Homeschool and Home Management

One of the challenges of homeschooling the kids is how to manage the rest of the household duties and keep some semblance of order in the home. The reason why this is a unique challenge for a homeschool family is three-fold (but there could be other things I’m not thinking of): first, the house is occupied all of the time. We don’t have a chunk of time when our little (and not so little) mess-makers are at school. Second, we have a whole set of educational items that need to be incorporated into the home. It isn’t just a place for back packs and lunch boxes, etc. We have years worth of curricula, text books, teachers guides, boxes of work representing each child’s school year, base ten blocks, scads of paper, pencils, crayons, markers, notebooks, science experiments, history projects of large scale….just lots of school stuff! Third, we are dealing with large amounts of time to keep the kids occupied which means lots of wonderfully creative messes around the house. If school takes 3-5 hours, that still leaves 9-11 hours of time to fill. Even with the heavy dutiest kiddie chore list, you still have lots of hours for them to make messes. And if your kids are like mine, they cycle through various play things making it hard to have them pick up one thing before they get something else out. Inevitably, they want to return to “lego city” later, or show dad their tent, or keep the clay sculpture because they are proud of it. I just thought of a fourth factor that doesn’t affect me in this season but did back in the day…if you have preschoolers underfoot, you may be contending with more mess because while you’re teaching your 2nd grader math, that toddler can wreak havoc on any room of the house. It’s astounding what they can do when we are distracted for even five minutes!!!

I don’t mean to discourage any of you future homeschool gals with regard to keeping an orderly home. I just think it’s important to have reasonable expectations regarding home management. Some of you love order. You love your to-do list, your schedule, your routine. Your bent toward order and structure is going to be wonderfully beneficial to your family. However, if you are in any way hoping to derive peace or control from these tools, you will find yourself and your family very frustrated. Some of you love spontaneity and creativity. You may like spur of the moment field trips, flexible hours, and time with other moms and kids. Your family will benefit from your fun loving approach to the day. However, if you are undisciplined and disorganized you also will find yourself and your family very frustrated. Whichever group you find yourself in (and I have one foot in each group), God will use homeschooling to help you cultivate the strength and overcome the weakness of your particular bent. Okay, that wasn’t very practical – it’s just a heads up. Now on to the practical…

1. Find out your husband’s preference. My husband loves orderliness. I love this about him because it helps me to constantly be growing in my own time management/ home management skills. Because Jason is the kind of guy to like order, when I asked him what he would have “take a hit” so to speak, he chose meal preparation. In the beginning especially, we ate frozen pizza more than I care to say! But my particular husband would rather have me use my time cleaning than cooking elaborate meals, so the meals take the hit before the cleaning does here at the Reyes house. There is a kind of relief when we find out that hey, this isn’t a big deal to my husband so why am I feeling guilty about it?

2.  Food and laundry. When you are in a survival mode – like you have lots of preschoolers, or a new born, or the hubs is working crazy long hours, take your Girl Talkers advice and strip it down to food and laundry. They need to eat. they need to have clothing. Repeat to yourself often, “it’s only a season!”

3. Organize the bones of the home. I have found that if the bones of my home are organized, it’s a lot easier to keep the house in order from day to day. You may want to spend time working on organizing toys, cleaning products, kitchen cabinets (consider putting dishes low enough for the kids to put them away), homeschool area(s), bedroom closets/drawers, etc. If the mention of this makes your chest feel tight – just go back to suggestion #2. If you think you could find a bit of time to do some nitty gritty organization, it will be well worth the effort.

4. The kids do get old enough to help and it can happen earlier than you might think. I can hold out hope that your kids being home all day means extra hands to vacuum, dust, empty trash, fold and put away laundry, unload the dishwasher, and pick up the messes.

I have a few posts on organization,  housework, menu planning ideas, etc.  here, here, here, here, and here.

How do you manage your home and your homeschool?

Bandwagons Aren’t Bad

I mentioned that I am slower to get on certain bandwagons these days. This isn’t to say that I’m not on any bandwagons. I am.

1. The beauty of biblical femininity

2. The gospel’s relevance to the daily life of a Christian woman

3. Men should never wear skinny jeans. ever.

There are women I respect who have wonderful bandwagons. I think most bandwagons in the Christian Mommy Blogosphere are well-intended. Many of the mommy blogs have a specialization because these capable gals are using their blog to make money through advertisers and product reviews, or they are gaining exposure in hopes of publishing material. It makes sense that a blog on frugality would have tons of posts about how the author saves money on her grocery bill. If she isn’t passionate, enthusiastic, and persuasive about being frugal, her blog isn’t going to be very successful.

I also think bandwagon blogs are a wonderful outlet for sharing God-given gifts and talents. Are you good at decorating? Cooking? Creative parenting? Writing? By all means, share. Do you have special training in prenatal care, health and nutrition, educational techniques? By all means, share. Are you learning how to be frugal, eat healthy, run a marathon? Please share.What a wonderful inspiration to see God’s grace displayed with variety and beauty through the gifts, talents, and efforts of Christian women from all over the country.

It is so wonderful to read about how Christian women who are excited about  expressions of biblical womanhood. Where this can go wrong is when we assign moral value to practices that aren’t clearly commanded or prohibited in scripture. One danger is that we can feel unnecessary guilt when we aren’t able to live by a certain practice. Another danger is we can look down on others who don’t adopt our same practice. Those dangers are two sides of the coin of self righteousness.  Either danger keeps us from humbly appreciating the work of God in each others’ lives.

I want to get on the bandwagon that loves to encourage other ladies, especially young moms, in their often-very-hidden pursuit of God and His will for them.  I want to be able to point out subtleties of grace that a young mom may not see in her own life while her house is a mess and she serves PBJ’s for dinner, again. I also want to be challenged by the bandwagoneers in areas where God may be calling me to grow. It is wonderfully humbling to see another woman doing what I cannot do because I am not as godly, gifted, or capable; but it is also good to be inspired to try harder or try something new that may be a good fit for me and my family in the season of life we are in. So while I don’t think I’ll be raising my own chickens, clipping coupons, or having the children memorize Westminster Catechism this year, I will be inspired as I see the grace and beauty of the One who is at work to will and to do for His good pleasure (Phil 2:13) in the lives of Christian women everywhere.

 

MOMentum:Back to Life; Back to Reality

MOMentum is a new feature of Ordinary Mother. My hope is to connect the impelling power of the gospel to ordinary motherhood.

Tomorrow is the first day of “real life” following a wonderful conference. Even though I came home late Saturday night, life has still been unusually easy. We spent Sunday with the Stewarts and Hendricksons eating fantastic food mostly provided by the Stewarts. The kids watched the game, sledded in the back yard, and played with their friends with narry an argument between them. Then today was Jason’s day off which gave me a fairly undistracted opportunity to catch up on laundry, and restock the pantry.

So I sit here tonight considering tomorrow, my first day back to reality for quite a while. I love my reality. I can’t imagine any other life for myself that could possibly be as rewarding as being a wife, mother, and homemaker. I’m not just saying that! I really am grateful for my life’s work in this season.

As much as I am grateful for my real life, it does require selfless serving, that I haven’t encountered for the past few days. I was thinking of a verse that might prepare my heart for tomorrow. I thought of Romans 12:1

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, [1] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Tomorrow I want to offer my body as a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to God, my spiritual act of worship. I marvel at the fact that what seems like mundane work around the house, or typical moments of mothering, or ordinary services for Jason can actually be received by God as worship! This is amazing, truly.

But it isn’t the most amazing thing about this verse. It isn’t what will keep me motivated all day long. What I hope to keep in view tomorrow is the most amazing phrase, “by the mercies of God”. Yes, I want to live sacrificially for the glory of God tomorrow. I long to have awareness of the sacredness of what I am doing for His glory. But I know that if I jump into my day with my sacrifice in view, I will ping pong between pride and condemnation as I have success and failure.

Tomorrow I want to keep His sacrifice in view with an eye toward the mercies that I receive as a result. Because Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb of God, took the wrath my sins deserve when He suffered and died on the cross, now I receive mercy. Not just mercy but mercies. It could have been “by the judgment of God, offer yourselves” or “by the fear of God’s wrath, offer yourselves” but amazingly it is “by the mercies of God”. What a gracious God!

I pray that tomorrow, with all of what reality will look like, I will take time to consider God’s mercies to me and allow that to motivate my living sacrifice. I pray that I won’t just live conscious of the reality of motherhood, but conscious of the greater reality of mercy that is constantly flowing from the throne of grace, covering my sins and my attempts at righteousness.

That is my life.

That is my reality.

Anyone Can Do This: Lego Storage

step 1. take one out of control lego collection

step 2. purchase multi drawer cart from Wal Mart

step 3. put big pieces in big drawers

step 4. put little pieces in shallow drawers

step 5. Remove drawers for portable play

step 6. Display creation on mantle (this is Joshua's monkey)

The key to lego storage is keeping the storage bin shallow. Otherwise, the tiny pieces stay at the bottom and it is frustrating (and loud) to rake through the larger pieces to get to them.

Also, when we get a new set, like a Star Wars ship, it gets its own storage bin (usually a dish basin) along with the directions while the owner is in the assembly process. We keep it up in their bedroom to keep it from accidentally getting mixed into the fray.

After a while the specialty item either breaks from use, or gets picked at to make something else. At this point, we just add it to the collection.

The masterpieces that come from their imagination get a place on our fireplace mantel for a week or so before they get disassembled. If it is an elaborate project, we will take a picture before cleaning it up.

This idea was taken from my dear friend and favorite hair dresser, Mary Cook…lego mom veteran.

Square Peg, Round Hole

*This is the testimony I referred to here about home management not coming naturally. For really outstanding homemaking help please read the girltalkers latest series on the subject starting here. It is excellent.

Messies. SHE’s (sidetracked home executives). Type B. I prefer to call it “creative and spontaneous”. We are the ones for whom this whole area of home management doesn’t come easily. Rather than list the reasons for this, or the ways to change, I decided that it would be best to share with you my own story. I have experienced much grace in the area of home management. This is to the glory of God alone, believe me. My hope is that you will have fresh faith in God’s ability to work in your life in any area, not just keeping house.

Change in my life began when God showed me that it was His will for me to be a worker at home. Through His word, various teachings, books, and others around me I was able to understand this was part of God’s design for me as a woman. After various phases such as resenting my house-keeper status, frustration over the never finished nature of housework, and an arrogant need to be seen and appreciated God mercifully broke through giving me a desire to pursue growth in this area. You can read more detail about what I learned as far as motivators and motivations here.

Change in my life continued when God began convicting me of the various sins that were hindering my obedience to His will in this area. Laziness and self indulgence along with bowing to the idol of comfort and ease were the most consistent areas of sin being exposed. There was such liberty in calling sin “sin”. Before this I just figured I was a square peg of a woman trying to fit into the round hole of home maker. There is no hope in this conclusion. Jesus came to die for sinners, forgiving them, and changing them. I can’t be set free from my personality, but I can be set free from laziness, self-indulgence etc. Even more amazing, I can have grace to change in these areas.

Change happened as God showed me my need to depend on Him even in this practical area. Dependence meant prayer. Believe it or not there were many times I had to pray, “God please help me to get up and unload the dishwasher. I don’t want to do it. I just want to sit here and…” Then I would get up and do it. It was an embarrassingly hard battle with my flesh to do fairly routine housework. This was such grace, though. I didn’t mount up on some mystical bubble that carried me up to the laundry room where my tingling fingers would work their way through a mountain of laundry. It felt like really hard work. Working hard is profound grace at work nonetheless.

Finally, change came as my husband prayed over me for anointing to do the practical work of home making. This sounds rather dramatic for what it really looked like. Jason prays briefly over me most mornings. The prayers are basically, “God help my wife today” kinds of prayers. But in the early years, he distinctly prayed for anointing for home management things. God answered those prayers. I believe He gave wisdom (mostly through books and older ladies) to run my home more efficiently…this obviously wasn’t a tribute to my personality, but to God at work in my life.

Truth is, even though I don’t generally have a huge battle with my flesh everytime I unload the dishwasher anymore, I am still seeing my need for growth in this area. I am not discouraged, I am full of faith. More than God helping me establish patterns of keeping the kitchen clean, learning how best to store legos, or stay on top of the laundry, God has changed my heart. Willpower would only result in external comformity resulting in pride or more likely, failure. But God’s grace at work resulted in a heart change. I can honestly say that by God’s grace, over the years my love for my home and joy in working in my home has increased. I want to learn more of the domestic arts and improve in the ones I already know. If you looked in my garage today you would agree that I have definitely not arrived. In fact, Jason and I just recently had a little lengthy discussion about my priorities lately reflecting more selfishness than a desire to help and serve him. Ouch. But when I consider the grace that has been available for change so far, it gives me hope that He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it.

Case of the Missing Post

A couple of weeks ago I re-posted an article about humility and housework. After I posted it, I received a comment that started me thinking that perhaps in my attempt to be specific regarding examples from my own life, I may have inadvertently placed a stumbling block to those who would read it. I decided to delete it until I had time to “fix” it.  So, I have re-posted this for the third time with an addendum to clarify for the benefit of others who are reading (follow the floating asterisk).

“Humility in Scripture does not mean pretending to be worthless and refusing positions of responsibility, but knowing and keeping the place God has appointed for one. Being humble is a matter of accepting God’s arrangement, whether it means the high exposure of leadership, or the obscurity of being a servant.” –The Reformation Study Bible pg. 1519 in “The Humble Obedience of Christ”

I know that the place God has called me to is my home. It is indeed primarily a role of obscure servant-hood. I don’t think I ever connected my obedience to God through His calling me as a helper to my husband, a lover of my children, and a worker in my home as an expression of humility. Conversely, I have never associated my lack of keeping the place God has called me to a source of pride. Laziness…yes. Selfishness…yes. But pride?

One manifestation of pride is me seeking to elevate my will above God’s will. This happens primarily in the so-called minutia of life. It is expressed in things like napping when I have laundry to do. It’s in wasting money on fast food when my husband told me we need to stick to the budget. It’s in threatening and repeating myself to my kids rather than lovingly bringing biblical correction. It’s in skipping Math today because I would rather go to Target.*

What is the solution to my pitiful pride? How do I joyfully get on the path of humility right here and now in the minutia of life? I confess my pride, seek forgiveness for my sin and then fix my gaze to the ultimate example of humility: Jesus.

“In His humiliation, He left behind the eternal glory that was His, taking on a perfect and complete human nature: body, soul, spirit. Through His incarnation He lived a life of poverty and suffering. He was rejected by His nation, finally to die the shameful death of a common criminal.” –RSB pg. 1519 “The Humble Obedience of Christ”

Jesus humbled Himself to become a man, live a perfect life – completely conformed to the will of the Father, and then die on a cross suffering the wrath that my sins deserve. And now, because of His humility, I can have grace to conform to the will of the Father as well. Even now, when I get up from the computer and commence the day’s activities, I want to keep the Savior’s example before me.

It’s time to make the beds!

(originally posted November, 2005)

*These examples are ways that pride is manifested in my own life. They would not be examples of pride in everyone’s life. Indeed, for some, taking a nap would be more of an expression of humility – sometimes rest is needed more than housework. For some setting aside a to-do list, a need to get it all done and enjoy an outing with the kids is the greater expression of humility. That just isn’t typically my personal pattern. To be honest the more I live life, the more I realize that for every look at myself and the way pride is manifested; I need to take ten looks to my Savior and His perfect expression of humility in obeying His Father’s will even to the point of death on a cross. What a Savior!

Linky Loo: Metro Moms

Metro Moms is one of my favorite blogs. They consistently treat relevant women’s topics with wisdom, humility, and often humor. It is always short enough for a busy mom to read in just a few minutes, but packed with enough insight to think on all day.

I love the recent series they are doing about hospitality. It caught my attention when Sheree posted the following statement and thought-provoking questions.

In recent months some of us have been discussing the issue of hospitality and how it seems cultural norms in this area have changed over the years…resulting in affects in the church. For example:

• Why is it that restaurants and coffee shops are so often the place where people enjoy hanging out and fellowshipping more than around the kitchen table?
• Why do so many young brides feel unprepared for the rigors and fun of homemaking, cooking and meal planning? Could it be partly because they didn’t “practice” hospitality at home with their family and friends?
• Why do many of today’s families spend less time enjoying meals together and more time eating on the run?

The outstanding series (so far) can be found here.

You may want to begin with the first post, called An Invitation by clicking here.

Your 2 Cents: Keeping Homeschool Alive

While I know that through our move to Akron my children are learning valuable, even once-in-a-lifetime lessons that couldn’t possibly come contained in a textbook or curriculum, I do want to keep the academic home school alive even if we have to hurdle fourteen boxes to get to our books (can that count as gym?). Does anybody have any suggestions as to how to do this effectively? I’d love to hear your 2 cents!

I Know I Am Needy

No, this isn’t a spiritual post, though it is definitely a very true statement for me. First of all, thank you so much for all of the advice about packing. Please keep it coming. Even if you think of “just one more thing” – tell me. I am already so much more envisioned and prepared from some of the information you guys gave. Today I am going to wrap my art our blankets, etc. thanks to Kristie‘s advice. Also, Fishmama e-mailed me about labeling and I’m going to use the system she linked to (make labels for each room and label every side of the box on the upper left-hand corner). I am going to use a master list (like Tara and several others suggested), and I have the Flylady page bookmarked! Whew!

Still, I am needy. If you are a local girl, could you save your newspaper and boxes for me? I will pick them up whenever you let me know. Please spread the word that I need boxes. One bit of advice that was repeated by several people was that I would need way more boxes than I realize. I am taking Zoanna‘s advice and pleading for boxes via blog from my girlfriends here in MD.

Your 2 Cents

We finally sold our house. Our settlement date is October 31st. My emotions regarding our move are all over the map making it difficult to put two sentences together that would make any sense. Sooooo, I have decided to be practical about this. Well, actually, since I’m NOT very practical, I am asking for help. Over the next few days I would love to hear your 2 cents about a variety of topics. Please leave your comments, post on your blogs, or use the “contact me” button to email with your brilliant (yes, you are ALL brilliant and I can’t wait to hear from you ) ideas.

Today’s I-need-your-brain topic is: packing. If you have any information, links, websites, ideas about the practical aspects of packing a house to move, I’d love to hear from you. I’ve moved a couple of times before, but know I can learn more. Honestly, one move is a complete blur. (The boys were 3, 3, and 2 and I had Maggie 10 days later – yes, we’re nuts!)

Where to begin?

What to keep out?

How to avoid putting my kids in front of the TV while I pack?

How to get them involved in packing…without losing my mind?

Anything you can think of, please.