Simply Mother

I am so not a Steven Covey/Franklin planner sorta girl. I like to make little charts and schedules and plans; I’m just not very good at following through with them.

Nevertheless, I’ve been at it again, but this time I’m counting on my complete lack of ability to abide by anything, and, even though I’m penciling in times for everything, I’m not even permitting myself to dream that I might actually stick with it.

It’s still serving a purpose though. Order. Even if I never manage to actually get out of bed at 7am (which shouldn’t be a monumental feat, I know) and if the process of brushing everyone’s teeth ends up taking 20 minutes instead of a reasonable 6, and our “Morning Playtime” somehow gets scrunched down from 3 and a half hours to 30 minutes every day, at least we have a semblance of structure to keep us on track. So I don’t get sidetracked with checking email (and then Twitter . . . and then all your fascinating blogs . . .) before little bellies even get the benefit of a bowl of cereal, you know? Tell me you know what I mean.

Okay, maybe you don’t. That’s okay, I’ll get there. I’ve been there, actually, you know how these things come and go with the ebb and flow of a normal, changing, family life. I’ve had great periods where I actually managed to get out of bed by 6 every morning, and everyone benefited from having mom showered and refreshed and ready for the day before the kids even woke up.

That hasn’t been happening lately, and would you like to see my attempt to get back into it? Here’s the layout. Things with *’s are defined below.

7:00 Get up, shower, get dressed, make bed

7:30 Read Scriptures

7:50 Prayers with the girls (I’ve been trying to have a little prayer with each of them in my closet before breakfast every day. They seem to love it.)

8:00 Breakfast. Also: Unload dishwasher and start laundry. (I do these things while the girls eat. They take a lot longer to eat than I do.)

8:30 Brush Teeth and Bathroom Maintenance*

9:00 Check email. Give baths M-W-F (Sarah recently pronounced those “bath days” and who am I to argue?) (Their baths usually last at least an hour, so this may extend into Morning playtime.)

9:30-1:00 Morning Playtime* (I’ll put out a snack–fruit, veggies, or a smoothie, around 10:30)

1:00 Lunch

1:30-4:00 Afternoon Playtime* (Maybe another snack, but I don’t know, my kids tend to get so engrossed in their activities they don’t even notice hunger.)

4:00 Start dinner (May vary depending on how long what I’m making will take.)

4:45 Beautify House*

5:15 Finishing touches on dinner/Girls set the table

5:30 Dinner

6:00 Family scriptures and prayer (early, so Matt can have time to go work on the duplexes we own, that seem to be in constant need of attention.)

6:30 Teeth and Jammies

6:36 (Or whenever teeth and jammies get done) Reading Time (I read picture books first, and then as much of a chapter book as we can manage before 2-year-old needs to sleep, at which point, Sarah goes out to read on her own–or play or whatever, but she almost always wants to read–and Carrie and I lie with Jade till she falls asleep.)

9:00 Sarah’s sleep time. (But if she’s not feeling tired enough, she’ll read in bed for awhile.)

11:30 I’m trying to tell myself I have to be in my bed, reading (NOT blogging!) by this time. We’ll see. That means I only have five more minutes to hit publish and I still have to define everything!

12:00 Lights out! (I’ve been trying to make myself go to bed by midnight for roughly 10 years. Again, should NOT be that hard.)

Bathroom Maintenance
Sarah has been happy to help me clean the bathrooms ever since we moved into a house with cleanable bathrooms, but recently we went through all the things that made for a clean bathroom and wrote a list to tape to her bathroom wall. The list includes things to do daily and weekly. We both do our daily things in our own bathrooms after brushing teeth.

Morning & Afternoon Playtime
This can include any number of things: Grocery shopping, going to the park or library, Visiting Teaching (a church thing), sewing, reading, making muffins, or granola or bread, playing with kids or helping with projects. Whatever we have planned for the day.

Hopefully soon we’ll get some regular out-of-the-house activities like dance or sports classes or homeschool park days or something and having the times set here (even though I know I just said I’m planning on a high probability of my NOT FOLLOWING this!) will theoretically help me schedule those things.

Beautify House
It sounds more exciting than “Clean up time.” This is where we run through and get the house back in order preferably before Matt is done working and comes out of his office. The girls like the idea of making it a beautiful, relaxing place for Daddy to “come home” to.

Haphazard Chore System

I have been thinking about instituting some sort of family chore system for some time now but keep getting stuck in all the conflicting thoughts and theories out there about family work, responsibility, autonomy, methods of “enforcement,” and so on.

My beliefs on these things probably run the gamut, and they change frequently so I definitely won’t be trying to elaborate on any particular one here, I just know I’m not into any kind of punishment/reward system and I don’t want to make work into something dreadful. Good luck, I know.

But I did finally act on an impulse and make up something.

I’ve been admiring Verymom’s chore pockets for awhile now and then Soulemama recently posted about her new family board, and I know I eventually want to make something similar to these, but before I go all out with the cork board and fabric, I’m actually going to think ahead this time and try a system out with something less time consuming first.

So the other day I grabbed some scrap cardstock and made them index card size-ish. I wrote one chore on each one and had the girls draw pictures of them. Just six. Here’s what we have:

• Put all dishes in dishwasher. (Check all rooms for stray dishes.)
• Clear clutter and put away. (Clutter is defined as “anything not where it belongs”. This is the biggest one, since it involves undoing all their games from the day, which tend to get pretty elaborate. But I do sometimes ask them to clean up big “projects” [not messes] before moving on to the next thing, so we aren’t totally overloaded at the end of the day.)
• Clear and wipe down all kitchen surfaces. (Counters, sink, stove, table.)
• Arrange couch pillows and books on fireplace.
• Sweep.
• Put clean clothes away.

Then I made a little pocket to hold them and the girls take turns picking. They are color coded so we know which ones to pick first–so we don’t end up sweeping before wiping the counters.

We all work on one card together until the job is finished before picking the next one. So far, it has been a hit. But it has only been two days so, you know, we’ll see.

We’ll see about my schedule too. Because look, I’m already over an hour behind!

Filed in: home education • just life • parenting | April 1, 2009