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There are a few things about me that you may not know…..I am a workaholic, I am an over the time idealist who will jump into a project feet first without working out the details and I feel most useful when I am doing things for others. Now being wired this way kinda makes me a target to not only stay busy in my home but also I stay busy in about a million other projects at all time. I declare that I am going to take it easy, that I am going to take a break at some point and sadly those breaks don’t happen as often as I would like. Along the way, I have discovered a way to balance things (at the moment) and well I recently had a reader asked how exactly I do balance everything so I thought I had better address that question before I forgot.
I have found that in order for my day to start and finish strong I must first invite God into my day. I have found that if I do not get up before my children and I do not immediately start my devotions then I will not ever get to them. This, in turn, causes my day to seem to stay in chaos. Currently, I am reading through the Bible with Good Morning Girls (in case you haven’t been tuning in on Fridays to see my thoughts on the weekly Bible reading 😉 )
I have learned early on is that I am easily distracted. Therefore, for myself, I must have a master list to get my day moving in the right direction. I write down each room and the tasks that I must get done in each room for that day. Mind you this does not mean I deep clean each room daily but it does mean that I do something in all the rooms. I also write down any writing assignments that need to be done. Typically this is just the sites name because I never truly know what it is that God is going to lay on my heart. I simply just jot down things as they come to mind. It works for me though so I guess that is what matters.
Another thing I have learned is that my house gets messy quickly. In fact, I am pretty sure if I was to stress over having my house spotless I would more than likely end up in an early grave by the end of the week. I have a house full of children. Messes and children go hand in hand. Now, this does not mean that I do not clean my home. Instead, I have on top of my daily list, a room to scrub a day. This works for me. The reason why I do this is that not too long ago I followed the Flylady cleaning ideas. However, they focused on a room a month. This, I found, left the rest of my house looking horrible (not all cleaning plans are going to work for all people). However, if I would 30 mins in one room each day I find that my house looks lived in but somewhat clean.
I make sure that all my big things are done in the mornings when I have the most energy. This means we do our school lessons and all major cleaning in the morning. Again it is what works for us. How I balance those two together is another post in its self. If you are interested in that then comment below and I will go into detail how we juggle school and housework in the same time blocks.
I have set routines for myself. I have a morning routine, an afternoon routine (which is when I write 🙂 ) and I have a nighttime routine. Some say that routines are just boring, I find that they simply keep me focused. My routines are set up with simply the core things that have to be done in my home every single day.
I also make sure that I fill in a calendar! This keeps me on track on days that I have something special planned, project that is due to be finished and of course, my planner also holds all our school plans. I find it is best for me to have a one-stop calendar instead of several different ones.
Finally, I have simply learned that no matter how hard I try my home is not going to be perfect, my kids are going to be a bit wild someday and there will be days that I am going to drop the ball. My family and I are completely fine with that because honestly at the end of the day as long as our children know they are loved, my husband knows that he is my favorite man on Earth and we can walk through our house without breaking a body part then we are perfectly content.
So there ya have it, I can assure you that I don’t have life balanced out, I don’t have a perfect house and I never will. I choose to believe that there is no such thing as balancing our homes. What I do believe is that I have is a willingness to serve my family and others. I have a desire to do the best that I can for my family and these few tips are how I accomplish it.
I would like to invite you to my Facebook group Christian Homemakers in Training where we dive into homemaking, motherhood, marriage and group devotions. After all, we all need a safe place to grow together, right?