Q&A

Someone recently asked me some questions about organizing and general household managment.   Here are the questions & my responses.

I am just wondering if you have any tips or insight to share with the rest of us about how you manage to accomplish so much with kids’ school, housework, household duties, etc. How do you manage your time and resources, and get so much done?

I think one of the most helpful things is that I am always thinking ahead, waaay ahead.   My husband does not work this way and finds it highly annoying. lol!    I hate, hate, hate to feel rushed & pressured so by planning ahead I can move at a more relaxed pace, pick things up when I am already doing something else in that area, be on the watchout for good sales, deals on craigslist, etc.  (This was in reference to Christmas shopping)

I am militant about using my calendar and not just for keeping track of dates- I put all sorts of reminders on there. Examples- reminders in Oct. to call and schedule Nathan’s annual physical in Jan., reminders to bring xyz to CC, reminders of when my groupon expires. And I might even write several reminders- for ex. 10/3 (Groupon expires 10/20!), 10/8 (take pictures of kids in halloween & christmas outfits for calendar), 10/17 (groupon expires 10/20!), and then on 10/20 (Groupon expires today!!) (the groupon was for a picture/calendar making service hence the reminder to take the kids pics to put in the calendar) This is really helpful in keeping important things in the front of my mind so they are not forgotten.

As to getting things done:

I have found that some type of routine or schedule is helpful. And one hugely helpful thing for me to be more productive was learning to schedule MORE time for each activity/event in the day than I thought was necessary. And also learning that you can’t just follow what other people say is the “right” schedule- you really have to look at YOUR family, your lifestyle, your internal clock & rhythm and work around your own natural flow, while still being realistic.

So- how that looks for me- I am just not a morning person, never will be. So it is just NOT realistic to say that I am going to get up at 5am to read my Bible, have breakfast at 6am and have the kids starting their schoolwork by 7am. Never gonna happen and it sets me up for failure to try to do so. On the other hand, I do need to be realistic- my husband is not a night owl and he wants most things done & clean by the time he gets home and so if I’m going to honor that, I can’t sleep in until 11am and start school at 3pm, you know? So I get up at 7am, shower & dress and then give myself 45minutes to an hour of doing… nothing! I wander and putter and have a slow start- I putter around with the breakfast dishes in the sink, check my email, read a bit at the shed, etc. I don’t get the day started until 8:15 and even that starts slow. 15 minutes of training, followed by 15 minutes to get dressed, brush teeth & hair, clean their rooms, and then Bible study/quiet time for all.  We don’t start school until 9am.

I find that Charlotte Mason’s idea of short and varied lessons is applicable to life as well- our day is broken up into “chunks” and I find that having shorter work times, spread out over the day allows us to be refreshed and work quickly instead of one big long neverending slog of school work and chores. So we have a morning chunk of time (8:15-9:00) followed by a school work time (9:00-10:30 or 11:00) and then 2 hours for recess & lunch, then a quiet time, followed by another chunk of time for school and another quick clean up. So you won’t see us doing 3 or 4 hours of school straight, it’s broken up over the day. The same with chores/clean up- we don’t spend 1-2 hours just working on chores- it’s spread out over the day. So we have smaller spurts of more intense, focused activity, then change to something entirely different for a while and so on. I find that our family works more effectively that way.

Other house “rules” as pertains to housework-
-90% of our toys are locked up in the toy closet so very few things are out.
-toys stay in their homes and are not hauled around the house. So if the “inchimals” set belongs in the school room, it never leaves the schoolroom. There is no taking it downstairs. That keeps it feeling somewhat “new” and cuts down on the work for me.
-The kids are NOT, NOT allowed free roaming & wandering throughout the house. They are generally expected to stay in the room that I am in. This keeps the mess from being spread over the whole house.
-We have to clean up the room we are in before we leave it. So the living room has to be neat & tidy before we leave it to go upstairs in the morning. Bedrooms are picked up daily. Schoolroom has to be neat & tidy before we leave to go down for recess & lunch.
-It really is easier to keep the house clean if you cut down on the clutter- whether it’s kitchen supplies or children’s clothing or toys or cleaners under your sink- less is better. And it is also really easier to keep it clean if you just… keep it clean! Pick up each room before you leave it, do a daily straightening of the kitchen counters & desk areas, etc.

Do you keep a paper calendar, wall calendar, monthly/daily? What kind of calendar is it? Do you carry it with you everywhere?

Are you a stickler about finishing everything on your to-do list?

Are you a stickler about keeping to your school schedule no matter what or do you allow some flexibility?

If you’re not feeling well (ex. morning sickness or something) do you just suck it up and power through?

What about outside activities? I know you guys do some stuff out of the house so how do you keep that from throwing you off track?

-I keep a wall calendar. I’m not out of the house enough that I would need a small calendar in my purse- but if I was, I would probably carry one. If someone asks me about a date, etc. at a time that I’m out, I just tell them I’ll have to check my calendar and get back to them.

-To Do List: No, I wouldn’t say I’m a stickler about it. I do keep a running list each day and whatever I don’t finish that day gets carried over to the next day. As you know, with small kids in the house, there are so many disruptions, accidents, falls, someone is sick, etc. that it is hard to always get everything you want done in one day.

-Schedule- Well, I am a stickler about it but strive to have balance & be reasonable as well.    I mean, it’s not much of a schedule if you never follow it, right?    So this year we are doing 4 days a week, 6 weeks on with the 7th week off. So there is time built in each week and every 7 weeks for the extras. My 1 “off” day each week is floating- I take it when I need it- maybe a Monday this week or maybe Thursday next week, etc. So I really try to stick to the schedule on the 4 school days knowing that we’ve got our off day for appointments, fun field trips, etc. But we also have 2- 2 1/2 hours for recess & lunch each day and so I occasionally utilize that time to do a grocery run, picnic lunch at the playground with friends, etc. And I am REALLY enjoying our 7th week off because it is built in time that is free for the big trips- the zoo, local museums, small daytrips, etc.

Now, if for some reason we need to deal with an interruption to our school day, that is fine- we just jump back on the schedule when we can.

If I’m sick with the flu or something, we just take the days off for school- even public school kids gets 10 sick days a year. If it were something more long lasting like morning sickness- I operate on a modified schedule/routine for weeks. To some extent I do just power through but I also try to recognize what can reasonably be dropped or adjusted for a while. So we’d keep doing math, language arts & history and drop a lot of the extras.

Outside activities- We’ve really cut down this year- we’ve dropped out of classical conversations (just did that this week) and we’ve dropped tae kwon do & swimming. When we do have activities, I try to limit them to the afternoon so that they are not interfering with our school work and the youngers afternoon nap. We have a wonderful piano teacher who comes to our home at 4pm once a week and Nathan is doing cubscouts at 6:30pm every other week. We are doing a Keepers/Contendors group with 2 other families but again that is only 2x a month and it doesn’t meet until 6:45pm so we still have all day at home. I am very careful about how much we are out of the home during the day and try to avoid anything that happens before 11am so that we can get the bulk of our work done.