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While there are varying skill levels, from messies to cleanies, there is no such thing as a perfect homemaker or the perfect home. We all have room for some improvements!
Last week I enjoyed the many sessions available through the online Homemaking Ministries Conference {I'm still catch-up watching this week and probably will be for awhile! So many good sessions!}. If you missed the live launching of the conference, you can still purchase a "ticket" at any time and enjoy lifetime access to each video session and the conference notebook.
Watching the sessions and thinking through the topics, I've had a chance to reflect on my own home. I'm also in high nesting gear {due date is Friday!}, so naturally I'm organizing all of the closets and reflecting on my home in general.
There are a few areas I am very thankful to feel like I've finally figured out in our current season {which I'm sure are bound to be wildly disrupted with the coming of a newborn! Ha!}.
Laundry. One load each morning Monday-Saturday, started before breakfast, switched while kids play, folded and put away while I work with my six year old on her homeschool. This happens most days, so if I miss a day or two, we still have clean underwear and socks.
I don't like mixing my loads up too much, so I have a laundry sorter {similar} in my closet to divide loads. Whichever bag is the fullest is the load that gets washed that day. Sometimes I'll combine light colors with whites, or vivid colors with darks, but I'm able to keep things generally separate.
Getting dinner on the table. After naps and reading a few books together, the kids go outside and I make dinner. I've even been cooking double to fill our freezer for postpartum days, so I feel very accomplished right now! Cooking isn't my favorite thing, but its a lot easier without kiddos underfoot 😉. I always have to give myself a pep talk to get started, but once I'm in the swing of it, its not so bad.
Weekly meal planning the day before I grocery shop is the key to making this happen.
Homeschool. Not necessarily a homemaking task, but a regular part of life in our home. I've grown a lot in consistency over the last few months, my daughter expects to have to do her school work each week morning, and I'm finally in a good groove of making sure what needs to happen is happening.
Kid's morning chores. Making beds and unloading the dishwasher happens every weekday morning, and it contributes greatly to the general orderliness of our home!
I've been realizing lately that my kids are probably capable of quite a bit more than what I'm asking of them, so now that these chores are down, I'd like to start slowly training them in a few other areas over the course of the next few months.
Mother of 7 Amy Roberts from Raising Arrows has a great session for the Homemaking Conference all about training children to help around the home, and I can't wait to implement her suggestions and printables!
Daily pick ups. We pick up toys, shelve books, and clear clutter off tables 2 or 3 times each day. My house may not be in perfect shape, but it is much more pleasant and tidy this way! The more I ask my kids to do these things, the better they get at it. So we are just practicing a lot 😉.
There is, however, one area that I find myself falling desperately short in, week after week.
Cleaning. Between the school work and the dishes, laundry and meal prep, homeschool and general tidying.... our house runs smoothly, but I struggle to find/make time for scrubbing the bathrooms, vacuuming, dusting, and mopping each week.
My home is picked up. But it's also kind of filthy.
A friend recently recommended Dana White's book, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind. It was a quick and fun read, with plenty of good advice and generous doses of humor.
In the book Dana talks a lot about pre-made decisions- determining ahead of time that doing the dishes every day, for example, is a non-negotiable. Most of us are great about rationalizing our way out of things we don't want to do {especially cleaning!}. A pre-made decision is supposed to guard against this human tendency.
I think this helped me to identify my main struggle with weekly cleaning. I've set a time for cleaning each day {in the morning, right before school}. But I pull from a list of cleaning tasks, trying to decide in the moment WHAT I will clean on a particular day.
If we are running behind, or kids are more underfoot than usual because the weather has cooped them up indoors... it can be difficult to pick a task that fits my constraints. This makes it easy to waste my time rationalizing away what needs to be done.
Sticking with my predetermined time slot, I'm going to try assigning each particular job to a particular day. I'm hoping this will eliminate my decision fatigue and just help me to get it done! Not perfectly, but anything would be better than the sporadic cleaning I've been guilty of in recent months.
What areas do you dominate as a homemaker? And where could you use improvement? I love reflecting on and trouble shooting these sorts of topics 😊.
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