Once upon a time, a storm hit my life. In the aftermath I looked around and to my surprise there was debris everywhere. Total chaos and confusion. Okay, I really should not have been surprised, but when you're in the midst of a storm sometimes the storm is all you can see. Especially, if the storm is a long time coming and then continues to go on and on and on, and on..and...yes, on.
There was no order or structure anywhere it seemed. I struggled to find one little place, one little thing that was 'right' after such a horrendous event, for this was no small storm. When I did find one thing I clung to it for dear life, for me, it was reading my Bible daily.
It was the one thing I could do, somedays it was all I could do, to hang on to reality, normalcy and structure. Then one day I realized that I was ready for more. It was a long hard road to get there and the next step was figuring out what needed to be done to regain some structure. After many failed attempts, I came to the conclusion that I needed to take baby steps. So, one at a time, I added things.
I homeschool my 4 youngest children so this came next on the list. To do school everyday in a routine manor. Once that was going well and I knew I was ready for more (which took months I might add) I added some necessary things around the house. It seemed overwhelming at first but I thought of the little poem that goes something like this:
Monday: Wash Day
Tuesday: Ironing Day
Wednesday: Sewing Day
Thursday: Market Day
Friday: Cleaning Day
Saturday: Baking Day
Sunday: Day of Rest
At least it gave me a place to start. I don't sew or iron so I changed some things. Mine looked more like this:
Monday: Wash Day (this means I do 4-5 loads of laundry and put it all away. The rest of the week I only have to do 1 per day)
Tuesday: Kitchen Day (includes cleaning a couple of shelves in the fridge, making some freezer meals, baking bread and cleaning cabinets inside and out. Not all the same week of course! Some weeks I may do 1, others 2 sometimes I may be on a roll and get 2 1/2 done.)
Wednesday: Office Day (paying bills, working on my budget, balancing checkbook, filing papers, cleaning bookshelves, making lists, etc)
Thursday: Project Day (I love projects. This can be anything from painting the bathroom cabinet to making paper bunnies with the grandboys. Kind of my reward day.)
Friday: Cleaning Day (this includes all rooms inside, garage, our vehicle, and silly but the yard and garden go here)
Saturday: Sabbath (Our Sabbath is from Friday at sundown to Saturday at Sundown)
Sunday: First day of the week. The Lords Day (we go to church then enjoy fellowship with family and or friends)
I am not an over achiever so I only give 1-2 hours to each item per day. Of course some take longer, but the general rule is that I try to not get in over my head, overwhelmed, then give up.
I actually sat down and wrote a list of everything I had to do in a week then for a day. I prioritized it, made 'morning routine' and 'evening routine' lists. Later I was able to add things like 'before lunch routine' 'lunch time routine' 'after lunch routine' and one of my favorites when I had young children '4:00 routine' (time to pick up those toys from the day and put school books away).
It has never worked in our house to say, "everyday at 10:00 we are going to do history" it does work, however, to say, "everyday when Language Arts are finished we will do History". Eventually, I was able to figure out how many hours I have in my day, then decide how much time I wanted to spend on each 'to do' item on my list. Next, was making the list of what 'to do item' goes where. When I made groups of routines it seems doable.
As I put my focus on the little bit I could do each day, time passed. I looked around, the storm was over, life was good and I smiled.
No comments:
Post a Comment