I want a peaceful home. You do, too. Nothing can so drain us as the conflict and stress that plague families.
Because I am a Christian psychologist, you can imagine that I will encourage you to regularly pray for your family. 1 Timothy 2:1-2 confirms that prayer is a vital part of peaceful living.
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
If your family life isn’t peaceful primarily because of the choices of another family member, remember that we are only called to peace as far as it depends on us. We can’t change people directly, much as we might like to.
But there is something else we can do to promote peace in our homes.
When there is no routine, when we have to scramble to get out the door and are still late, when the house is a wreck and you have no idea what’s for dinner, peace will elude you. I know, because I’ve been there. My poor habits caused conflict with my husband, made me a short-tempered mom, and made me fearful that someone would come to my door and discover what a fraud I was.
If you want more peace in your home this year, develop good habits. I encourage you to read my post at HeyDonna.com titled “Habits: The Heart of the Home” for more on how to do that.
What habits would make your home more peaceful this year?
I have read so many productivity and organizing books that I started to think I can’t learn anymore, but boy was I wrong! It isn’t that the concepts are completely new; it’s that the personal insights and presentation are. I had a hard time limiting myself to six, but here are some great productivity books for you to read this year and why I’m crazy about them.
I was very surprised that this book, which helps you evaluate your productivity habits regardless of your approach, was so enlightening. For example, one habit is collection. This is the idea that you need to collect all of your to-do’s into one trusted system. This is so obvious, but David Allen helped me see that my failure to do this was giving me grief. I’ve been using some kind of task management system for a long time, so I thought I would get high marks in this area. Wrong!
The evaluation in the book helped me see that I was not collecting phone, text, or IM-related tasks. Thus, I was forgetting them! I am now immediately adding them to my system, which at present is ToDoist.
There were other reasons I loved the book, not the least of which is its use of research to support best practices for getting more done. Francis Wade wrote a guest post in which he explains how we can get even more done if we’re already productive.
This is a book you’ll want in your library, regardless of the app or system you’re using at the time.
I cannot even describe how much I love this book. This book is the natural sequel to FLYLady’s Sink Reflections. I don’t believe I have ADHD, but the author makes it clear that you don’t have to have it to benefit from these organizing principles.
I think I can summarize the premise of the book this way: organize for how you will behave rather than how you’d like to behave. In other words, you may wish you would take the time to put things back into beautiful, stacked Pottery Barn containers, but the truth is you will shove it back into a cabinet, wherever there is room. So make room! Drastically declutter.
I am following the home storage solutions 101 calendar for decluttering this year and I am drastically decluttering. Here’s an example. I have a large number of expensive kitchen appliances that I needed when I was really into healthy eating (why I’m not obsessed with this anymore is a post for another time). While I keep telling myself that I’m going to make homemade jerky and tortillas and bread with wheat flour from my mill, but I don’t. These appliances take up enormous room in my kitchen and mind. Every time I see them, I feel like a failure. No more! They served a purpose at one time in my life and now I’m going to bless someone else with them.
There is more to this book than I can describe here, but I can’t recommend it enough.
I am easily overwhelmed by all the things I have to or would like to do. Most people have heard of the 80/20 principle (that 80% of the rewards come from 20% of your efforts). Keller makes it that much simpler: choose the one thing that will make everything else easier or eliminated.
I heard about Essentialism after I read The One Thing. I worried that it would be redundant. It wasn’t.
My biggest takeaway from the book is that I want to BE an essentialist rather than do a few things to simplify my life. I want to replace the nonessentialist thinking of I have to, everything is important, and I can do it all with I choose to, only a few things really matter, and I can do anything, but not everything. The last two are particularly important for me. As hard as it is to admit that I can’t do it all (and that it doesn’t even matter that I can’t), there is great freedom there too.
Essentialism is a book I need to reread regularly. I think you’ll want to be an essentialist, too, if you give it a read.
Loren has guest blogged for Psychowith6 on productivity before and I’m a huge fan. He recently completed his ebook which is free to subscribers. I have to tell you that I’ve read a huge number of books on procrastination and I wasn’t expecting much, but this book is really valuable if you are a Christian who struggles with putting things off.
My favorite tip from the book was to visualize yourself in the process of working toward your goal and not just achieving the goal. As I work on my curriculum, I keep fantasizing about the day when the first volume is complete. That’s great! But it makes the day-to-day fanny-in-chair stuff seem that much more unpleasant. Now I visualize myself writing and learning how to complete the project.
That brings me to another insight from the book which was HUGE for me. Loren writes that many people procrastinate because they don’t have a growth mindset, but more of a pass/fail one. In other words, some people put things off when they discover a task doesn’t come easily to them. They assume that they “just aren’t good at it” so there’s no point in continuing. I realized that this is me! I approached my blog that way. When I didn’t have instant success, I thought I wasn’t good at it, and waffled about continuing. Now, of course, I know that like most things, it’s something you can improve on. Most importantly for me, I realized that I had a pass/fail mindset about the curriculum I’m writing. I was wondering if I would be good at it or not. That set me up to procrastinate. Now I’m approaching it as something that will be challenging at first, but that I will grow into.
I believe you’ll gain insights in your procrastination and how to stop, too.
I listened to this book via Audible when I was on vacation and it was just what I needed. While it is geared toward creatives (and is rated PG for language), I found the admonitions to unplug and give myself time to think incredibly valuable.
The book does offer good ideas for building routines as well. But I do pretty well at that already. What I don’t do as well at is giving myself margin. As a result of reading the book, I plan to take Sundays off and unplug. That may be challenging at first, but I’ll grow into it. It’s not a pass/fail, right?
What productivity books did you read last year that you recommend?
Homeschoolers tend to spend a lot of time organizing their school spaces and that makes sense. But it also makes sense to organize the most-used room in your home. This week we will focus on making our kitchen kid-friendly, so kids can help themselves, and you can save time.
#1 Organize dishes and cups
The younger your children, the more important it is to put children’s dishes where they can access them. Even though my youngest is now eight, I still keep all of the plastic cups in a big bottom drawer next to the refrigerator. It’s really fast to throw them all in there when the dishwasher is unloaded. Where is the most time-saving, accessible place for you to store kids’ plates and cups?
At the same time, it’s important to store dishes you don’t want your kids to use out of reach. I bought over-sized bowls (I ADORE Corel dishes) and while I love them for certain things, they take up way too much room in the dishwasher. I also don’t want the kids using them for cereal. I’m spending a fortune on cereal already. So I put these bowls up high.
#2 Set up snack centers
I think my kids are more interested in what they will have as a snack than just about anything else. I can’t really blame them! I love a good snack, too.
This week, you will set up an organized, fix-it-and-forget it system for kids to (hopefully) get their own snacks depending on their ages. First, you may need some ideas for healthy snacks. Here is a list of 50 ideas. Then you may wish to portion them in individual servings and store them in the refrigerator or in a plastic bin. That may be all you need to do today!
But if you have a child who turns his nose up at fruits and veggies, you may want to set up a snack shack for the kids. A fellow homeschooling mom shared the idea with me years ago and it’s ingenious. Here is how it works:
Make up a menu list of snacks that you will have on hand, including the less healthy options your child likes
Set prices for snacks, making fruit and veggies free and less healthy foods more expensive
Give kids paper money for the week (I gave my kids $5 a week)
Turn any leftover money at the end of the week into real cash
If you’d rather not take the time to operate the snack shack yourself, you could put an older child in charge. To make this an educational activity, shop with your child for snacks and use an app like Fooducate to determine what the prices should be for various snacks they like. If you have a child who doesn’t eat enough, I don’t recommend the snack shack! I had boys who would go without snacks just so they could collect the money. Go figure.
If you’d like to give the snack shack a try, I’ve created a free printable for you. You may want to laminate it and post it on the fridge with dry-erase items and prices. Or you may want to use permanent marker in case your child “accidentally” changes the prices!
#3 Move seldom-used items
My goal is for the kids to be able to help me as much as possible. If I have all kinds of pans and gadgets I never use cluttering up my kitchen, the kids will struggle to find what they need to make their own lunches and help make dinners. If you haven’t used something in the last year, either declutter it or get it out of the kitchen today. I store seldom-used items in my basement storage area. It’s better to have to purchase something you end up needing again than to waste time in the kitchen.
#4 Organize for kid cooking
Today, ask one of your younger children to help you cook. Pay attention to how you can put things at lower levels and label them, or put items where your child looks for them first. Take advantage of the space behind cabinet doors for listing what can be found there and use descriptive names kids understand like “spaghetti pot” rather than Dutch oven.
One of the things that appealed to me about homeschooling was that I wouldn’t have to have a schedule. I relished the idea of getting up when I felt like it. I also tried doing laundry and dishes and teaching when I felt like it when I started homeschooling. The problem was I didn’t feel like it very often! Something needed to change or I felt I would have to send my kids to school.
Discovering Routines
What changed is that I came across some emails by a woman named Marla Cilley — aka FLYLady. She gave me an alternative to a rigid schedule in her morning and evening routines. It seems so obvious that life runs more smoothly when you have an organized pattern of activities, but it wasn’t to me. The impact of loading and running the dishwasher each evening was huge. So was scheduling errands and doctor’s appointments on the same day of the week. There were many other benefits.
But when it came to school work, I was very much influenced by Managers of Their Homes. I wished I could be as super organized as Teri Maxwell so I initially created a packed schedule to manage my growing family. Then I was very frustrated that I never EVER followed it to a tee. I returned to a routine for schoolwork, but then managed to take the routine to an extreme, too. Today I use a fluid combination of a schedule and a routine, helped along by my children keeping me accountable. In other words, “Mom, are we going to start school?”
Your Challenge for This Week
#1 You and Older Children Track Your Routine or Schedule
The biggest mistake I have made where routines and schedules are concerned is trying to make too many changes at once. Rather than trying to plan the ideal routine, see what you’re doing right now. I really dislike time tracking in general, but an overview of what you’re actually doing is a very good idea. Older kids can definitely participate in this as time management is an increasingly important skill in our culture. Best not to let them record what you and others are “actually” doing in their opinions. 😉 You can track on paper listing the hours of the day on the left and your basic activities on the right. If you have subscribed to Psychowith6, you will have access to subscriber freebies that includes a form for tracking your routine this week.
#2 Keep Tracking and Choose One Schedule Change to Try
The book, The House That Cleans Itself, taught me to use what’s already happening to my advantage. Let me give you an example to clarify. Let’s say that you’d really like to do family devotions after dinner. But you see from tracking your schedule of actual activities that you tend to watch movies as a family instead. You could a) watch Christian or biblical films at that time, b) discuss secular movies from a biblical worldview, looking up verses, or c) you could choose a better time for family devotions. Trying to enforce more than one schedule change will likely frustrate your family and drain your energy. Pray about the change that would have the biggest impact. You have plenty of time to make more changes as this one becomes second nature.
#3 Keep Tracking and Plan a Time to Evaluate Your Schedule Change
You may not want to keep tracking (I get it!), but the days fluctuate and you may see some important patterns that have to be addressed. Implement your one change (older kids can choose an individual change also) and put a note on your calendar or use the reminder function of a smart phone to assess how well it’s working. This is the step so many of us leave out. Assessment keeps changes in the problem-solving realm, rather than the blaming realm. If it’s working, wonderful. Discussing it with the kids (if it impacts them) will teach them how to problem solve and manage time. If it’s not, it’s important to determine why not and brainstorm potential solutions. Don’t give up assuming that you’re just not organized.
#4 Keep Tracking and Choose a Schedule Format
Continue tracking today and through the weekend if you’d like. Save this information for next summer when we will be working on your homeschooling schedule in depth. Decide on how to keep your schedule or routine visible. I have my HomeRoutines app on my phone, a schedule in my homeschool planner and the kids’, and I have it posted in the kitchen and school room using magnetic frames. Are you getting the idea that I don’t want to forget? One change I plan to make is to acknowledge that the schedule/routine can be regularly updated. I have the file on Word. It doesn’t take much to update it and reprint.
I would love to know the one change you’re implementing this week!
Have you ever gotten to the end of a summer and been disappointed? I have, many times.
I’m a homeschooling mom who takes time off in the summer and I hope to get so much accomplished. Somehow very little of it gets done. I’m not talking about the fun activities we always manage to squeeze in (barbecues with friends, float trips, swimming, etc.). I’m talking about the projects I can’t get around to doing the other nine months of the year.
This summer I am determined to have a different outcome. I am so excited about the simple solution to my end-of-summer blues that I want to share it with you. In just three steps, you can make a satisfying summer a reality.
#1 Create a wish list.
Dream a little. What would you love to accomplish this summer? Are there any projects that you’ve procrastinated doing that would feel great to get out of the way? Are there things you could do to make life much easier the rest of the year? Or is there something you’ve always dreamed of doing that you’ve never made time for? Add all of these things to your list. At this point, don’t worry about adding too many things.
#2 Consolidate.
Look at your list and combine tasks into weekly projects or areas of focus. For example, would you like to defrost the freezer and clean out the pantry? These tasks can become Organizing or Cleaning. Each weekly project will include a number of tasks required to complete it. My consolidated weekly projects for the summer should give you the idea:
sort clothing
sort and sell books
organize
deep clean
book project #1
book project #2
school prep
video editing
blogging
scrapbooking
freezer cooking
#3 Schedule
This step is critical to making your summer satisfying. Make a list of each week this summer. Because I start school the second week of August, I have 11 weeks from 5/26 to 8/4. I have assigned each of the above projects to a week. If you will be on vacation for a week, that will be your week’s project. Assign projects to logical weeks. For example, freezer cooking is my last project because I want dinner in the freezer before I start school. Otherwise, start with top priority projects. For me, that’s sorting the kids’ clothing for the season and selling books we no longer need.
Schedule time at the beginning of each day to work on that week’s project. If your schedule doesn’t permit you working at the beginning of the day, make sure you work on these projects during the first part of your work period. Why? You’re more likely to accomplish your wish list if you work on it first.
What if you want to do something that will take more than one week? You can either assign it to more than one week or schedule it on a daily or weekly basis. I will be spending more time than a week each on blogging and book projects, but those weeks I will devote extra time to them.
What if you planned to finish a project in a week and you don’t? I don’t anticipate spending every day of the week on my planned projects. Things come up and I love being spontaneous in the summer. If I spend just one day a week on each of these projects, I will be thrilled! But if it’s really important that you finish a project before moving on to something else, you can definitely edit the schedule. If you have your projects in order by priority, you’d simply move everything back a week and the lowest priority project would be dropped from the summer schedule to be worked on another time.
I can’t wait to hear about the projects you have planned and to see if these steps make this summer a more satisfying one for you. What’s the first project on your list?
I’ve found so much hot homeschooling stuff this week that I had to save some of it for next week! Thanks so much for the link-ups. Please keep sharing the great ideas! Click the titles of the articles that interest you and leave a comment for the blogger or share these sanity savers with other homeschoolers.
I’ve never been much of a St. Pat’s fan. But the winter has been extending its stay into spring and my kids need a day of refreshing fun. So I’ll be going green for a day. How about you? Nicole of Mama of Many Blessings shares a great lineup of ideas for us.
Are you heading to a homeschool convention this spring or summer? I’ve been going for so many years and I still get excited. Heather Bowen shares some great advice at Homeschool Village for getting the most out of a convention and the coolest thing ever–a printable to help you stay organized. I’m so using this!
It’s wonderful to be able to homeschool in every room of your house. What isn’t as wonderful is having every room of your house LOOK like a school room. Stacey at Layered Soul has some real life examples for keeping your stuff accessible, but out of sight.
Carol Anne’s post at Confessions of a Fraidy Cat really touched me because she shares the emotions so many mothers have when they wonder if there’s something different about their child.
I found this great website for educational downloads and was inspired by how one teacher used her materials. From the newsletter: “Meet this week’s Featured Teacher, Jodi Southard. Jodi has raised over $10,000 through her TpT store to contribute toward covering the medical expenses of a young child, a sibling of one of her students, who needs a heart transplant. Twenty-one generous TpT Sellers supported her efforts by donating products toward her drive. She raised the money in about a week.
Speaking of downloads, Felicia at Princess and the Rock has some great worksheets and a game that will keep your kids interested in writing this week. If you have any to link up, please share them with her.
Now link up what’s hot on your homeschool blog this week!
Please grab the What’s Hot button from the right footer of Psychowith6 or link to this post. Visit at least one another link. Thanks so much for sharing.
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
