Scheduling Your Day: Mom Sanity

So, pretty much every conversation I've had lately with other mom's has been in whole or in part about this book: Managers of their homes: A practical guide to daily scheduling for Christian homeschool families.

If you haven't heard about it I feel sorry that you are in the dark, but let me enlighten you.  This is probably the best mommy sanity book EVER!!  If you are like most moms and struggle trying to juggle your role as a mother, wife, daughter, sister, maid, employee (for those who work), volunteer and teacher (for us homeschooling moms)...it can be a very daunting!  There are days I want to pull my hair out and then days that I feel so blessed beyond all reason.  The ups and downs up mommy hood, right?  No, it shouldn't have to be that way!

I use to think that I was the only one.  I'd look at other mom's with more kids than my two and wonder how on earth they could have so many and still look so put together.  I only have two and I'm lucky to get a shower most days. Ugh!  How could they look so put together when they have 5 kids, or even more?!

When I started digging down and talking with other mom's I realized that we are all really good at painting a rosy picture of our family.  When is your house the cleanest? When people come over, right?  When are your kids in their finest clothes? When your headed to church, right? Why is it that we have this innate fear of looking like a failure around other people and moms (especially the ones that have so many more kids than I).  Why do we hide? Why does it have to be a secret that we're not perfect?  I mean, nobody is, right?!

In talking to other mom's I also realized that we all have this incredible fear of being a failure as a mom.  We put so much pressure on ourselves to juggle everything that we lose our sanity in the process. Yes, me, the organize queen, the teacher, the hard worker who always had it all together thought I would have no problem popping out 7 kids....yes I, was at my wits end with just two children!  How could this be?!  Well, for a while I just basked in the knowledge of knowing I'm not the only mom who's going insane.  And then I started wondering what the solution was.  What can I change, because something has to!

Enter: 'Managers of Their Homes' by Steven and Teri Maxwell.  This book has been a lifesaver to me.  It came at the perfect time (that would be rock bottom). I really needed someone with lots of children to tell me how they do it, so I, with only my two could do it too!

They go into everything in their book about scheduling their days: homeschooling, chores, naps, babies, priorities, menu planning....almost anything you could think of.  I love how they also quote The Word in their book too.  It is the manual for living, right?

So, I did my priority worksheets and slowly started building my schedule. Although she includes worksheet for schedules I wanted something bigger so I got some unused foam boards out of my craft closet and got to work making a big one.

I started at the building blocks of our schedule with things such as, breakfast, lunch, nap, dinner and bedtime.

More of my notes and ramblings as I was going through this process.

Each person gets their own color.  The schedule is based on half our increments (she explains why in the book). Although I find right now hour blocks seem to work better for us, at least for some things.

My little helper along the way.  This whole time with her was talking about our new schedule and getting her excited for things like chore time and helping mommy cook, etc.  She was ready to start now!

While this is just the start of my total thoughts on this schedule I couldn't resist posting about it so that any other mom's struggling could find it for themselves.  I have told ALL of my friends about this book already because we all seemed to be struggling, some more than other.  But we were all struggling in our own ways. 

I was blessed by my mother in law with this hand me down version but for all of you who aren't so lucky you can check out Managers of their homes: A practical guide to daily scheduling for Christian homeschool families at Amazon for $30 I believe...and to be honest if I had known how much hope and joy this book would bring to my life I would have paid almost anything.  It's that good!!

More posts to come soon on how our schedule is coming!

God Bless!

Heather Joy