It's Summer!

After cold and rainy weather for what felt like FOREVER, it finally feels like summer.  We've had HOT, humid weather and lots of sunshine.  It does look like a storm is rolling in today, though.  I am kind of bummed about that because my garden needs a bit of tilling so I can get it planted.  This was not a good year to try and create a new big garden.  It has been too wet to work the ground.  Hubby finally got our garden plowed and disked, but it needs some tilling before planting.  It should have happened last weekend, but mowing took precedence.  I am hoping we don't get so much rain today that we can't till and plant this weekend.

Now that I have more days at home without outside commitments, I have been taking this opportunity to do some cleaning and organization that was long overdue.  Our schoolroom/office was a ridiculous mess.  You couldn't even walk through the place because it tend to be a dumping place for everything.  I started sorting though stuff, but got discouraged.  That paired with the fact that we were have people over last weekend, I just boxed everything up and hauled it to the basement.  I promised myself that I would go through one box per day.  I might not be keeping up with that so far this week...BUT the schoolroom looks great! 

Yesterday, I started cleaning out my pantry.  It is packed full and I can never find anything. I had shelves full of bags of bulk foods, etc.  I would look for something, not see it, and end up buying it.  After returning from Sam's Club yesterday, I realized that something HAD to be done.  I didn't have room to put anything away.  So I broke down and purchased some containers to store all of our bulk things like nuts, grains and dried fruit.  I was so glad to get rid of all of those little bags!  It is still in process and my kitchen counter island is still covered, but I am hoping to have it put together by the end of the day.  Fact is, we go though a lot of food.  We have changed out diet to mostly unprocessed, whole, real food.  This can allow for way less packaging and a tidier pantry.  I just had to break down and spring for some containers.  I fell in love with one type, but they were $10-15 each.  I settled on a more economical option and they seem to be working out great.

My next big project will be our clothing/laundry situation.  I have come to the conclusion (with help from my hubby) that I am a clothes hoarder.  I save every outgrown thing for the next child coming up.  I buy any good deal I find even if I have enough clothes for that particular child.  (When I mean good deal, I am talking a quarter.)  However, I am discovering that much of what I have saved looked pretty sad.  It is worn, faded and outdated.  This should be no surprise.  I have about 7 years between several of my same sex siblings.  If you figure that most of the clothes were purchased used, they are over a decade old and have seen the wear of at least two children.  A couple of boxed were attacked by mice as well, so they were trash.  So, I am sorting through and getting rid of a bunch of stuff.  I will only save the best of the best clothing and pass on the rest to someone else.  I probably have a couple of weeks worth of work to go through my stash. 

That's my life right now.  It is busy with the mundane but necessary.

Making Time

It sure has been quiet on the blog front here hasn't it?  I am trying very hard to be more disciplined with my time and follow a particular routine/schedule for my days.  The time in my day that I have allotted for blogging is in the early morning before my children rise.  During that time I also get completely dressed and ready for the day, make hubby's lunch, and have my quiet time with God.  These things take priority over blogging so if I don't get up as early as I would like, guess what falls by the wayside?  Yup, the blog.  And guess how is having difficulty getting up early?  Yup, that would be me!  I am working on this.  I am determined to do better. 

On a positive note, the new routine has been working pretty well for us.  (That is, when I actually stick to it.  Oh Discipline, I pray for you daily!)

DAILY SCHEDULE

• 5:00-6:00am:  Get up.
• Until 8:00am:  Get completely dressed and ready for the day, make coffee, make hubby's lunch, bible study, prayer, e-mail, facebook, blogging.
• 8:00-8:30am:  Wake kids (if necessary), help them complete their upstairs tasks, laundry.
• 8:30-9:00am:  Breakfast, family devotion, memory verses
• 9:00-:9:30am:  Mom's office time, Kids chore time
• 9:30am-12:00pm:  Academics
• 12:00-12:30pm:  Lunch
• 12:30-3:00pm:  Project time
• 3:00-3:30pm:  Tea time
• 3:30-4:30pm:  Quiet reading hour, Mom's office time
• 4:30-5:30pm:  Pick up house and make dinner
• 5:30-6:00pm:  Dinner
• 6:00-8:30pm:  Family time/Outside activities
• 8:30-9:00pm:  Younger kids bedtime
• 9:00-10:30ish pm:  Free time with older kids
• 10:30pm (approx.):  Bedtime!

Of course, this varies depending on outside activities for the day, but this is the basic framework that I am trying to maintain. Theere are several new things on this schedule that are working out very well:

1. Earlier mealtimes than we had before.
2. "office times" both early and late in the day for me to officially make/return non-personal phone calls, do paperwork, pay bills, etc.
3. Tea time which acts as a benchmark in the day and a little snack time for the kids.  We have been reading poetry during this time.
4. Quiet reading hour for my younger children.  This gives me a quiet hour to be productive AND I have seen a big boost in reading interest and skills since we started this, especially with my 8 year old son.

That all being said...I gotta go.  It's time for me to go motivate my kiddos!

Time Management

It's that time of year again...back to school time.  So, you're like, "Don't you homeschool?  Don't you even homeschool year round?"  Yup, yes I do.  But there is nothing like sales for school supplies and hearing all my friends preparations to send their children back to school to make me feel the need for some planning and regrouping.

First, I always have to ask myself "why?"  Why in the world don't I send my children to school and take this enormous burden to educating them off of myself?  That's a whole other topic that I am not going to go into right now, but suffice to say, I know that this is God's calling for me and the right thing to do for my family.  It is good to think about that and remind myself why I go to this effort.

Next, I feel the need to plan things out and make sure we are on course.  Although we school year round, I find that I get a bit slack in the summer.  By the end of the summer the lessons are getting very relaxed.  This year I even feel like I have let our tried and true routines slide quite a bit, too.  It is time give our little homeschool a kick in the pants.

So, I am thinking a lot about our daily schedule and how to make it all fit.  There is so much that I need to squeeze into a day.  Without careful planning, it is just not all going to happen.  I realize that I can't figure this out on my own; I need help.  So, I have been seeking God's Wisdom during my morning quiet time.  I'll share a bit of what I have discovered:

"So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air." 1 Corinthians 9:26

"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." Matthew 6:33

"Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time." Colossians 4:5 (Emphasis mine)

"For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?"  Luke 14:28

"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." Ephesians 5:15-16

"O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!"  Psalm 39:4-5

"Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin." James 4:13-17

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:"  Ecclesiastes 3:1

"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,"  Ephesians 5:15

"And Jesus said to her, 'Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.'"John 2:4

"And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed." Mark 1:35

"So as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God." 1 Peter 4:2

There is much that God has to say about time management.  Lessons that I learn from this are:

• God desires us to use our time wisely.
• God wants us to plan ahead.
• When God causes circumstances to change, we need to roll with it.
• We are to put God first in our priorities.
• There are "seasons" for everything. Blocks of time for each purpose we have.
• Jesus had His time planned out.
• Jesus got up early to pray to God.

I am really trying to think this through and apply it to my life.  I am in the process of mapping out my days into blocks of time (seasons) so that it is possible to get all I need to do done.  But as I type this, I realize that I am out of time. (How ironic!) So, I will have to share that in more detail on another day.  Until then, God's speed to you!

Photo:  My Regulator Clock that hangs in my living room

Laundry Woes

I have a lot of areas that I am weak in. Laundry is definitely one of them. I have really improved through the years, but during that time our family keeps growing so the net results don't look much better. I have tons of laundry around. There's the ever present dirty stuff as well as a big messy pile of clean stuff that needs to be sorted and put away before it permanently looks wadded up.

Really, I think it is this putting away of the laundry that really does me in. I hate when you have a pile that has items that literally need to get put away in six different locations. It actually makes me crazy and robs a bit of my sanity. So, my solution to this is that each family member has their own laundry basket and I wash all of their clothes at once and then they get put back into their basket and then put away. This does work pretty well, especially if I keep up on it. The problem is that I don't always. Then I have laundry baskets of clean laundry sitting in the kids' rooms and they are throwing their dirty stuff on the floor of their closet where it all gets mixed up together. Then I end up washing loads of mixed up clothes which, in turn, get piled up in my laundry room because I hate to sort them to put them away. That is where we are now. My laundry room is literally a black hole of (mostly) clean laundry.

This terrible laundry state has driven me to think about a new way to tackle laundry. I truly have no idea if this will work for us, but it should solve some of my problems. I am thinking about moving everyone's individualized laundry baskets into the laundry room so that clothes can be sorted right as they come out of the dryer into them. Then each child (perhaps with an older helper) would be responsible for putting away their own clothes. Also each person would take their dirty clothes to the laundry room to be sorted and washed instead of piling up in their closets.

I am thinking that I may try this with just the little ones and see how it goes. My older girls do their own laundry for the most part, so I don't want to mess with that. We'll see how it goes and I'll report back.

It's Monday

Yes, it is Monday morning and I am sitting here trying to gather my thoughts and plan out my week and my day. There is so much I want to get done and know that in reality, it can't all happen right now in the time that I have. I guess that goes back to the priorities that I talked about last week. I have to decide what is the most important and move that to the front of my to do list.

I always envision this to do list planning as a priority ladder. The top rung is that most important thing that I have to do right now. Each day I hang things on each rung in order of importance and as I complete the top thing, everything else moves up. Unexpected things happen and they will have to be put at the top, pushing other things down the ladder. Sadly, often things I really want to do continually get pushed down the ladder and I can never seem to get to them.

So, how does one decide what is currently at the top of the priority ladder? Because I tend to be procrastinator by nature, deadlines tend to be the deciding factor. If something has to be done this morning, it goes to the top, while the thing that needs to be done by this afternoon goes on next, and so on. Once all current deadlines are met, I have to choose what is the most important using my priorities. Often I do what sounds like the most fun at the moment, but that is probably not always the best choice. Although, when I am in the mood and motivated to do something, I can accomplish it much faster than if I am not.

Right now, as I look at today's ladder, I think I am going to have to put motivating my children to finish getting ready for the day and fixing breakfast right at the top. That would fall into the "deadline" category above. The day is getting away fast empty tummies have needs. Then I will tackle today's to do list.

The Daily Grind

Schedules confound me!
I really LOVE the idea of my days following a precise schedule in theory, but in practice, I just can't do it. Ugh! and it frustrates me. I know that to get all that I want to get done in a day, I have to plan for it. I can make up the best schedules ever, but then something happens and they all fall apart. Some days it is some unexpected event, or a child's meltdown, but if I was honest, I would have to say that I am the biggest detriment to my schedule. I hate being a clock watcher; it stresses me out, and I also have to much desire to be spontaneous. I will run something out to the mailbox and then get sidetracked pulling a few weeds I see in the garden.
The next thing you know the kids and I are weeding the entire garden and watering the plants and I have used up the rest of my morning. This is both a blessing and a curse. I have gotten important work done, but to do so I have neglected other important work.

I wish I was a person who found pleasure in a schedule. I know there are people like this who are even passionate about their schedule and feel such a sense of accomplishment from staying on track and crossing things off their list. Why can't that be me? I know that managing a household of eight and homeschooling my children requires the discipline of planning and scheduling to get done what needs to get done. A schedule is a required tool to maintain sanity. So why do I struggle with it so much? Is it a lack of discipline and a form of sin? Some days, I would have to say that this is so. I have made poor choices and chose to do unproductive things with my time. But, on another level, I think this is part of my genetic makeup - the way that I am built.

If I am not a structured person by nature, what am I then? I find that I get an idea in my head or the urge to accomplish something and I am very passionate about it and intensely motivated to get it done. I will tend to ignore everything else until I accomplish this task. If I were one single person who was not accountable to anyone else, this would probably work just fine. But I am not, and my struggle is to figure out how to allow for this spontaneous, random productivity in a framework of a schedule that forces me to get other things that HAVE to get done done.

Several years ago, I was a fly baby following the Fly Lady. She is a great motivator for "side-tracked home executives" like me. There are many useful tips I have learned from her. One of them was the concept of a routine instead of a schedule. A routine does not watch the clock, but is a series of things you do in order and is based on habit. You do one thing after another every day until it is a habit that does not require thought. One routine that I have established is my early morning routine. I wake up before the rest of the family, get dress and cleaned up, make my coffee or tea and have my morning quiet time in which I pray, do bible study and (attempt to ) plan out my day. I do this pretty consistently and it works fantastic for me unless I oversleep or the baby wakes up earlier than expected. I keep trying to add other little routines throughout the day, but I am struggling with being consistent with them.

Although, we homeschool year round, I find that I let the lessons get pretty laid back in the summer. As the rest of the world prepares to go back to school, I get the bug to take a fresh look at our schedule and do a little planning. So, I have been doing a lot of thinking about our family's daily schedule. There are several areas of discipline that I have let slide in both the lessons and the home maintenance so I want to build these back into our daily routines. I can make great plans, but as I look at them, I know that it is unrealistic that I will be able to enforce them or even keep up with it myself for the long term.

I have been doing a lot of praying about this and feel like God is showing me that we need a balance of both more tightly scheduled times and more loosey-goosey times that allow the freedom for spontaneity. My plan right now is to build these tight routines into the benchmarks of our day. Everyday we wake up, eat three meals, and go to bed. Exactly how we do these may vary, but they happen every day. So, I need to build routines into these activities for myself and all the children.

Hopefully, within the next week, I will have some concrete ideas that I can share. I am praying that God gives me some profound wisdom in this area.

"Be Prepared."
That statement has been pressed in front of me today.
I was reading a blog by the sister of a woman who was in an airplane crash with her husband. She mentioned that her sister had just taken on the mantra "Be Prepared" the week before the accident. How fortunate because her house was in perfect order and well stocked making it so easy to care for the couple's four children. My mother is in a similar, although thankfully less severe, situation. She fell and broke her pelvis in two places. Since she will be off her feet for quite some time, she mentioned being thankful that the house was in order before it happened.

I can't help but turn my thoughts to my own home. [sigh] It's not so in order. It is messy, unorganized and even my own family members, and often even *I* can't find things. If something were to happen to me today, how difficult would it be for my family to function? I certainly hope, I don't feel burdened by this because something tragic is going to happen in my family, but it is making me think. I am not being a good steward of my stuff or my time when I am unorganized. For example, I spend way too much time digging through my big ol' pile of clean laundry to try and find a complete outfit for each of my kids each day. Of course it also takes time to sort, fold and hang all those clothes, too, but it is probably a better way to spend my time because there is way less frustration involved.

So, what does it mean to be prepared? I am thinking about this and here are a few ideas that I have come up with that I think are important for our family household:

Minimal clutter because clutter hides what's important.

Pantry
stocked with items to make complete meals (still trying to decide how far ahead
to stock for).

Clothing in order for all family members.

Medicine
and first aid supplies stocked and organized.

Files organized enough that
someone else can easily find things.

Emergency fund set aside.

I am sure I could come up with a much longer list, but I think these are the biggies. If these things were in place and in order, we would be better prepared if something happened to either Barry or me or if something happened to make us unable to get supplies.

Roses are Red...

Violets are blue.
I'm still alive;
How about you?

Although things have been pretty quiet here in blogland, it has been quite the opposite in real life. I am finding that in adding an 8th member to our household, my days are incredibly full and I really need to plan out my days and be disciplined to follow a schedule/routine or my days slip away and nothing has been accomplished.

This year I was too cheap to buy the refill planner pages for my Franklin Covey planner and decided to put my scrapbook supplies to good use and create my own. I downloaded the "Daily Docket" page from the Simple Mom blog and have been using this for my daily pages. It isn't a perfect fit for me, but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted in a daily page and thought I would use this for a while until I figured it out. One thing a I do really like about it is that it has a "Things to Do" list with 10 spaces as well as "Today's M.I.T.s" (MITs = Most Important Tasks) with 3 spaces. I have a master to-do list that is a mile long, but these daily lists force me to prioritize what is the most important to complete. I don't always complete my list, and I carry this over to the next day's list. This has helped me be much more productive in my day.

Ok, so you may be wondering about this photo I posted here of the marker covering the arm of my couch. It doesn't really fit into this topic of daily productivity - or does it? Yesterday, I walked into my kitchen/family room to discover my lovely 2 year old daughter with a 5 color highlighter marker drawing on my couch. To say I was upset would be an understatement. She got in BIG trouble and has been banned from anything that writes for the time being. Thankfully, the Bissell carpet pretreatment spray took this all off. I was so relieved. Anyway, I share this because interruptions like this happen continually every day. Today it was the numerous potty training messes I dealt with today. It is always something. That's why it is so important to have that daily docket, so once the current drama has been dealt with, I can refocus on what I need to be doing.

Quick post with a scrapbook page

Thought I would share this scrapbook page I worked on this weekend. It felt so good to sit and do something creative on the computer. I haven't done that in a while. I am hoping that I can sneak some more scrapping in after the baby arrives. Of course it will have to be done one handed while I am on nursing duty, but I can live with that.

In regards to this page, it has one of *my* baby pictures. Here I am at 10 months old. I still remember that skunk. Her name was Flower (like the skunk from Bambi). I had her for years. Check out that avocado green and yellow flowered chair. Can you tell this was taken in 1970? Credits for the page can be found here.

I just realized that I still do not have any 2009 calendar pages in my planner. That's not so good. Instead of buying some, I am going to try and make my own. I think it will be fun to put a little creative energy into my planner since I refer to it so much. I am going to try and at least get a couple of months printed and clean out my planner book. I try and share when I get done.

12 Weeks Until Christmas

Did you realize that it was time to start counting down to Christmas? The holiday season is upon us! Simple Mom reminded me yesterday that it is time to pull out my Holiday Planner and start getting to work.

Last year, I made the investment in this e-book holiday planner and it was incredibly helpful. The planner is designed to break up all the tasks needed to be done for the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years) into weekly segments so that by the time Christmas rolls around everything is done and we can celebrate without stress. I didn't keep up with all of the tasks every week, but I found this such a benefit for us. I got much more done than I usually do, too. Most year I have really good intentions to do lots of baking and make a lot of my gifts, but I always run out of time. Last year I got a lot of this stuff actually done!

Although I highly recommend this e-book, if you don't have money in your budget to spend, Simple Mom is doing something similar on her blog. It is worth checking out. If nothing else, this is a good time to start thinking about your Christmas budget, who you need to buy for, and what holiday projects you are going to tackle this year. Lets make sure that this Christmas is a merry and stress-free one so we can focus on the REAL reason for the season, the true gift of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Proof that I am an Organized Wannabee

I mentioned that I am an "organized wannabee." I desire being organized and having everything in its place. Proof of this is some of the blogs that I love to read (which I mentioned yesterday can be seen in my blogroll on the bottom of the right-hand column).

Here are a few that are great for organizational inspiration:

I am an Organizing Junkie

Simple Mom

Small Notebook

Simplify 101

Pottery Barn

Pottery Barn Kids

Ok, those last two are not blog or informational sites, but I am always inspired by Pottery Barn's furniture for storage. The image above is from the Pottery Barn Kids site. I would love to deck out my home with fun storage pieces like this. Unfortunately, these are completely out of my budget. However I can use them for inspiration.

I just have to share a few inspirational images:

So, have fun and get organizationally inspired with me!

I am an Organized Wannabee

I have come to a self-discovery. I am an organized wannabee. So, what does this mean? I crave organization. I love the concept of everything having a place and everything in its place. BUT...My very nature is spontaneous. I wing things a lot. And I have a large eclectic variety of interests. All this is naturally very UNorganized and cluttered.


The Dilemma
Do I remain my spontaneous, curious, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants self? Or, do I give that up for an organized and planned out life? You see, I want it all. I want my feet on both sides of that fence. However, I am finding as I get older, and as my family gets larger, and the demands on my time grow, winging it can cause quite a bit of chaos. I am seeing that a bit of organization and planning of my time can be so freeing. If my day is planned out, I do not need to spend my mental energy on deciding what the next thing to do is. When I have an organized grocery list, my shopping goes much faster (and another bonus is that I usually spend less). When everything is in its place, I save so much time NOT have to search for something.


So, I am trying figure out a middle ground where I can have the best of both worlds. I want the stress relief that organization brings, but I want to freedom to change my plans on a whim because something came up whether it be a friend needs me, a fun opportunity presents itself, or even that it is just too nice of a day to be cooped up inside.


Clutter: Enemy #1
I think one of the biggest enemies of organization and a producer of stress is clutter. I shared in an earlier post that I believe I need to declare an all out war on clutter in this house. As Flylady would say, "You can't organize clutter." It is just too much work to do so.


Clutter is the stuff that surrounds us that produces stress. It is the piles of papers on our desks, the closets over-stuffed with clothes, the toys that overflow the toy chest and spill across the floor. When is it too much? I think that varies from person to person and household to household. When you can keep control over all the stuff around you and it begins to control you, there is too much.


I believe that when I am surrounded by physical clutter, my mind becomes cluttered, too. When things around me are clean and organized, it frees me up to think bigger thoughts and be more creative.


I have shared before that I have an a pack-rat and a saver of stuff by nature. I know that there are people out there on the opposite end of the spectrum who have no qualms about pitching and getting rid of nearly anything that isn't nailed down in their house. I just totally cannot relate - they are a mystery to me. Part of me will daydream about what it would be like to live organized and clutter-free...always knowing where everything is or being able to locate it at a moment's notice. It sounds so peaceful; so freeing.


My Plan
Well, I know that I will never be one of those pitch everything kind of people, but I do realized that I have to move a bit closer to the middle of the spectrum. So, I have vowed before God and all of you that I will be making an effort to clean out and declutter some every day. Even if it is just going through one drawer or one pile of papers, I will dispose of or donate something everyday.

Accountability Time
Ok, I am going to put my self out here and share something embarrassing.
Here is my upstairs hallway:

Sad, isn't it! We have been doing some rearranging of kids' bedrooms and in the process much of the toys and laundry found their way here. The toys are in need of some serious decluttering, so I didn't want to just put them directly into their new room homes. So, I am sharing this with you to hold myself accountable. I plan to share a photo of a clean, empty hallway within a week. Through this process I plan on having a box of toys to donate and bag of trash to throw away.

So keep watching the blog...

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