I haven't been blogging lately, as you can tell! However, life has changed a lot around here! My dh is unemployed and has been for 7 months. We are excited to spend the time together, however it does have it's challenges in the homeschool world and the home organization world!! I've recently realized that I need to keep on doing what I need to do to keep the house and school up and running. So...now things are great!! We have a clean home!!!! Which I've never been good at keeping up with. But now I have a routine that works for me!! More on that later!
God has been doing amazing things in our lives!! We are now a missionary family! (That still seems unreal to me, and I'm not sure I've ever written it down!) We are currently raising our support and are excited to see what God will be doing in our lives! We need to be fully funded before we can move and join in on the work that God has called us to. And might I say we are sooo ready to be there! We will miss our current home and friends, but know that God has that all figured out for us!!
Back to the clean home thing!! I have visited sooo many sites trying to figure out how to keep up with my house and finally I turned to God and asked Him what I could do....and the result is amazing!! Here's the way I'm doing things.
There are the potential of having five weeks in a month, so I based it on that and then decided on things I'd like to have done around the house, but NEVER do! (OK, sometimes I'd do some of them.) For example, clean baseboards, clean blinds, dust, clean fans, clean tub/shower, clean windows, and sad to say, change the sheets! ( I thought you only needed to do this if you spilled something on them, or a child threw up on them, or your little one accidentally peepeed on them in the night.) LOL! Anyway, I then decided to break that down by week for the month.
So week 1 is baseboards & dust,
week 2 is shower/tub & sheets,
week 3 blinds, fans, & dust,
week 4 is windows & sheets,
and week 5 is a break...nothing extra! That'll make since in a minute I hope!
Now for the days of the week. These are things that I want to have done weekly. So I commit 15 minutes each to a room or two a day.
Monday Master bedroom,
Tuesday Kids rooms,
Wednesday Kitchen,
Thursday Living room & Laundry room,
Friday Bathrooms.
So, if it is Tuesday of the 4th week, I'm cleaning in the kids rooms. I'm changing their sheets and washing their windows. Not sure this makes sense to anyone but me, but this has changed my life!! Taking this in bite size pieces, I can and am doing it!! I use to get so overwhelmed and try to do too much at a time. That is the basic idea, but here is what tomorrow has in store:
- Quiet Time
- Laundry
- Exercise
- School
- Kitchen 15min cleaning (microwave, stovetop, etc.)
- Kitchen Baseboards
- Shine sink daily (Yes that is from Flylady, if you've never heard of her, please check her out. She is amazing!)
- Straighten up before bed 15mins. (the kids do this too!)
I also add in mopping and vacuuming. I alternate weeks. one week is mopping, the next is vacuuming. These are goals!! If I don't get them all done each day, it is ok because these rooms will see me the next week!! I do not list times with these, so that I don't feel like I've failed or missed my opportunity to do the task if that time has passed! This whole thing is much easier to understand if you make a blank calendar and insert the tasks. I hope that someone else reads this and can enjoy what God has helped me learn! He soooo good!!!!
I have so much more I'd like to say, but sleep is overdue at this point. So goodnight!!
