When Momma is Sick-Part 3-Putting it all Together

Once I fell into a groove with my daily routines, I “set them in stone” on the calendar.  I bought a 5-6 week rotating dry erase calendar that when you write on it in permanent marker, it doesn’t smudge when you pass your hand over it to write on the calendar. 

This is what my calendar looks like now—

                                         

I have all the rooms of the week written along the left side.  This is where the deep cleaning comes in.  Everything that we do each day in the rooms of the week is written along the bottom—except Sunday.  I have all my kitchen duties written along the right side for each day of the week—except Sunday. The beauty of this system is that, even though it may not get done on one day during the week, I leave Saturdays for doing what I missed or additional things I want to do that I wasn’t able to do with the other days of the week—like wiping out trash cans or cleaning curtains.  This truly blesses my home, it doesn’t drive me.

This is the goal, this does not drive me.  When there is someone who is sick, the very basics get done and that is it.  The stuff on this calendar is not the basics by far.  Dishes, laundry, bathrooms and floors are basics and even those are just basically done, nothing “deep cleaning”, well, except the kitchen.  Wiping the counters, doing the dishes, putting dishes away, shining the sink is always done.  Rarely does it go undone.  By the end of the day, all the dishes are washed, the counters are cleaned and the sinks are shining.  J

When we do the laundry, now as opposed to pre-FLYlady, we do 3 loads a day.  We occasionally do more and sometimes we don’t have any items to wash on the list.  There are times we get behind, but we don’t fret.  We get the washing done that needs doing, then get back on track.  Once again, Sunday is not scheduled to do any laundry.  However, there are times when it needs to be done. 

Mondays-1).  Bath Towels & Hand Towels (washed together with fabric softener)

2).  Kitchen Towels, Dish Cloths, Wash Cloths, Napkins and Placemats (washed together with Vinegar instead of fabric softener—never bleached)

3).  Jeans

Tuesdays-3 Loads of Blues

Wednesdays-2 Loads of Reds and one load of whites

Thursdays-1).  Whites

2).  Bath and Hand Towels

3).  Kitchen Towels & etc.
Fridays-1).  Sheets and Pillow Cases (On hot due to allergies)

2).  Blankets
3).  Comforters
Saturdays-2 loads of Blues and anything else that needs to be done.


Usually when I wake up in the morning, I head down to start the first load of the day, transfer anything out of the drier in to a basket for folding.  I take an inventory of the items that are needed in there or things that need cleaned up.  Since our laundry room is also our Family Closet as well as our pantry, there are times when the person in charge of putting canned goods away has forgotten to take care of the bags and boxes.  Since Momma’s been sick, I didn’t take note of it until today. 


Bathrooms are deep cleaned when their time on the calendar hits.  This is when I wipe down walls, deep clean the floors, wipe the mirrors, scrub the showers/tubs (gasp!  Once a month!) , and the sinks, declutter the drawers and baskets, dust the heaters and window ledges and wipe the windows.  Now, lest you think it’s awful, think again!  Every day the bathroom sinks and counters are wiped down with a disinfectant wipe.  The shower is sprayed down with Tilex every couple of days. The toilets are “swished and swiped”.  Another person comes along and sweeps the floors really quick and voila!  Good enough!  If they’ve missed something, it can be brought to their attention to remember next time.  No worries!  No frets!  Much grace!  Much mercy!  J   None of us are ever perfect, so why expect perfection from those around us?


Floors are “basically” done every day.  The carpeting is vacuumed, in the main traffic areas and the sweeping is done.  Once again, lots of grace, lots of mercy, but knowing also that the one who takes care of the floors pulls double duty when it is shedding season.  Steps and stairs are done once a week, as is the mopping.


I’m sure you’re wondering in your mind, where do you start?  I would suggest you start with flylady.net and read all you can.  Set your timer for anything need to do or have to do, then do it.  Don’t beat yourself up for not being able to clean something or make things pristine right away.  Your best bet is to just go slow and steady. 


Once you get your house taken care of, try branching out to other programs to help you tweek the flylady program to fit your family’s needs.  Since we home school, I bought Managers of Their Homes through titus2.com.  I read through the book and started with that system 6 years ago when we moved in to our current house.  I went through so many different schedules for us and I just finally found something that works.  It is what works for us.  We use it as a goal and not feel guilty when that goal isn’t reached.  Scripture tells us that we need to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Well, many of us go as far as the loving our neighbors, but we don’t love ourselves enough to forgive ourselves for being human.  One time my son was feeling guilty, like he could have done something more to keep a little boy from falling off his back during a pony ride/play time.  He felt so riddled with guilt because the little guy fell.  I asked him, “Did he get hurt?”  he said no.  I looked at him straight in the eyes and said, “Please stop beating my son up!”  He gasped and didn’t really know right away that I was talked about him.  Then the tears flowed.  When you truly realize that you’ve beaten yourself up over something that was so very minor in the grand scheme of things, the release is usually going to yield tears.  We must learn to love ourselves enough to stop beating ourselves up.


Now, after 11 years of working with 2 programs that were sort of similar, but one addressed one part of our lives and the other addressed something different, I give you our bulletin board that guides our days—

Each of the lists above are integral to the running of our home.  They can each be added to or taken away when something isn’t working well for us.  Our daily schedule is on the far left.  If you would like to see a copy of our daily schedule, please email me privately at homeschoolmummyx3 at msn dot com.  At the bottom of our schedule is the children’s checklist of things they need to do.  They begin their checklist from 10am to noon.  After lunch, we start back in again.  This gives us 6 hours per day to do strictly academic things.  On Daddy’s days off, we do school for one of his days so that he can help with school work, then we take the other day off and do school on Saturday.  This works well for us.


Our “G” Home Guidelines is to guide everyone back to what should be happening or shouldn’t as the case may be. 


The schedule on the far right is our schedule for the days we go to co-op.  This helps to make sure we just keep going until everything is put away, then we can collapse.  We don’t do school on co-op days, but we count co-op days as school because they’re doing things at home school group for their schooling.  The blue area you see to the right is my office duty schedule. 


We are enjoying the freedom this schedule affords because it is a goal.  We work toward it, but it doesn’t drive us.  There is enough give in the schedule that allows for creativity, but also enough structure that helps those who need to know what to do next.  I am a creative person at heart who would like nothing more than to just let the day flow from thing to thing.  I’ve never been one who purposely made a schedule or anything like that for cleaning or anything like that.  But, out of necessity, my family needed me to do something different because it was driving us all nuts.  LOL

Tomorrow I will be elaborating on what I do to prepare for my Mega Shops.  I don’t claim to have all the answers, nor do I claim to have the right system, but this is the system that has helped me to make sure my family is cared for.  Why am I bringing this up now?  Because my next Mega Shop will be for almost a month’s worth of groceries, I need to be prepared! 

In His Service,
Regina