboard from their virtual classroom and turn that into a chore chart. I am still working on the finished product and will share that in a separate blog post later! Under the calendar I have three clipboards attached to a pallet style sign that I use to hold coupons. I considered using some hanging file folders to store paperwork the kids bring home but instead put up a cork board so that I could see their paper work more easily. The daily agenda board is for the kids to write down upcoming assignments that are due and for myself to write down our meals for the week.
Lastly I added in some decor to make the wall fun. I love word art and grabbed some of my favorites from around the house to put on the wall. I also had wanted to create a space for the dogs food bowls so we put up each of their photos towards the bottom of the wall and got them new bowls. I think they approve!
I am very pleased with how this command center turned out. It makes me happy to finally feel like this is a functional space. Stay tuned for the post on creating the chore chart!
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