Mom Sanity-Part 2 (Our Diligence/Chore Charts)

We've been incorporating the tips from 'Managers Of Their Homes' recently and if you missed my first post about the book you should check it out here, because my whole world has changes since I first read this book and now I'd like to follow up with some of the key things we've implemented in the Garcia household.

#1: Chore/Diligence Chart

#2: Dishes Routine

Now, transitioning to and building up to our schedule took a bit of work but its been slow and steady progress and I'm happy to be slowly reaping some of the fruit to my labor.

CHORES:

My first thing to work on was our chore chart, which we are now calling our "diligence chart". God calls us to be diligent in all we do, so I like to think that doing our work is not a chore but an opportunity to work diligently.

I started by making Kara her own diligence chart (age 4) and spent a few days training slowly how to do her chores. She can mostly do them by herself but I wanted to spend the time to make sure she was doing them correctly.

There are a few she does as needed but on her chart are the ones she has to complete on a daily basis.  I require her to complete her morning chores before she can have breakfast or play. Since she only has a few it works out well. Then after breakfast I usually have her do a simple task, like wash off her table or help me with my chores a bit (more chances to start training her to add chores to her chart eventually).

 

Below is my own diligence chart.  The way it gets broken down is by Morning and Evening on the top portion of the sheet and then the Monthly/Quarterly work that needs done on the bottom portion.

During the Morning and Evening on the left side it lists my diligence work to get done everyday. This includes things like: unload the washer, clean kitchen, start laundry, lunch prep, etc. On these things I have included a BB, DB, or AB which stands for Before Breakfast, During Breakfast, or After Breakfast. Then along with my daily chores on the right hand side I include a weekly schedule of diligence work to be done on specific days.  So, for example Monday morning I along with my everyday work need to vacuum upstairs.  Then in the evening on Monday I need to do one of my monthly items listed at the bottom.

I left extra room on the bottom for more monthly, quarterly and yearly chores as I think of them. Once I feel my list is completed I will laminate the list and then check off the monthly stuff so I know what is completed. 

This chart has helped me keep up with and maintain the things that use to overwhelm me. I just have a designated time to do it and it doesn't take as long as what it would if I let it slide for weeks, like in the past.  Plus, a big part of our conviction is having a house centered around hospitality and I've found when I keep up with my diligence work I feel like I can use our house to bless so many more people.  If my house is in constant disarray the last thing I want to do is invite a new couple from church over.

DISHES ROUTINE:

The second thing that made a HUGE impact in our house was my dishes routine. I've always heard that its good to get dishes done before you go to bed but that didn't ever work for me because either I had a whole sink full of caked dishes that needed soaking, or that didn't even all fit in the washer.  Or it's even worse when I went to load the dirty ones only to find out I need to unload the clean ones!  And at 11:30pm at night it's just not worth my time.

In going through this book (Managers Of Their Homes) and reevaluating our dishes as a family, I realized that we are a 3/4 dishes family. Which means they sit in the dishwasher one day and then the next day it gets full midday and I send them through sometime later. But it just caused a pile up because by the time the dishes were done I already had a sink ready to load up. So it's just a cascade effect.

Implementing the dishes routine: setting a specific time to load and unload the dishwasher. 

Since we are a 3/4 dishes family I implemented Ryan to be the one to send the load through at night before bed. The big thing here is that he sends it through whether its full or not! This may sound a bit wasteful but to keep my sanity and household running smoothly I will pay the extra $1. Then I am the designated unloaded at breakfast time, since I just snack at breakfast anyways. This prevents a pile up for the rest of the day. Larger families may need to have a designated time to load/unload twice during the day. 

Doing this has honestly brought such relief to me. I get so frustrated and overwhelmed if my kitchen is in disarray. With the dishes being taken care of I don't get overwhelmed like I used to AND I can now sit down if I want and take a break knowing there's not a sink of dishes waiting to be done like there used to be. 

I will have more of the things we have implemented in another future post, so look for it. Until then, God Bless!

Heather Joy

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