Organizing the Kitchen

Today I thought I would broach the topic of organization.  I know that many others have written all about how to get yourself organized, and I know that I still have a long way to go (especially with filing), but I thought I’d share a little bit about how I organize my home. 

Before I begin, as a disclaimer, I’d like to admit that I do not claim to have all the answers to organizing things.  I read a lot, I look at how some of the organizing magazines suggest doing things and I pray about how to organize something.  If something isn’t working, I don’t get peace.  I currently don’t have peace when it comes to this one computer desk.  It’s a “catch all” for papers of all kinds.  Things are not working, so I’m praying about how to handle organizing it all.  If it means completely rethinking everything, then it will come to me, eventually. 

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then it makes sense to begin there.  Right now, as I type this, my daughter is sitting on a chair reading a book in the kitchen by the stove while pumpkin pancakes are cooking for breakfast.  There are things that need to be put away, wiped down and just generally tidied up.  This is what happens when a family is home and lives here.  Things are generally clean.  When things need to be cleaned up, it usually takes about 15-20 minutes to complete the entire kitchen's daily chores. 

Organizing begins, after utilizing the FLYlady methods, by decluttering.  If there is clutter in your kitchen, you’ll know it because you won’t be able to find things easily.  Or, you have a young person putting things away in a different spot each time they put it away.  Yup!  I have one of those!  He wants to get it done quickly and forgets that the twix-it clips belong in one drawer and he puts them in another and the list could go on with the food processor parts, lids and plastic items.  This is a matter of training which is a part of running a home as well.  Since my husband doesn’t care for the thought of labeling where everything goes, I have to find another way.  Regardless, if there are too many items in your kitchen and you don’t use them, it is time to bless someone else with those items.  Which reminds me, I have a couple items I'd like to bless someone else with. 

When the Kitchen cleaning week rolls around, I have one day delegated to decluttering a part of my kitchen.  I don’t do every part of my kitchen every time the week rolls around.  Usually what I do is take a mental note of what area needs doing as I’m working or passing through.  Then when my decluttering time comes around, I address that area.  I give myself some grace and mercy though, too.  If this week, we’re supposed to work on the Living Room and it has been dusted, wiped, decluttered and etc, I allow myself to go outside the Living Room and work elsewhere on a special “usually overlooked” area for my 15 minutes of work time.  For those of you who don’t know, I work very hard to keep my house clean, just 15 minutes a day.  Some days it doesn’t work, or people are sick and I need to play catch up, but this is all I do for deep cleaning, 15 minutes a day.  Today is wiping things down day in the Living Room.  The wiping down was already done, so I had some extra free time today.  I needed it too and I used it by going off to pray alone.  What a blessing!
 

As for decluttering in the kitchen, start by opening a drawer and taking mental stock of what you have, what you don’t use, what needs thrown out, and what you need.  If there is something you don’t use, find a box and start a “give away pile”.  The next time you go to town, take it with you to Good Will or Salvation Army as a donation, or give it to a needy family you may know.  This is called “blessing someone else” with the stuff you don’t use.  This isn’t broken junk that needs to be thrown out.  This is stuff that is still usable, has life and use in it, but you just don’t use it.  Yes, there are things in my drawers that have never been used.  I should pass them on to someone else, but they hold memories for me and there are only two and they're cute stoneware cookie molds that a dear friend gave me years ago.  So, I'm keeping them. 

Keep going through your kitchen one drawer at a time, not all at one time, though.  That is just way too overwhelming.  If you can't deal with it in 15-30 minutes and get everything wiped down and put away, just do a smaller chunk! :)

After you’ve decluttered your kitchen, you’ll find that you have space that you can use for storing things.  I’ve made room under my buffet table and found a place to store my flour, sugar, dried beans, some baking pans neatly tucked in a bin, and 2 bins of rice--one white rice and the other a mixture of brown, black, Indian and other wild rices.  If you’re looking for places to store things so you can buy in bulk and bake more things from scratch, just look around and see what you can do to clear out, declutter and find those interesting places for your bulk food items.  For us, we live in rural PA.  I don’t like taking too many trips to town because it uses gasoline.  I need to be a good steward of the things the Lord has placed in my care.  Decluttering, making room for more storage, baking from scratch, striving for greater organization, is a very small part of the larger picture.

Decluttering the cupboards is the same as the drawers.  There may be out of date items that need to be thrown out, stale items that didn’t get closed well enough, stuff that when once tried, it just didn’t appeal to the family.  This is normal for our family and I’m sure it may be the same for others as well.  It is rare, but it does happen that we don’t care for something that we’ve purchased “just to try.”  The important thing is to set the timer for 15 minutes and see if you can declutter a cupboard completely, wipe everything down and put it back.  Once you realize you can do this, it is empowering.  You’ll want to do more.  Just make sure you give yourself a 15 minute break every hour or you’ll get burned out.  I don’t work like that any longer, unless we’re canning.  I have lessons to teach, children to train, sewing, crocheting,  and knitting to do.  Paperwork needs to get done, children to spend time with, a husband who needs me at any given time.  Things need to be more flexible at some times than at others.  This is the nature of the flow of our lives.  Deep cleaning is a necessary part of our lives, but it doesn't have to encompass all of our days.

Once your kitchen is decluttered, it will not take much to keep it decluttered.  Your once a month week of decluttering and deep cleaning along with your daily wiping and shining the sink should keep your kitchen clean.  Of course there will be the odd thing spilled on the floor that completely soaks everything and you have to clean out every possible crack and crevasse.  This happened to us when someone tripped over the cord to the crock pot that spilled 6 quarts of turkey broth all over the dining room floor. 

This is all I do for my kitchen organization.  Things change around occasionally to see if they work better somewhere else and that is ok too.  The biggest point is to just jump in with both feet, set the timer and go.  Chances are that you already know what needs to be done in your kitchen, you just need a little push, like I did.  ;) 

Record Keeping

Original rough draft written in June, but adding an addendum at the end.

Keeping records for a family or for a business is crucial. I have not been a very good record keeper over the years. I admit it. The sheer magnitude of the chore overwhelms me. There are so many steps, so many things to keep track of! Adding a business or two on top of that, there are the added things to keep track of as well.

With everything, there is a certain amount of time investment that needs to occur to keep track of everything. To keep things neat and put away, for me is a challenge. I admit it. I fall so very short in this area again and again. I am getting better than I was years ago, but it has been a very slow and arduous journey for me. Throw in home schooling papers that need to be kept to put in to porfolios and you've got quite a paper work mix that just seems to swirl round and round in a never ending whirlwind.

I've purposed to stop the whirlwind. The past 2 weeks, I've been working on getting paperwork under control. I just work an hour each day on it. Sometimes I feel good enough to work on it a second hour after going off and doing something else. I know this is something that may come easy to others, but for me, it is extremely challenging. I am sharing here what I do. It may appear to some that I can actually skip a step or not even do something. I am open to suggestions!

For starters~Receipts~

Receipts are important items that show you exactly where you spent your money. I am beginning to like receipts for the information they hold. Why? Because once the receipts are entered in to Quicken in this fashion~




The above "split transaction" is an example of my Aldi's list. I separate in to categories to track our spending whether it is over spending or underspending. It helps us to adjust the budget in those areas. It also helps me to know where I need to cut costs. When I find a good deal on shredded cheese, I buy it in bulk because it pays off in the long run.

What does all this record keeping of receipts add up to?



This, hopefully, gives you a better picture of what the beginning of the month looks like. I'm sure that by the end of this month, the pie chart you see above will definately look much more colorful with more sections to the pie, like the one below~

This helps me to see how much or how little we spend in any given area.  I have the groceries separated by type as well so that we can see where we need to cut back, make from scratch or spend more in-like baking or potentially making our own cheeses.

Regardless, once I finish with the receipts, I mark on them "Entered into Quicken" and they're ready to file in to the accordian file.

There are numerous other programs you could use to keep track of things like this, but I keep coming back to Quicken for its ease of usability for me. You may like Quick Books or MS Money. Either way, it always helps to not just start a program, but get in to it, utilize it, get familiar with it, short cuts and learn everything you could possibly do with the program to help you keep track of your records.

What about bills? When paying bills, I learned this from my dear mother-in-law, that you mark every bill with the date you paid it, the check number and the amount paid on the bill part that you keep for your records. Make sure you always write down the account number in the memo corner of your check. If you're paying your bills online, this is already done for you through electronic transfer. Everyone has their own preferences whether they go to the company itself to pay with cash, sending money orders or checks in the mail, or electronic transfers. Just make sure you have records to back up that you paid your bill, when, for how much and the account number is put on the method of payment unless cash, in which case you just need a receipt from the company. :)

Once you've paid your bill, the records need to be filed. Many people scan their bill, keeping a file on their computer and throw the paper away. Many people file everything in a filing cabinet with everything in alphabetical order and everything within the file is filed by date. There are other ways to file, I'm sure, but be sure to keep it simple and user friendly. Make sure you enter the bill payment on Quicken/Quick Books/MS Money once you've paid it under whichever method you've paid it.


Addendum:  Since the original writing of this rough draft that was never published, I have been reviewing my Quicken files and marveling at how many income tax deductions I’ve missed in years past.  I honestly believe this program has been such a blessing to us.  While it has been frustrating at times, I admit, I also struggled through those frustrating times to get to the other side.  I knew that I needed something better than just tossing the receipts in to an envelope and leaving things at that.  I would highly recommend this program to anyone who has a business, it doesn’t matter the type of business.  You could purchase the program and the cost is tax deductible.  The cost of filing your taxes is deductible.  This program figured out deductions that I didn’t even know we had!  I thought we had quite a few deductions pinned down to begin with, but this particular program found things like car registration, stationary items like stickers that you would put on packages for business transactions, rental vehicles for when your “business” vehicle is in the shop.

I would like to encourage everyone to utilize a record keeping program like Quicken.  It doesn’t have to be Quicken, but just use whatever you’re comfortable with.  The point is, you’ll find tax credits that you never knew that you had.  What a blessing!

Very Early Mornings

This morning I awakened at 4:12AM. I came downstairs, turned on the radio on Family Life, Christian radio, and sat down to enjoy the music to greet my day. I've listened to and been so very blessed by the messages of Chuck Swindol and David Jeremiah so far this morning. What incredible, powerful messages! 

My prayers today revolve around my husband and oldest son. They awoke at O-dark-thirty to prepare for a day of hunting. I don't doubt their hunting abilities. I have no doubt they do a wonderful job. My concern is the other hunters with my husband and son out in the woods on the first day of buck season. Some hunters are careless. It doesn't matter if they've taken hunter's safety courses. Things happen that you have no control over. My prayer is greatly leaning toward safety for everyone as well as wisdom.

When they do get venison, we get it butchered just down the road from us. The people there are so very nice to us. We love living here in this community. They do such a good job for us, many times over. It stands to reason that with such wonderful treatment that we would be frequent patrons at their store. :) So much so, that they know the kind of lunch meat we'll order when we come in. LOL

I almost have everything upstairs decorated for Christmas this year. I would love to go get more decorations because I just love to decorate. This is my favorite time of year.

This is one of my favorite decorations.

My brother-in-law gave me the little house. It has sparkly glitter on it and a removeable roof for easier access to the candle. I've never lit the candle, but it is nice to know that I can. LOL This is a special gift for me, even though it is so very simple. You see, my brother-in-law is Learning Disabled. He picked this out by himself for me the year I gave birth to DA. DA's middle name is after my brother-in-law. :) He doesn't ever really say much to me in conversations, but this precious gift spoke volumes to me.

My mother-in-law gave me the 2 precious angels one year. I came up with this little arrangement when I was placing things for Christmas. I love how they peek in to the windows. It helps as a reminder to me that we could be "entertaining angels unawares."

JL is 8 in this picture, but one of our favorite decorations is behind him. We love interactive decorations for the children. This particular one plays a variety of familiar Christmas songs while a train circles the Christmas village on the top. As you can see, his hand in on the train. What fun!

I made this one at a women's retreat years ago. I love this set because it is kid friendly. The kids have played and played with this set reenacting the beautiful Christmas story with their other animals they find in their toy box. It was especially interesting when they included a stegosaurus, T-rex & "long neck". LOL Precious memories...I love how "real" the Christmas story has become to them just simply by being able to play with baby Jesus.

I made this picture larger so that you can see my angels. Through the years, my husband has bought me beautiful angels. The past few years he hasn't because I haven't found any that strike me like these two have. These are the beginnings of a Christmas angel collection he's started for me. He won't buy them unless I like them. I don't buy them myself. He has to be with me. :) I'll try to get a better picture of them this year. The pink one is just beyond the aloe vera.

Once everything is decorated, I'll take pictures and post them. I do something a little different each year. We have everything almost done. We just need to get the tree and put the bins away. :) Today is not going to be the day we get the tree though, unfortunately.

A few days ago we were out doing a little shopping and returning some tools to Sears, when we were discussing the 2 major holidays of our year. I asked the children, which is more important, Christmas or Easter? I received a variety of answers, then my husband pointed out, "That's just like asking which came first--the chicken or the egg." I told him that I knew that, but I wanted to see where their thinking was and why.

So, if Easter is more important than Christmas, why not decorate and "celebrate" more then? We probably should, then, huh? I would LOVE to decorate for Easter. The only problem is there's too many bunnies, chicks and eggs out to decorate with. Must figure something out. Maybe we should make a cross out of tulips and daffodil bulbs like some others have done? Or how about an empty tomb? I've seen a used car lot in Seneca, PA cut a van in to pieces and made an empty tomb inside it. It is unmistakable. They've added 3 crosses beside it with the words "He is Risen" hanging over the opening. It is definitely something to take your breath away because it is so very unexpected, especially from a used car lot.

Christmas is so much more than decorations to me. I look at these simple reminders of God's love toward me and my family through the years, from the simplest of times when we were first married to now, with children in their tween & teen years. I do not use them as idols, of course. I love to remember the precious times of love we've shared. I love to see the memories every time I look at something. It warms my heart and helps me to remember that the season isn't for stressing out, but for celebrating the love that God showed us by sending us His son to earth. I'm hearing about this being Cyber Monday when many people make a lot of their Christmas purchases online. It isn't all about the shopping, the baking, the parties, or getting the biggest and best gift.

It is all about Jesus.

Lately...

We've sat beside the fire, reading the Sunday morning comics.

Sat beside the fire and make goofy faces...

Sat under a blanket, making a complicated bracelet with such concentration and intensity.

The newest knitted baby afghan.

Daddy makes the filling for the pumpkin pies at our house.  Daughter loves to hug her Daddy.

DA made almost the entire apple pie this year.  HJ made all of our pie crusts.

JL rolled all 3 of them out and with the leftovers he made cinnamon crisps.

I didn't get any pictures making my pecan pie or the dinner rolls.  Those were my job.  :) 

This is what we did the day before Thanksgiving.  Sadly, I didn't get any Thanksgiving day pictures.

I'm Here!

I'm continuing to write for the NaNoWriMo, but I haven't posted it here on my blog.  Some of the topics are still very raw and emotional, some of them are needing to be polished more before I post them.  I am behind on my word count, but I am catching up.  In the next few days, I hope to have more things posted for all of you to see.  I promise to post Thanksgiving preparation pictures too!  This is what we do after years of trial and error.  This year we're going back to doing Tom Turkey in the oven instead of in the roaster.  Lessons were learned last year and we're thankful. :) 

Until then,
Blessings to all!
Regina

Mega Shop Day Preparation

This is a post that I had already written about my Mega Shop days, so I thought I would post it here today.  The work had already been done, so why redo all of it? 

Mega Shop is a term I picked up from copperswife on her blog. What a wonderful wealth of wisdom she is!

I've always mega shopped, even long before reading it on her blog. The term just clicked and seemed to fit. After years of trying desperately to get organized with my shopping, I've come close to something that makes me feel so very comfortable with my shopping organization now. It is not without other steps, though, so please don't think it does itself. LOL



This is a sample of my shopping list. I'm not sure if you click on it that it will get any bigger than what you see above. I have 4 pages that print out with everything under the sun that we could possibly need in town. My ultimate goal is to not "need" to do any shopping between Mega Shops. I am not one who enjoys going shopping for hours and hours. I never have been. I am one who currently has a plan: Go in, get everything written down on my list and get out as quickly as possible. Now, the things that are needful to me is teaching my children the value of not just thrift, but also health. We spend some time on these things each time we go to the store. We recently found a very nice place to go to get our shredded cheeses at $2.50 cheaper than W*l-M*rt. It turns out to be $2.64/pound instead of $3.89/pound. I also found vegetables, tater tots and french fries cheaper at this particular store than at Aldi's! Since I no longer use a price book, I can easily see simply by knowing what things cost by going through our receipts every 2 weeks. I know that I want to scale back on price without sacrificing taste and quality.

Now, one may laugh at this, but I organize my shopping list in the same format that W*l-M*rt lays out their store. This is so much easier for me! I don't like W*l-M*art, but it is the least expensive place where were we can buy things we absolutely need. I've tried substituting other places for WM, but found that I'm paying more money for it. I don't like that! We are pretty limited here where we live to take advantage of the things that are close to us or pay lots of money driving to places where we can find it elsewhere. I rather enjoy the time I'm able to spend with my family, so I try to organize my trips all in one day.



There are a few more steps in preparation before walking out the door that are needful. One is to make a menu plan. I plan for everything from my husband's days off to company, lighter meals for when we have heavy errand days, convenient meals for when I know we'll be exhausted, picnics, pot lucks, family gatherings, snacks and anything else that comes our way.



The point for planning all of these meals is not to overwhelm oneself. It is simply to make sure that you have everything you need at a moment's notice just in case you need to make adjustments, or you forget to take out pork chops to defrost. You can easily flip another meal from the menu and make it instead remembering to take the pork chops out for tomorrow's dinner. Things happen and we have choices of how to act or react to certain situations. I was getting very tired of my own reactions being one of stress and angry at myself for not preparing ahead of time. I had made this a matter of prayer for a long time and the system I'm presenting to you now is the product of lots of prayer, putting it all to practice and planning.

Another reason I do all of this is to simply be a blessing to my husband. He works so very hard at work, going through such overwhelming stresses every day along with paperwork out the wazoo that he just does not feel like dealing with more papers and planning when he gets home. I "wised up" to that and just organized my own system while he was at work and you are beginning to see the fruits of that work. :)

As you can see, Mega Shop day for us is like the big performance that one must get prepared to perform long in advance to make sure it progresses smoothly.

I've found that taking a large cooler for all the meats and dairy is a must. I have one child in charge of getting the cooler wiped out and put in the back of the vehicle. I have another child making our sandwiches to put in to a lunch bag. I have another child gathering spoons and napkins as well as filling water bottles. All this while I dry my hair and review the shopping list for the 100th time, then present it to my hubby to review and see if I'm forgetting something because invariably, I do. LOL

We usually head to the bank first and get our banking done. Since starting the Dave Ramsey program in 2009, we've done things quite a bit differently. Lots of planning, discussing and calculators are included! :) Speaking of planning, my husband and I were discussing knowing exactly how much we spend in each grocery category. Up until the end of 2010, neither of us knew exact amounts. With the aid of Quicken, we've been able to more accurately pinpoint expenses in each category. What a blessing! We know where we have room to nip and tuck! A representation of the categories are below~



When I go shopping at Aldi's, this is pretty close to what the category split is. When I made these categories for Quicken, I just used my Predictable Shopping List as a guide. This helps me to be able to show my beloved how much we're spending in each area. Why be so detail oriented about this?

Pro 31:11-12 "The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. (12) She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life."

Pro 31:14 "She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar."

Upon returning home, everyone helps to get everything put away, before we relax. The point is "all hands on deck" and everything gets done much faster! We have trained the children to put things away properly in the freezers and in the pantry in the basement. We've repeated the lessons with them on numerous occations, taking the opportunity to retrain when necessary. While things are not "perfect", they are relatively neat. Yes there are times when we have gone to quite a few places and we're all pretty exhausted. Those are times when we just put the perishables away, grab something to eat and just put a movie in to relax. We are so very glad to be home and amongst the peacefulness of our home that it is just a relief to be away from all the rush of the stores. Many times my children remark about how other children behave so badly or they're just crying and whining in the stores so much it seems. It just happens that they may be on the same track that we are on and their shopping takes them in to our viscinity all through the store. This is stressful to all of us, but so very needful for my children to hear to help reinforce the verse,

Pro 19:18 Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying.

The teachable moments are many, but the sheer stress from days like this really gets to their spirits. There is greater peace when we get in to the vehicle, talk a bit about the occurances of the day and put on some praise music to sooth our spirits and give us more peace until we get home. These instances, usually, we just put away the necessary items and then go rest and regain our sense of peace. This is a necessary thing, in my opinion, for the greater peace of our entire home. Other times when it is needful to just put away the necessary things is just simply because we're not feeling the greatest. This is when we need to grant ourselves grace and mercy due to our own physical needs. The canned goods will keep and so will the pasta. It wouldn't hurt to put them away the next day.

Dinner on Mega Shop night is usually boxed pizza, canned soup, egg rolls or something similar that doesn't take very long to make. Even through all the preparations and shopping, it is truly exhausting WORK. My husband has asked me in the past why I don't split up the work in to a couple different days. I just tell him that I would much rather do all this work all in one day so it is behind me and I can spend time with my family. Time is such a precious commodity that once it is spent, you can never get it back again. We have such a very short time in the grand scheme of life with our children while they are growing up and I would like to spend as much of my time loving, growing deeper as a result of having them in my life, and being richer by having the priviledge of knowing such wonderful people God is growing them to be. I guess you could say that this is the biggest reason I do all the preparations and work for Mega Shop day~so I can be blessed by my family on all the other 13 days in peace at home, at work, at play, or running around town. It helps me to know that I don't have to worry about feeding my family because that's already been thought of, prepared for and that it takes very little time to get ready with a little preparation.



Blessings,

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

When Momma is Sick-Part 2--Preparation

Whenever we make new friends and invite them to our house for lunch, there is a perception that I’m organized with our schedule and getting things done.  What they don’t know is that the schedules and checklists they see are 11 years worth of tweaking.  If it has taken me 11 years to do, what did it look like before?  Please allow me to share with you exactly what things use to be like, before I decided to take charge of my home—when it had charge over me. 

If you walked up to our front door, knocked and wanted to visit suddenly, we wouldn’t have been able to let you in because we were always, constantly, consistently in a disheveled mess.  There were always papers on the dining room table that had to be gone through, organized and filed because, well, I hate filing—a theme that I have yet to conquer.  There was always dishes in the sink and on the counters to do.  There were toys everywhere.  Mount washmore decided to grow in to what seemed to be a looming giant willing and able to slay me at a moment’s notice.  The walls were closing in on me and it certainly wasn’t a place of peaceful rest for anyone, including my husband. 

After giving it lots of prayer for help, I kept getting encouragement from a friend of mine here and there about this fabulous website that helped her to shine her sink every day.  I thought, “How ridiculous is this?  I can shine my sink, but what difference does it make when the whole house needs such drastic attention?”  I decided after looking at Mount Washmore again, that something, even the seemingly most ridiculous, had to be done.   

I went to flylady.net and started reading about this lady who, with military like zeal, had managed to gain a hundred thousand followers.  I thought, “Wow!  People can sure fall for stuff, can’t they?!”  LOL  But, I kept reading.  I came upon the part where I was supposed to simply start by shining my sink.  She dared me to shine my sink every day and make sure it was shining before I went to bed every night for 21 days.  I thought, “Uhm, this is really weird, but I guess I could do this.”  I began right then.  I took all the dirty dishes out of my sink and shined it.  It looked so pretty!  I hadn’t seen it that clean in a long time.  I thought as I stood there looking at it, “I could do up all these dishes, but what does she say about that?”  So, as you could guess, I went to the computer to read about how she attacked massive amounts of things.  To my shock and utter amazement, she didn’t finish them right away!  She didn’t spend hours in the kitchen finishing the dishes and cleaning!  She only spent 15 minute increments, setting a timer, doing what she could as quickly as she could and when the timer went off, she moved on to another area that needed attention in the house.  *gasp*  I was in SHOCK!  I thought, “Oh my gosh!  She gives herself permission to walk away from unfinished dishes and work on something else for 15 minutes!  And if that doesn’t take the cake, she does it AGAIN!  Holy cow!  Then she goes and puts her feet up and gets a drink!”  I was dumbfounded to say the least.  Shaking my head in disbelief, I began the same thing she elaborated on.  You know, no one would be able to fully comprehend the amazing transformation of events that unfolded when all I did was rotate through my house in 15 minute increments, resting the final ¼ of an hour, every hour until my work was done and my house was picked up.  It took me a full week, if not more for more troubled areas, to completely get things under control.  But, as she said on her website, “Your house didn’t get messed up over night, so it isn’t going to get clean and decluttered overnight.”  I kept working, seeing more and more improvement.  It was contagious too!  My kids got in to it!  We had the whole house dusted in an hour!  But, that wasn’t my goal.  My goal was how could I tweek this system, keep using its basic premise, and make it work beyond how she organized her own system?  Besides, I was home schooling and she wasn’t.  That was a dimension that she hadn’t broached yet, so I needed to.  I went back to my knees and asked God for help.  I didn’t get help right away, but honestly, that was probably a good thing.  LOL  I needed to keep moving with the flylady system and get more decluttered and packed away for our move and sale of our house.  We were putting finishing touches on our house to sell in 2005, so it really was a help with everything packed in boxes in the garage so that we could focus on keeping the house tidy, neat and clean for people who were going to come and look at the house. 

The source of the fire was a foot off the floor, underneath the charred table.

Then, when we thought we had things under control, the unthinkable hit—a disaster, according to most—a fire started in our basement after putting the finishing touches on the floor.  

To the left of the above picture.  The melted plastic on the walls was part of a French Drain system.

Past the hot water heater on the other side of the basement was our home gym. 



Pantry cupboard, a small portion of it, with everything charred from the fire.  All of our food, including the contents of the refrigerator upstairs, had to be thrown out.  The only redeeming items were in the garage freezers.



This is looking down the steps to the basement.  The side door that was broken in is to the left.



How did the flylady system help through all of that?  Well, all through the 4 years prior, she encouraged all of her readers to start a Control Journal.  This thing was basically a binder that was “Command Central” for each of our own homes.  With the Control Journal, it was something that if you had an emergency and you just are clueless about what to do next, because let’s face it—most of us shut down when you see that your front and side door of your home has been kicked in, glass is everywhere and you’re not allowed back in to your house.  This was our one saving grace because I took my Control Journal, my crocheting and my camera with us where ever we went in my bag.  I pulled out my Control Journal while sitting in the drive way, paged to the Emergency Contacts section and called our insurance agent on our cell phone.  I then called my dad and a friend of ours.  Everything was right there because I had prepared for it ahead of time. 

Now, so I don't leave you hanging, I'll post the newer, improved pictures after things were cleaned up and taken care of. 

Newness everywhere.  :) 

New door, everything sealed for the fire smell and repainted. 

God worked everything out for this entire transaction.  October 2004, we started praying for the future owner of our house that our house would be a blessing to them.  In February 2006, this house sold to a single lady.  I think she was blessed!   

In March of 2005, my husband transferred to another facility 2 hours away.  He was driving back and forth and was considering starting to stay with some friends during his work week.  We prayed that God would keep us together as a family.  We ended up living in a camper for 6 months, but God is faithful.  We didn’t spend one night separated as a family.  God gave us a place to lay our heads, shelter and food. 

In September of 2005, God blessed us with this house after spending 6 months in a camper—

The back of our house.

As you can see, preparation is very important.  I would like to encourage you, if you are overwhelmed, much like I was, please go to flylady.net and read.  Start today just simply shining your sink.   

Disclaimer:  Is my sink shiny every day all day long?  No!  There are days when things are so very busy and we’re gone all day, we get home and it is just waiting for us.  BUT, I know that within 15 minutes the kitchen will be taken care of.  The living room and any other room is the same way.  With 10 hands working at the same time toward a common goal, things get tidy and neat within a very short amount of time.   

What a wonderful feeling!  That is perfect peace!

In His Service,

Regina