Communication is an important part of family life, but as children grow into adults and work schedules become more and more fragmented it’s easier said than done (if you’ll pardon the pun). I’m realising that notes and messages on scraps of paper are becoming of vital importance in our home.

While I realise that this is by no means the best case scenario it’s surely better than not at all. For a period of time my daughter was working extra shifts starting at a ridiculously early time in the morning. For a time I did get up to say “Hi” and see her off but I simply couldn’t maintain it as my timetable had me working late into the night at the opposite end of the clock. She only had a few “silly shifts” left to work before moving to another department and so a fridge-memo count down was adopted and gave her a smile in the morning. It made a nice change from the stereotypical “Your dinner is in the oven” standard. Sometimes we’ll just leave a silly picture noting a funny conversation from earlier.

The institution of the fridge memo works alongside more official fridge documentation, which notifies the family of the shifts we’re working and also works in addition to the “Ironing Board” notice board which ends up as the general filing system for the household.

I’m sure that there are many more sophisticated ways of keeping each other abreast and in touch, but in this digital age it’s a nice throw-back and works nicely for us!