Home Sanctuary

Household Organization - Setting Up a System That Works

It's January, so it's time to figure out how you're going to make THIS the year you finally get organized. Since I do this a few times a year, this may be a review for many of you, but really...it's worth reviewing again and again. I get inspired each and every time - plus, life changes quickly and what worked last year might not work THIS year. Let's get going!

If you've ever tried setting up a housekeeping schedule and failed, the next few posts here at Home Sanctuary will help you come up with a way to organize household tasks that will actually work for your family. You won't want to miss any of them! (cough-SubscribeToFeed) 

When you set out to make something like a "Housekeeping Chart," it's easy to bite off more than your family can chew.  We all get star-struck with the idea that we will run a tight ship, know where all our receipts are and have baseboards that shine.  We see the lists of tasks set out by the experts, break them up into a complicated weekly spread sheet and then....implode.  Who are we kidding??  We can't keep up with all that!

The reality is, most of us would be thrilled with a general system that would corral the clutter into a reasonable scale, help us find permission slips, and keep our homes relatively germ-free and company-ready.  We'd like to function freely without being slaves to a monstrous spread sheet.  

We want to have a home that embraces the people within its walls and accepts that life is sometimes messy. We don't want to become housekeeping tyrants.

But we know we need help, and we are tired of the chaos that comes when we flunk the Flylady or drop out of Martha's methods.

Today's Small Thing is to make a simple, yet significant step toward the kind of life you want to live.  

Not to get overly excited here, but what we are starting today could, quite possibly, change your life.  I'm not even kidding.

We'll begin by making a list of the basic tasks that you feel are important to the health and well-being of your family.  We will keep this rather general: keep in mind, we are working on something that will be manageable and not take on a big, scary life of its own. I have a blank Task List for you to download at the bottom of this post.

I'll get us going, and your list might look different than mine. I haven't included major tasks, like cleaning out the gutters or seasonal tasks like polishing silver (riiiiiight). We are just talking about the everyday things that we want to get under control.

• Grocery shop
• Kitchen floor: sweep
• Kitchen floor: mop
• Dishes
• Counters
• Oven
• Fridge
• Trash
• General Pick-up
• Vacuum living areas
• Vacuum bedrooms
• Cleaning bedrooms
• Dusting
• Entry way
• Laundry: sheets and towels
• Laundry: family clothes
• Craft projects/Personal pursuits (scrapbooking, knitting, etc)
• Bathrooms (tub, toilet, sink and counters, floor)
• Paper work (filing, bills, etc.)
• Yard work
• Errands (dry cleaning, dog to groomer, etc.)
• What else can you think of??

 

Now.  Beside each task, you will assign a number:

1 - This should be done every day

2 - This could be done once a week

3 - This could be done once, every other week

4 - This could be done once a month

5 - This ain't gonna happen

I want you to think about each thing realistically.  If you can't remember the last time you mopped your kitchen floor, perhaps assigning a 3 or a 4 to that task would be reasonable. Don't worry about what you think you "should" do.  Remember, if you currently aren't doing any of these things well, then any bit of improvement will help.  You can always go back and tweak this later, when you are flush with success.

That is ALL you have to do!!  You don't even have to do any ACTUAL WORK today!  Woo HOO, I love being a Company Girl!

Tomorrow, we will start figuring out how to work these tasks into your lifestyle.  Let me assure you, you aren't going to have to kill yourself to set this up. But in order to make it work, you WILL have to step up your game just a bit.  

I don't know about you, but I'm READY to step up my game!  I'm excited about making my home sparkle with peace, order and beauty!  It's going to happen for all of us.

Hey! Here's a blank pdf you can download to make this even easier!   Download Household Task List

Song of the Day: Step by Step, Backstreet Boys

 

And Now, A "Real World" Housekeeping Schedule

Trying to keep up with housekeeping tasks can lead to frustration, anger and depression when you just can't manage it all. Let's face it, life is busy and most of the time we have too much on our plates to do everything as well as we'd like.  I can't bear to look at another "expert's" housekeeping gold standard schedule without feeling like an inept failure. That's why I love this "Real World" system of sanctuary.

Today, we are going to try and put our emotions aside and look rationally at creating a Housekeeping Schedule that will get you past the inertia that sets in when things get overwhelming.  Did you have a chance to do Step 1 and Step 2 and leading up to Today's Small Thing?  They'll really help you get ready to make this simple schedule.

Let's lay a few ground rules:

1. Decide on a realistic level of cleanliness for the season of life you are currently in.  Your housekeeping standards will change many times over the years, depending on the time you can devote, your energy level and even your own attitude.  The ages of your children will affect how much you can do yourself, and how much you can delegate.  So don't be too hard on yourself if THIS particular go-round with creating a schedule doesn't look like much.

2. Don't set your standards by your mother-in-law's, Martha Stewart's or your neighbor's.  Often, "clean enough" is enough.

3. Group tasks together that make sense.  For example, creating one chunk of time per week to run errands, rather than running around every day, will free up more time.  A whole day that was supposed to be devoted to home tasks can get eaten up with a simple trip to the Post Office, so you want to limit the times you have to get out and about, if possible.

4. Life is not all about cleaning.  But having things neat and tidy affects your life in a very big way.  My husband feels loved when he walks into a clean living room, and that makes all of us much happier. Believe me.  But he would rather have me cheerfully loving on him than bitterly yanking clothes from the dryer. Sometimes you have to make choices and cleaning loses out.  People come first.

5. Be flexible.  A schedule should serve YOU, not the other way around.  Things happen.  Life changes.  Don't come unglued if your schedule doesn't work all the time.  Just pick up where you left off as best you can.

6. Delegate.  There is no reason that you, and you alone, should do all the work.  That does not mean that your children should be your slaves.  But each child should be able (and expected to) pick up their own things, and perhaps do one or two simple things around the house on a regular basis.  We can cover that more, later. But realize that you will almost always have to help them remember to do their jobs, so just get over it.  Kids have amnesia, and they also suffer from "Can't See the Mess Syndrome."

7. Don't overplan.  If you work a full day and then have to take your kids to basketball practice, don't plan a "whole house" overhaul on that day, unless you just love being frustrated.  Maybe that's an evening in which you collapse on the couch with a bowl of ice cream.  That's OK!  You need time to relax, too.

Alrighty.  Let's get down to business.  I will give you examples of a Stay at Home Mom schedule, and a Work Outside the Home Mom schedule.  I've kept these very simple and general, and not included many outside activities, just so that you can see how I've divided up the work.  Your own schedules may look completely different than mine.  And if you are a nurse, or work retail hours that change from week to week, you may have to make more than one schedule to reflect your situation.

First, I've taken a look at the things I want to do daily and included them in my Minimum Maintenance routine.  These things don't go into my weekly schedule.  I normally do most of my Minimum Maintenance in the evenings, when the kids can help (5-10 min), because I like to wake up to a tidy house.

Don't underestimate the incredible power of Minimum Maintenance.  I've survived WHOLE YEARS on doing little more than that each day.  Somehow, Minimum Maintenance makes the rest of the housekeeping tasks much more manageable.

When I was a SAHM, I liked to do my major housecleaning on Mondays.  That gave us more time on Saturdays for other things, and allowed me to supervise the kids' simple chores, which seemed to drag on forever. When I was distracted with my own jobs, I couldn't help them accomplish theirs.

Download Housekeeping Schedule SAHM 

You can see that Monday and Tuesday are the hardest housekeeping workdays, but then those things are done and the rest of the week is fairly easy.  Since most of your time is spent caring for children, I use the term "easy" loosely.

Now, for a working mom, things are a little trickier because you have to work AROUND your "paid" work schedule.  Again, doing your Minimum Maintenance is the magic pill that will make things run more smoothly, but you will still need the cooperation of all family members.  Theoretically, since you are gone during the day, your house "should" stay cleaner because you aren't there to mess it up, but some would argue that point.  Some pretty big messes can be made "after hours."

Download Housekeeping Schedule WOH 

You may have to break big tasks, like laundry, up into smaller pieces to get them done.  More of your housekeeping will have to fall on the weekends.  I've found that I have to relax some of my standards during the week so that I'm not grumpy all the time.  I want my kids to remember me enjoying life, (and them!), rather me yelling at them.

One last point: If you notice, I have not broken my tasks down into detailed sub-tasks and specific chores in most cases.  I have left things pretty loose and general because I find that when I start complicating things, I don't follow through.  That's just me, I'm pathetic that way.  I also don't assign specific times to my tasks because they are tucked into the overall job of parenting and keeping the wheels on things.  I cannot stress myself out over sticking to a time schedule along with everything else.

Today's Small Thing is to print off a blank Housekeeping Schedule and play around with plugging in your tasks.  You probably won't make the "perfect" schedule right off the bat, so maybe try 2 or 3 different options.  If you need to make a 2-week or 1 Month schedule because it just doesn't all fit into one week, that's perfectly fine!

Download Housekeeping Schedule Blank 

Creating a simple and general schedule frees you from thinking that you have to try and dig out from your disaster in one day.  On Monday, do Monday's jobs and don't worry about Tuesday's jobs.  On Tuesday, do Tuesday's jobs, and so on.  Give yourself time to get the tasks into a "pipeline" and you will see how beautifully it can work.  Be patient and stay committed to creating some order, and it will happen.

Later, we will talk about getting your children (and spouse) involved in helping you manage.  Yippee!

Feel free to leave a comment with your suggestions, and link to your own post if you have posted about this task!

Where Does Your Time Go?

 

Step 2 of setting up your miracle housekeeping schedule is to take a look at a typical week in your life.  For you chart and list-lovers, you will be in heaven this week.   And for those of us who are visual learners, this exercise is perfect.  If you missed Step 1, it is here.

Let's set this up horizontally.  Here is a simple chart I've made so that you can follow along.  Sorry it's not very pretty, but it's really late and my creativity already fell asleep.  You can print off a blank one for yourself. Download Horizontal time

This works most simply if your schedule is fairly consistent each week, i.e. stay at home mom, or working from 8-5.  If you have a nursing schedule or work retail hours that change from week to week, you will have to make some adjustments, or perhaps make more than one chart to reflect your situation.

Just fill in the general blocks of time: departures, arrivals, work, school, nap times, episodes of "LOST" that you just can't miss.  You will start to see where your time is spent, and where you might have "empty" blocks of time that could be used for your housekeeping tasks.  Looking at your life as a horizontal chart might help you start realizing just how much you pack into a week!  And how easily time can get frittered.

Is your day jammed with activities from morning until night?  Do you have any time for yourself or for fun?  Do you have time to accomplish the very basics of family upkeep?  Does the computer hog every spare moment you have?

Sometimes it's important to take a good, honest look at our days.

Ps. 90:12 says,

Teach us to number our days aright,
       that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Today's Small Thing is to take a few minutes to fill in the time chart.  It doesn't have to be perfect or pretty.  If you want to get fancy, you could use colored pencils to indicate blocks of time, like work or school, but that's completely up to you. This is entirely for your benefit.

Then, fold your hands and pray over your schedule.  Ask God for wisdom.  A healthy time schedule has some empty spots in it.  If yours is too full, perhaps you can reconsider some of your commitments. 

Tomorrow, we will take Steps 1 and 2 and combine them into a Housekeeping Schedule that will free you from feeling like a failure in this department.  You'll see how adding a small amount of general structure will bring back the joy you've been missing because the laundry and chaos have beaten you down.  You will feel empowered to give yourself permission to have fun at home AND find time for personal pursuits. It is exciting to know that there is hope for all of us!  So hang in there, Company Girls.

Household Organization - Setting Up a System that Works, Gloriously

If you've ever tried setting up a housekeeping schedule and failed, the next few posts here at Home Sanctuary will help you come up with a way to organize household tasks that will actually work for your family. You won't want to miss any of them! (cough-SubscribeToFeed) So let's get started:

When you set out to make something like a "Housekeeping Chart," it's easy to bite off more than your family can chew.  We all get star-struck with the idea that we will run a tight ship, know where all our receipts are and have baseboards that shine.  We see the lists of tasks set out by the experts, break them up into a complicated weekly spread sheet and then....implode.  Who are we kidding??  We can't keep up with all that!

The reality is, most of us would be thrilled with a general system that would corral the clutter into a reasonable scale, help us find permission slips, and keep our homes relatively germ-free and company-ready.  We'd like to function freely without being slaves to a monstrous spread sheet.  

We want to have a home that embraces the people within its walls and accepts that life is sometimes messy. We don't want to become housekeeping tyrants.

But we know we need help, and we are tired of the chaos that comes when we flunk the Flylady or drop out of Martha's methods.

Today's Small Thing is to make a simple, yet significant step toward the kind of life you want to live.  If you have been telling your friends about this incredible blog called Home Sanctuary (wink), today is the day to send them a link because what we are starting today could, quite possibly, change your life - and theirs!  I'm not kidding.

You are going to make a list of the basic tasks that you feel are important to the health and well-being of your family.  We will keep this rather general: keep in mind, we are working on something that will be manageable and not take on a big, scary life of its own.

I'll get us going, and your list might look different than mine.

• Grocery shop
• Kitchen floor: sweep
• Kitchen floor: mop
• Dishes
• Counters
• Oven
• Trash
• General Pick-up
• Vacuum living areas
• Vacuum bedrooms
• Cleaning bedrooms
• Dusting
• Entry way
• Laundry: sheets and towels
• Laundry: family clothes
• Craft projects/Personal pursuits (scrapbooking, knitting, etc)
• Bathrooms
• Paper work (filing, bills, etc.)
• Yard work
• Errands (dry cleaning, dog to groomer, etc.)
• What else can you think of??

 

Now.  Beside each task, you will assign a number:

1 - This should be done everyday

2 - This could be done once a week

3 - This could be done once, every other week

4 - This could be done once a month

5 - This ain't gonna happen

I want you to think about each thing realistically.  If you can't remember the last time you mopped your kitchen floor, perhaps assigning a 3 or a 4 to that task would be reasonable.  Don't worry about what you think you "should" do.  Remember, if you currently aren't doing any of these things well, then any bit of improvement will help.  You can always go back and tweak this later, when you are flush with success.

That is ALL you have to do!!  You don't even have to do any ACTUAL WORK today!  Woo HOO, I love being a Company Girl!

Tomorrow, we will start figuring out how to work these tasks into your lifestyle.  Let me assure you, you aren't going to have to kill yourself to set this up. But in order to make it work, you WILL have to step up your game just a bit.  

I don't know about you, but I'm READY to step up my game!  I'm excited about making my home sparkle with peace, order and beauty!  It's going to happen for all of us.

Don't forget about Minimum Maintenance...we're embracing new habits, right?

Hey! Here's a blank pdf you can download to make this even easier!   Download Household Task List  

Setting Up a "Real World" Housekeeping Schedule

There's a lot of anger, frustration and depression surrounding the subject of housekeeping tasks.  And let's not forget bitterness, that other lingering emotion that derails us.

Today, we are going to try and put our emotions aside and look rationally at creating a Housekeeping Schedule that will get you past the inertia that sets in when things get overwhelming.  Did you have a chance to do Step 1 and Step 2 leading up to Today's Small Thing?  They'll really help you get ready to make this simple schedule.

Let's lay a few ground rules:

1. Decide on a realistic level of cleanliness for the season of life you are currently in.  Your housekeeping standards will change many times over the years, depending on the time you can devote, your energy level and even your own attitude.  The ages of your children will affect how much you can do yourself, and how much you can delegate.  So don't be too hard on yourself if THIS particular go-round with creating a schedule doesn't look like much.

2. Don't set your standards by your mother-in-law's, Martha Stewart's or your neighbor's.  Often, "clean enough" is enough.

3. Group tasks together that make sense.  For example, creating one chunk of time per week to run errands, rather than running around every day, will free up more time.  A whole day that was supposed to be devoted to home tasks can get eaten up with a simple trip to the Post Office, so you want to limit the times you have to get out and about, if possible.

4. Life is not all about cleaning.  But having things neat and tidy affects your life in a very big way.  My husband feels loved when he walks into a clean living room, and that makes all of us much happier. Believe me.  But he would rather have me cheerfully loving on him than bitterly yanking clothes from the dryer. Sometimes you have to make choices and cleaning loses out.  People come first.

5. Be flexible.  A schedule should serve YOU, not the other way around.  Things happen.  Life changes.  Don't come unglued if your schedule doesn't work all the time.  Just pick up where you left off as best you can.

6. Delegate.  There is no reason that you, and you alone, should do all the work.  That does not mean that your children should be your slaves.  But each child should be able (and expected to) pick up their own things, and perhaps do one or two simple things around the house on a regular basis.  We can cover that more, later. But realize that you will almost always have to help them remember to do their jobs, so just get over it.  Kids have amnesia, and they also suffer from "Can't See the Mess Syndrome."

7. Don't over plan.  If you work a full day and then have to take your kids to basketball practice, don't plan a "whole house" overhaul on that day, unless you just love being frustrated.  Maybe that's an evening in which you collapse on the couch with a bowl of ice cream.  That's OK!  You need time to relax, too.

Alrighty.  Let's get down to business.  I will give you examples of a Stay at Home Mom schedule, and a Work Outside the Home Mom schedule.  I've kept these very simple and general, and not included many outside activities, just so that you can see how I've divided up the work.  Your own schedules may look completely different than mine.  And if you are a nurse, or work retail hours that change from week to week, you may have to make more than one schedule to reflect your situation.

First, I've taken a look at the things I want to do daily and included them in my Minimum Maintenance routine.  These things don't go into my weekly schedule.  I normally do most of my Minimum Maintenance in the evenings, when the kids can help (5-10 min), because I like to wake up to a tidy house.

Don't underestimate the incredible power of Minimum Maintenance.  I've survived WHOLE YEARS on doing little more than that each day.  Somehow, Minimum Maintenance makes the rest of the housekeeping tasks much more manageable.

When I was a SAHM, I liked to do my major housecleaning on Mondays.  That gave us more time on Saturdays for other things, and allowed me to supervise the kids' simple chores, which seemed to drag on forever. When I was distracted with my own jobs, I couldn't help them accomplish theirs.

Download Housekeeping Schedule SAHM 

You can see that Monday and Tuesday are the hardest housekeeping workdays, but then those things are done and the rest of the week is fairly easy.  Since most of your time is spent caring for children, I use the term "easy" loosely.

Now, for a working mom, things are a little trickier because you have to work AROUND your "paid" work schedule.  Again, doing your Minimum Maintenance is the magic pill that will make things run more smoothly, but you will still need the cooperation of all family members.  Theoretically, since you are gone during the day, your house "should" stay cleaner because you aren't there to mess it up, but some would argue that point.  Some pretty big messes can be made "after hours."

Download Housekeeping Schedule WOH 

You may have to break big tasks, like laundry, up into smaller pieces to get them done.  More of your housekeeping will have to fall on the weekends.  I've found that I have to relax some of my standards during the week so that I'm not grumpy all the time.  I want my kids to remember me enjoying life, (and them!), rather me yelling at them.

One last point: If you notice, I have not broken my tasks down into detailed sub-tasks and specific chores in most cases.  I have left things pretty loose and general because I find that when I start complicating things, I don't follow through.  That's just me, I'm pathetic that way.  I also don't assign specific times to my tasks because they are tucked into the overall job of parenting and keeping the wheels on things.  I cannot stress myself out over sticking to a time schedule along with everything else.

Today's Small Thing is to print off a blank Housekeeping Schedule and play around with plugging in your tasks.  You probably won't make the "perfect" schedule right off the bat, so maybe try 2 or 3 different options.  If you need to make a 2-week or 1 Month schedule because it just doesn't all fit into one week, that's perfectly fine!

Download Housekeeping Schedule Blank 

Creating a simple and general schedule frees you from thinking that you have to try and dig out from your disaster in one day.  On Monday, do Monday's jobs and don't worry about Tuesday's jobs.  On Tuesday, do Tuesday's jobs, and so on.  Give yourself time to get the tasks into a "pipeline" and you will see how beautifully it can work.  Be patient and stay committed to creating some order, and it will happen.

Tomorrow, we will talk about getting your children (and spouse) involved in helping you manage.  Yippee!

POINTS: 75 for working on this today.

Feel free to leave a comment with your suggestions, and link to your own post if you have posted about this task!

I've linked to Shannon's Works for Me Wednesday today.  Welcome, Rocks in My Dryer readers!

Where Does Your Time Go?

Step 2 of setting up your miracle housekeeping schedule is to take a look at a typical week in your life.  For you chart and list-lovers, you will be in heaven this week.   And for those of us who are visual learners, this exercise is perfect.  If you missed Step 1, it is here.

Let's set this up horizontally.  Here is a simple chart I've made so that you can follow along.  Sorry it's not very pretty, but it's really late and my creativity already fell asleep.  You can print off a blank one for yourself. Download Horizontal time

This works most simply if your schedule is fairly consistent each week, i.e. stay at home mom, or working from 8-5.  If you have a nursing schedule or work retail hours that change from week to week, you will have to make some adjustments, or perhaps make more than one chart to reflect your situation.

Just fill in the general blocks of time: departures, arrivals, work, school, nap times, episodes of "LOST" that you just can't miss.  You will start to see where your time is spent, and where you might have "empty" blocks of time that could be used for your housekeeping tasks.  Looking at your life as a horizontal chart might help you start realizing just how much you pack into a week!  And how easily time can get frittered.

Is your day jammed with activities from morning until night?  Do you have any time for yourself or for fun?  Do you have time to accomplish the very basics of family upkeep?  Does the computer hog every spare moment you have?

Sometimes it's important to take a good, honest look at our days.

Ps. 90:12 says,

Teach us to number our days aright,
       that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Today's Small Thing is to take a few minutes to fill in the time chart.  It doesn't have to be perfect or pretty.  If you want to get fancy, you could use colored pencils to indicate blocks of time, like work or school, but that's completely up to you. This is entirely for your benefit.

Then, fold your hands and pray over your schedule.  Ask God for wisdom.  A healthy time schedule has some empty spots in it.  If yours is too full, perhaps you can reconsider some of your commitments. 

Tomorrow, we will take Steps 1 and 2 and combine them into a Housekeeping Schedule that will free you from feeling like a failure in this department.  You'll see how adding a small amount of general structure will bring back the joy you've been missing because the laundry and chaos have beaten you down.  You will feel empowered to give yourself permission to have fun at home AND find time for personal pursuits. It is exciting to know that there is hope for all of us!  So hang in there, Company Girls.

POINTS: I'm going to give you a bunch because this Small Thing is kinda hard, but important....how about 75???

Household Organization - Setting up a System that Works, Gloriously

If you've ever tried setting up a housekeeping schedule and failed, the next few Small Things will help you come up with a way to organize household tasks in a way that will actually work for your family.

When you set out to make something like a "Housekeeping Chart," it's easy to bite off more than your family can easily chew.  We all get star-struck with the idea that we will run a tight ship, know where all our receipts are and have baseboards that shine.  We see the lists of tasks set out by the experts, break them up into a complicated weekly spread sheet and then....implode.  Who are we kidding??  We can't keep up with all that!

The reality is, most of us would be thrilled with a general system that would corral the clutter into a reasonable scale, help us find permission slips and keep our homes relatively germ-free and company-ready.  We'd like to function freely without being slaves to a monstrous spread sheet.  We want to have a home that embraces the people within its walls and accepts that life is sometimes messy. We don't want to become housekeeping tyrants.

But we know we need help, and we are tired of the chaos that comes when we flunk the Flylady or drop out of Martha's methods.

Today's Small Thing is to make a simple, yet significant step toward the kind of life you want to live.  If you have been telling your friends about this incredible blog called Home Sanctuary (wink), today is the day to send them a link because what we are starting today could, quite possibly, change your (and their) life!  I'm not kidding.

You are going to make a list of the basic tasks that you feel are important to the health and well-being of your family.  We will keep this rather general: keep in mind, we are working on something that will be manageable and not take on a big, scary life of its own.

I'll get us started, and your list might look different than mine.

Grocery shop

Kitchen floor: sweep

Kitchen floor: mop

Dishes

Counters

Oven

Trash

General Pick-up

Vacuum living areas

Vacuum bedrooms

Cleaning bedrooms

Dusting

Entry way

Laundry: sheets and towels

Laundry: family clothes

Craft projects/Personal pursuits (scrapbooking, knitting, etc)

Bathrooms

Paper work (filing, bills, etc.)

Yard work

Errands (dry cleaning, dog to groomer, etc.)

Now.  Beside each task, you will assign a number:

1 - This should be done everyday

2 - This could be done once a week

3 - This could be done once, every other week

4 - This could be done once a month

5 - This ain't gonna happen

I want you to think about each thing realistically.  If you can't remember the last time you mopped your kitchen floor, perhaps assigning a 3 or a 4 to that task would be reasonable.  Don't worry about what you think you "should" do.  Remember, if you currently aren't doing any of these things well, then any bit of improvement will help.  You can always go back and tweak this later, when you are flush with success.

That is ALL you have to do!!  You don't even have to do any ACTUAL WORK today!  Woo HOO, I love being a Company Girl!

Tomorrow, we will start figuring out how to work these tasks into your lifestyle.  Let me assure you, you aren't going to have to kill yourself to set this up. But in order to make it work, you WILL have to step up your game just a bit.  

I don't know about you, but I'm READY to step up my game!  I'm excited about making my home sparkle with peace, order and beauty!  It's going to happen for all of us.

POINTS: 50 for making a general task list and assigning a number to each item.

Hey! Here's a blank pdf you can download to make this even easier!   Download Household Task List  

To continue, here is Step 2 and Step 3.  Just take small bites of this at a time...it's easier than it appears at first glance.

Get Control of Your Schedule, Or, Getcha Some Backbone, Girl

Disclaimer:  Today's Small Thing will require more than just a few minutes of thought.  You will need a calendar, a red pen and and a steely determination to set boundaries in your schedule that will give you freedom to create "Sanctuary" in your home.  And you get all weekend to work on it!

This is the time of year when every organization gets geared up to recruit volunteers.  And EVERYONE needs help. We need Sunday School teachers, room mothers, carpool drivers, committee members, coaches, leaders, helpers, you name it.  If you are a parent, your kids will be asked to be involved in sports, youth groups, AWANA, scouting, Community Problem Solvers, clubs, Honor Society and play groups. Throw into the mix weekly Bible Study, Home Groups, Choir, neighborhood watch groups and co-ops and is it any wonder that our homes resemble way-stations rather than peaceful shelters?

We don't mean to get over committed. We always have good intentions.  We want the best for our kids and our families, but there are just too many opportunities out there to fit into a reasonable schedule. Today we are going to take a look at those opportunities and make some decisions ahead of time so that we won't get suckered into being on a committee that will eat up time we don't have.

This works best if you can sit down with your spouse and work on it together, but you can do this by yourself up to a certain point.  

Backbone Principles:

1.  Don't ever volunteer for anything on the spot.  Practice the words, "Let me talk to my husband first and I'll get back to you."  Or "Let me think and pray about it first."  Often you know the moment you walk away that you should not sign up.  That's the Holy Spirit, honey.

2.  Talk to your spouse about each activity before committing.  At times I've been really mad at my man when he hasn't agreed to something I wanted to do, but honoring him and our family has always been the right choice.

3.  Get a grip on reality. Plug in every commitment you already have (work, church, school, sports) and be amazed at how little time is actually left to take care of necessities like grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, homework.  These activities must be done and they do take time so don't discount them by filling every moment with outside stuff.  These are the things that create sanctuary for your family and they are important.  Decide when you will do them.

4.  Leave time for boredom.  People often remark about how creative our children are and we always tell them that we left time for creativity to happen.  When every moment of every day is filled, children don't have time to dream, color, make forts and do things with string.   That's a shame.  We really do our children a disservice when we orchestrate too many activities and forget to let them be kids.  Boredom is good for them.

5.  Set a limit on how many activities each child (and each parent) can do.  Help your children understand that it's better to do one or two things well than many things poorly.  This is an important life lesson.

I see I am getting lengthy again, but this is something we are passionate about as a family.  You may feel very hard-hearted and un-Christian to turn away from volunteering for the homeless shelter or being a Sunday School teacher, but remember that you are not called to fill every need that presents itself to you.  Your calling is FIRST AND FOREMOST to your husband and children.  Your aim should be to create a home that reflects Peace, Order and Beauty....one that glorifies God the moment you walk in the door.  That will only happen when we start getting control of our schedules and deliberately choosing which things to let in.

POINTS: 100....for carving out Sanctuary in your schedule...and you get all weekend to work on it!  Your calendar doesn't have to be perfect, just deliberate.  This might be a great time to try working in a Household Schedule  (or this one) or a Chore Chart.

Share your tips!  Let us know how your family handles schedule management!

Working Mom's Weekly Household Schedule (that might work)

Last Wednesday, I posted a simple weekly schedule that helped me when I did not work outside the home. It doesn't resemble ANYTHING like what I live with today. With just one (low-maintenance) child left at home, life looks a whole lot different than it did even two years ago. While the heavy duty years of diapering and homework-helping are behind me, our family business has required more of me than I would like, and I now pretty much have to fly by the seat of my pants.

My schedule changes from day to day. I might be up on ladders on a job-site one day, and then in day-long business meetings the next. Sometimes I drive all over the Dallas/Ft.Worth area, and sometimes I am home in my sweats in front of the computer. I've tried to organize my days, but a truthfully, a systematic weekly schedule doesn't work for me right now.

I rely on my very helpful husband, Tom, Minimum Maintenance and a fairly well-stocked pantry make it through.

Since statistics show that most women work full or part-time, this week's sample schedule might be more helpful. It is really very simple, and maybe it will work for you. Make a blank 7-Day table, like my example below.

1. Start by plugging in your work schedule. If you are a nurse or work odd shifts, you might have two or three sample schedules that you could make, depending on your week.

2. Write in standing commitments: church, sports, date night (ha!).

3. Swallow hard, but press on.

4. This is where it gets interesting. Think: how many loads of laundry does it take to keep your family operational? 5? 10? Chances are you will need to split up that job thoughout the week, or enlist help from the able bodies who are slumped in front of the video games. It can be ugly, but you are taking control.

5. Ask yourself: how clean does my house need to be, really? Do I need 6 hours on Saturday to clean, or can it be done a little at a time each evening?

6. Grocery shopping for my family takes me a minimum of 2 hours, start to finish. It has to go somewhere. Some moms hit Walmart at 10 pm and I admire that. Ya'll are made a tougher stuff than me. Pick a time and try to stick to it, if possible, so you aren't going every night.

7. Will Saturday work as your clean/shop/sports and entertainment day? Or do you need Sunday afternoons to get some of that done?

8. Notice I have "Min. Maint." typed in each day. Girls, hear me now and believe me later, this is the single best thing a working or "non-working" woman can do. You need to get your kids to pitch in for 5 minutes each day to pick up the messes everyone has had a hand in creating. Let your family know how much you appreciate their help, even the grumpy help.

9. I've left this sample schedule fairly blank on purpose. I just want you to get the idea, without over-complicating it. I think when you start putting your family activities and responsibilities on paper, you'll be amazed by all you are already doing! Give yourself a pat on the back.

10. Eliminate, eliminate. You don't need to be Room Mom, even though you are really good at it. You don't need to be on the Search Committee at church, an Awana leader AND have your kids in Future Problem Solvers. Ay, ay, ay! Learn to discuss activities and see how they will affect your family BEFORE you commit. Seriously put everything on the table, and start making some choices. Most of us choose to be busier than we have to be, and our families suffer for it.

Final thought, from one Type T (tired) Mom to another. There are many days that I feel defeated. Maybe I've tried to do more than humanly possible, or I've forgotten some important thing. Sometimes there is just a feeling that something is missing. To combat that, I ask myself: What does this child need most right now? What does my man need most right now? What small thing can I do that will make a difference in this day?

Often it is the extra five minutes spent staring into the darkness, listening to a child talk about his day before closing his eyes, that makes that pile of undone things seem less important. OK, so the troops might have to dig for undies tomorrow, but if you got to talk, got to listen, got to see those precious faces light up when you remembered to be silly with them, then you know you're going in the right direction. And that's what it's really all about.

For more Works For Me Wednesday Tips, see Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer.

A Weekly Schedule that Actually Works

My Weekly Schedule has changed more times than Britney Spears has changed her hair.  Sometimes I've let it go completely, and then other times it has kept me afloat like a life preserver.  Setting up a schedule for yourself is a tool to help you function and make good decisions for your family.  It gives you POWER!  It takes you from feeling victimized by that boat-load of tasks, and actually gives you freedom.  I like that!

And, in keeping with my theme song this week, it's also about respecting your role as a wife, a mom, a keeper of all things important, and overseer of your growing organization.

When I think about setting up my schedule, I like to borrow a phrase from a famous pirate movie, "They're not really rules, they're more like 'guidelines.'"  Guidelines give you some structure to work within, but there is a lot of wiggle room for when the unexpected happens, and we all know it will happen.

Katherine, at Raising Five, has an excellent post about a Weekly Schedule.  Since we are both Bonnie McCullough devotees, and because Katherine has really nice color-coded examples (jealous), I will give a slightly different slant. 

Paraphrasing from Bonnie, here are some tips on setting up your schedule.

1. Define your housekeeping goal. What level of cleanliness would be best for you and your family? (Sidenote: this can be an area of conflict if you and your spouse have different cleanliness level needs. I speak from experience....cough)

2. Decide how much time to spend on cleaning. Housecleaning, cooking, child care, laundry, maintenance AND self-fulfillment are all part of home management. Defining what MUST be done is important, so you are not wasting your efforts (i.e. overcleaning. no problem THERE!)

3. Make a 7-day work chart. Fill in fixed commitments and the basic family happenings for a week: departures, school, meals, arrivals. From these, a general horizontal time schedule will emerge, showing some structure. (Look at Katherine's cool color-codings.)

4. Set aside time for fun-specific time for relaxation. You owe it to yourself!

5. Group the same types of work together in your schedule as much as possible. Arrange days to spend AT HOME getting those things done. Arrange errands together. (Very important!!)

6. Delegate responsibility. You don't have to do it all! Every member of the family should carry part of the load. Be democratic, share the fun ones, too.

7. Plan ahead by scheduling. If your schedule shows soccer after school, dinner could be ready to pop in the oven before you leave. If you have a special event on a cleaning day, move your cleaning day over, or start it the night before. If an activity doesn't fit on paper, simply say no to it.

8. If an activity doeasn't fit on paper, simply say no to it. Oh, I just said that! But it deserves it's own special point. So quit cramming stuff in that doesn't fit.

9. Value your time. Pretend you are being paid a professional wage during your work times. Respect the work you do and what it does for your family!

10. Stay flexible. You are not a prisoner to the schedule. Its purpose is to allow you to take control of managing what happens in your home!

11. Be creative! It was a revelation to me to realize that I didn't have to do ALL my cleaning and laundry and yardwork and oversee kids' chores and do kids' sports all on Saturday! I began making Mondays my major work day, freeing up Saturdays to do other things.

Now, just a few thoughts: When you feel like your work is never done, it drains you of energy. Assigning days to do specific tasks frees you of the burden of the other undone things. See? You don't have to worry about doing that monstrous pile of laundry on any other day than Laundry Day. Sweet freedom!

I suggest starting very simply. Don't fill in every minute with tasks you know you'll never do. Think in terms of chunks of time, and just put in what you know MUST be done and live with it for awhile before you get real complicated.

Like Bonnie McCullough says, you deserve to treat yourself well, and with dignity. Caring for your household is a way of caring for yourself, and expressing gratitude for what you have. It's about creating a home sanctuary for the people you care about most: your family.

Here is a sample schedule for someone who does not work outside the home. How about I talk about setting up a schedule for a mom who works outside the home next time?

For more great Works For Me Wednesday tips, visit Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer!