Simply Convivial: Biblical Homemaking, Homeschooling & Mom Life—Without Burnout

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWe need to stop striving for having ducks in a row and admit that ducklings actually waddle where they will, leaving sloppy footprints as they go. We need to stop believing the marketers who tell us we're only 5 containers and 1 label maker away from achieving the state of organization. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanAn index card organization system predates blogs and word processors. It’s a thing, and it works because it uses a simple principle.Back in our first year or two of marriage, a good friend and I talked at least weekly about all things homemaking. We were figuring out our new role, and we wanted to do well in it.So, of course, we read the books.One of the books was straight off my mom’s shelf: Sidetracked Home Executives.I could relate to these ladies. They had ideas, they had things they wanted to do, and both the housework and the state of the house (because the work wasn’t being done) was getting in their way.They came up with a creative solution to break up the housework into manageable chunks and make sure they did it regularly without expecting themselves to recognize that it needed to be done or deciding each day what needed to be done.Yes, that’s right. They came up with a housework routine. Now, that alone is not creative or unusual, although there are points at which they seem to think it’s revolutionary.When you suffer from decision fatigue and a tendency toward procrastination or distract ability, however, a routine certainly can be revolutionary.What was creative in their approach was how they tracked their routine. It was an index card organization system.Pam Young and Peggy Jones were organizing their chores with index cards before homeschoolers were doing it with their memory work.In a day with apps and pretty planners galore, is an index card organization system out of date or still useful? Could this book so clearly from the ’80s still be relevant?If you want to accomplish your housework regularly without having the excuse to check your phone, you might consider their index card organization system.However, whether you use index cards, a list, an app, or any other implementation, you certainly can and should use the principle behind this method: Loop scheduling.The index card organization system developed and popularized by Sidetracked Home Executives is, at heart, a loop schedule for housework, just like Sarah Mackenzie’s housework routine – only Sarah uses a plain list instead of a box of index cards.Indeed, index cards can be rather fiddly. They can easily get mixed up, lost, or ruined. However, there are also advantages to running a loop schedule housework routine on index cards:1) You can decorate the cards.2) You can take notes on the cards.3) You can easily reassign the cards.4) You can easily delegate the cards.The index cards are not really the point, though, nor what makes the system work.What makes an index card organization system work is that it relies on three strategies:1) It eliminates decision fatigue.2) It holds the information you need and makes it easy to find and grab.3) It keeps track of what’s next for you.You can accomplish the same outcome with an app like Home Routines or even ToDoist, you can get the same benefits by keeping the same information in checklist form, and you can simply add your recurring chores onto your weekly dashboard.But what won’t give you this same peace of mind and effectiveness is simply printing someone else’s master cleaning list. We are tempted to shortcut the decision making process not by writing down and figuring out (through trial and error) what will work for us, but by finding someone who will tell us what to do.Even this index card organization system will do that if you buy the book. They’ll tell you which chores to write on cards and what frequency to arrange them in.We search for the “ready to go” plan not because we want to avoid decision fatigue, but because we think that our past inconsistency and failure disqualifies us from making our own workable plan.If this other lady – whether in a book, real life, or on the internet – has a plan that works for her, then I know it works, right? If it works, I don’t have to take responsibility. I can just adopt her plan and get her results – right? I haven’t removed decision fatigue at that point; I have removed personal engagement with the problem.Unfortunately, too often we don’t want to go through the process of getting organized, changing both our mindset and our methods, we just want a quick fix solution.Most likely, someone else’s plan will not work for you in a cut-and-paste sort of a way. It might be a great shortcut to developing your own workable system – even one with index cards – but you will have to mix with brains and practice before it actually works for you.Ready to make a housekeeping routine, a housework loop schedule, or even an index card organization system that works for you? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanThe daily card is a term that we use from Work the Plan for your daily to do list. So, you might have a planner and the question is whether or not you use the planner correctly; if we actually use what’s written in the planner to direct our days? And the daily card can be just a card, just a post-it, an index card, or it can be a section in the planner. But the point of it is to keep a very truncated, limited, small set of tasks for that day alone. So, you make a list of the top priorities for that day. And you re-do that every day. You might make it the night before, or you might make it the morning of, but you’re not making a daily card for every day of the week during your Weekly Review. Every day you’re renewing your task list and adjusting because sometimes the needs and the priorities of where our attention needs to go for the day do really adjust on a day-by-day basis, and I think now more than ever, we recognize that. How do you decide what your daily three are? Can it be in all different kinds of formats? Are the tasks typically habitual things? How do you keep wishful thinking off the daily card? People often say, “Mine turn into a daily brain dump so I struggle with knowing which three.”Knowing what to put on the card—that is the hardest part for everybody. And so, what we have to remember is the reason why we do a daily card every single day is for the practice so that we keep iterating, we keep learning, we learn from the previous day, and implement that the next day. So, the more and more we practice, the better and better we get at knowing what needs to go on the list. If you’ve made a daily card before and you find at the end of the day that really what you put on your list was wishful thinking and not what actually was important to do today that’s something to think about. That’s what you adjust moving forward. And what I found when I recognized that as well, was that I make a better daily list when I do it the night before rather than the morning of (and that’s not a universal thing.) It really depends on person to person. But, for myself, when I stop at the end of the day and I look at the list that I made for that day and see what did and didn’t happen, I make a more realistic plan for the next day when I’m tired and wishing I had accomplished what was on my list. And also recognizing the wishful thinking or how things changed that day that made the priority shift. Or recognizing, ‘Okay, I put that on my list and I didn’t do it, I’m procrastinating that. It needs to keep going on the list and I’m going to put it on there.’ In the morning, I feel more like, ‘Oh, fresh start, everything’s possible!’ I tend to be more energetic and optimistic in the morning and my to do list will reflect that. So, I make a more realistic to do list if I do it the night before. Your mileage may vary, but the point really, is to try it out. Try different times, try different formats, try different ways to write out your list, and learn. So, think of each daily list as an experiment and you can apply what you’ve learned to the next day’s card. At Simply Convivial we do not believe in one-size-fits-all solutions, plans, or check lists. I’m all about teaching you the principles and the skills that you need to figure out what’s going to work for you in your particular situation with your particular needs. If that’s what you need then make sure to subscribe and check out some of my other videos, including my series on Getting Your Life Organized in One Week. Check those out here. Always remember that your attitude is the most important part of your organization project. So, repent, rejoice, repeat. See you next time. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWe all know the feeling. There’s just too much to do. Do you ever feel like the more you have to do the less you actually get done? That’s a real thing. There’s a reason for that. And it’s decision fatigue. The first step that you have to do to prevent decision fatigue and then to get started is decide what to actually do next. It seems simple but it can be hard. The more options there are, the more that’s rattling around in your head, the more thought and energy it takes to come to a conclusion and just get started. Let me show you how to streamline the decision-making process so you can do what needs to be done no matter how long or short your to do list is. Let’s dig in.So, let’s figure out how to make our to do lists short and simple, so we can actually get them done each day.Step one is that you actually need two to do lists. One is your master list. A running list of all the things that need to happen; big or small, routine or not. Everything that needs to happen needs to be written down and kept. But that’s not your to do list that you actually work from day to day. Think of it like the safe-keeping place so that you’re not keeping track of everything in your head—you’re keeping things safe and written down where you can refer to it as needed, jog your memory, where you’re not afraid you’re going to lose something or forget something.Then, you need the actionable daily to do list. You can choose from that master list what goes on today’s list, but the list that you’re making for today is short. It’s prioritized. It’s a list of what’s most important today. Sometimes that’s going to be something that’s not even on your master list. Days are like that. Keeping a daily to do list allows you that flexibility you need to adjust to real life as it unrolls. Your daily to do list then is a prioritized list. It is not even all the things that you will do. It is your top three things for the day, the three things that, if you do those it’s going to be better tomorrow. The three things that are going to make a difference. It’s easy to get distracted of the little things that pile up but then we end up never getting to those important things that aren’t necessarily urgent. This short daily to do list is where we make sure that we do not lose sight of what’s important in our days. Now, we need to keep this to do list short because we don’t have unlimited time, we don’t have unlimited energy either. So, we have to choose. We have to make tough choices and then we need to write them down so that we can stick with those choices. And we make this list every day because every day our time is a little bit different—the time we have available, the kind of energy that we have available—and so we can look at what we actually have by looking at our calendar, looking at our commitments, and we can choose what’s most important. Sometimes, appointments might take up all day and so we don’t want to write a list that assumes we’ll be able to get a lot of home projects done. Or maybe even any of our routines done. Our daily to do list is made in light of the reality of today. It takes practice and experience to know how to pick a viable, realistic top three. It’s not something that anyone can tell you what you should pick. It’s something that you have to think about, figure out, try, experiment, iterate, and continually learn from your own experience by evaluating how it went, making observations, and moving forward in light of what you learn. In this way, with this daily practice of learning how we work, learning what our real responsibilities are, recognizing what we tend to procrastinate on, and seeing what’s really important. In this practice, over time, we make better and better choices. And, because those are self-determined choices that we know are realistic and necessary, we also grow in our self-motivation and momentum and follow through in actually doing them. And that’s really what we’re after. So, you need to identify your priorities. That’s hard to do but you’ll get better at it with practice. So, practice every day and write three to do’s down on a daily index card. You will, of course, do more in a day than the three things written down on your index card, but if you start with what’s most important, you’ll feel better about how you’ve used your time and you’ll probably even get more done in the long run because you’re focused and clear. You’ll see you’re spending your time well. We tend to waste more time in distraction and indecision when we aren’t working from a clear list. So, give it a shot. Try it out. And let me know in the comments below how it’s working for you. At Simply Convivial we do not believe in one-size-fits all plans. I’m all about teaching you the principles and the skills that you need to figure out what’s going to work for you in your particular situation with your particular needs.Always remember that your attitude is the most important par

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanHave you ever been frustrated trying to use a planner? Have you ever worried that you spend more time writing in your planner and decorating your planner than actually doing what that pretty plan tells you to do? Let me share my quick planner hack that streamlines the process and keeps me focused on the most important things to do each day. Let’s dig in.I know, planners are pretty. They’re fun. But a lot of the ones that we can buy pre-printed, packaged, ready to go are actually over kill. They contain sections and questions and areas that maybe (maybe!) work for the person who designed it and implemented it, and maybe they work for some people, but just because a tactic or a format works for one person does not mean that it’s the thing that will work for anyone and everyone.Instead of searching for and continually trying for that planner that will magically, suddenly make us into planners—not just make a plan but then do the plan—we need to find planning strategies that are simple, streamlined, and personalized. And that’s the planner hack I have for you today. Try to figure out what you need to make a consistent daily plan that actually works. We have to think about what the point of it all really is. Why have a planner in the first place? Why write things down? And you’ve probably thought about that already, maybe in the spirit of ‘Do I have to?’ or ‘What’s the point because I seem to just be wasting my time?’ And the reality is that a lot of planning is wasting time, but that’s because of the kind of plan that we make and not that all planning is always a waste of time.When we make plans that are based on wishful thinking that’s a waste of time. We need to plan for right now, our current reality, our current responsibilities, and then our plan will be effective. I think that a good question we can ask is, what’s the least amount of effort that I have to do to create an effective plan, a plan that I will use and follow through on? And my answer to that question is all you need is a post-it note!Using a post-it note to make our daily plans helps us remember that not only our time, but even our energy and our attention, our abilities, are limited. We can’t do everything that we might be keeping on some other to do list. We have to pick the things that are most important. And then we write down the things that are most important on a small piece of paper that we can keep in front of our face. Then we are more likely to follow through on tasks because they’re not vague, nebulous “I coulda, shoulda, some day do this thing.” We have specified and written down and thought about what it is we actually have to do. So, on your post-it note every day, at the beginning of the day or maybe at the end of the day (the day before) write down your top three things. That’s a hard thing to do. It’s a skill that we have to practice. And we will get better and better the more we practice it at choosing what those top three things really are. But the exercise of having to choose, having to narrow it down and pick three, is all a part of what makes it actually work because the best planning is mostly a thinking exercise. It’s not that in writing something down it’s more likely to happen. In reality, it is having thought about it and putting our priorities and what we need to be paying attention to top-of-mind and visible in front of our faces that makes it actually able to happen. Our minds are for thinking and we need to give ourselves the time and the prompts to actually think about what’s most important just today. And the daily card (or post-it note) is an exercise that helps us do just that. Because we are limited—we’re limited in time, we’re limited in resources, we’re limited in energy—our to do list also needs to be limited. And the tiny size of a post-it note is a visible reminder of that. Writing what needs to happen out by hand every day helps us focus on our priorities. It allows us to adjust the plan as needed as life unfolds. And it puts our responsibilities right in front of our face. The great thing about a post-it note is that it’s sticky. I can put this on the top of the computer monitor. I can put this on the front cover of my planner so that it’s right there. I can put it on the back of my phone and have it right with me in my pocket. A post-it note is super flexible and can help us keep our priorities visible. And that’s really key because a planner (no matter what kind of planner) will not work unless you look at it! So, I challenge you to try out this quick, simple, cheap option for your own daily to do list. Try it for at least a week. Give it a fair shot. Practice and see what happens. Over at Simply Convivial I’ve put together a Daily Card Quick Start Guide that will help you get going with this small, simple habit. It will teach you how to make and use this card (or post-it note) every day and give you a checklist so that you can hold yourself acc

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanTransformation Tuesday is our answer to the complicated, overbearing cleaning and organizing checklists out there.You don’t need to clean by someone else’s schedule.Instead, see what needs to be done in your own home, and spend 10 minutes improving the order and organization there.Transformation Tuesday is one of my little homemaking mottos that helps me tackle housecleaning in small bites and tame my attitude at the same time. Cleaning and decluttering should just be a small piece of your weekly cleaning routine. When we wonder how to organize our life, we usually think about containers, labels, and homes that magically stay clean without further effort. But someone who is organized is someone willing to continue taking the effort of homekeeping, to maintain the work consistently.Transformation Tuesday is a catchy reminder to spend 10 minutes once a week cleaning or reorganizing a small area that will positively affect at least your peace of mind and maybe even your personal productivity.No one can tell you what that area ought to be. Each week you pick the thing that’s bothering you, that’s holding you up, that’s the biggest (small) problem area. Each week you take just ten minutes and make an improvement in order and tidiness in that small spot.This accomplishes more than just the small amount of order. It also, gradually, changes our perspective and attitude about organization itself.When organizing an area is no longer a huge, overwhelming, whole-closet or whole-house project, but just a ten minute focus, we overcome our mental and emotional hurdles to becoming more organized.We aren’t going for night and day or for whole-new-self change. We’re just going for 10 minutes of better. We succeed at that. We appreciate the difference it made. We are less devastated when the work is inevitably undone by normal, everyday entropy. After all, it was only ten minutes. We can do that again.And when you do, take a before and after picture! Share on Instagram with the #simplyconvivial hashtag and tag me. We’re forming an open, honest, real-life community of homemakers who spur one another on to cheerful attitudes and good work at home. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI wanted to talk about decluttering as a habit because there’s this rumor floating out there on decluttering (from experts and gurus) who say that “decluttering can be done once and for all.” That it’s a project you finish and check off and be done with (which is really what we all want to hear, isn’t it?). We really want it to be something that we can achieve: “Achievement unlocked! We are now decluttered and forever and all time, moving forward. Now we have the right habits, the right house, the right organization. We won’t have to do that again!” That’s just not the way it really is in real life. Not our kind of real life anyway. Not family life. Not home life where you have a lot of people in one house actually living a full life—which means a lot of stuff—and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. I think there’s a lot of hope and happiness pinned even on minimalism (on eliminating as much as stuff as possible) as if I manage to do [that], get [that achievement unlocked] then I will be happy. Then I will be a good housekeeper. Then I will love my house. Then my family won’t drive me crazy. Then the lights shine brightly and angels sing, “la” and we have achieved our housekeeping, homemaking goal! Decluttered once and for all, now we can move forward and do this thing right.And that appeals to our desire to achieve our ambition. It appeals to just wanting to be done. To figure things out and do things right. But the reality is that stuff comes into our house still and it’s just something we have to keep up with. It’s just one more thing—like dishes and the laundry and meals—that has to be continually addressed. We should declutter in order to use our space wisely, but our life changes, our needs change, sometimes our house situation changes, the ages of our children and their stages change, and we need to adjust. We will continually go through that process of figuring out, “Well, I saved this because I thought I would need it. These are just questions in wisdom and stewardship that we need to be continually asking and assessing and working through because life and our situations change and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not because we’re doing it wrong, it’s not because if we had this thing figured out we wouldn’t have to anymore. When the stuff is used as the measure stick it’s just wrong. It’s not going to work. It’s not true. It’s not accurate. And it focuses us on the wrong things. So, the stuff is just stuff that we do have to manage and steward. There isn’t a universal one-size fits all plan for how much stuff you ought to have, what you ought to keep, what you ought to get rid of. So, decluttering will be put in its proper place if we think of it as a habit and not as the holy grail, the step that we need to complete in order to take the next steps of perfect homemaking. And so, if instead of thinking of it as a project that we’re going to finish, we think of it as a habit we’re going to build, it breaks it down, we take smaller steps, we work it into our routines and our awareness in the smaller chunks of time and energy, and in the end we actually make more progress because we’re continually applying ourselves to it, we aren’t frustrated because it’s not complete yet because we’re not expecting it to be complete, and we aren’t waiting to make other steps and other changes until it’s over and complete. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSo, we talk a lot about needing to declutter, but part of what holds us back from just diving in and making some progress in decluttering is that even though we say that we are doing this project we don’t really understand how to do it. We don’t understand what the project really is, what it entails, what we set out to accomplish. It remains this, kind of, vague, nebulous project that we can’t define. And that means we can’t see progress made. And when we don’t know what we’re going to do next, we end up not doing anything at all. So, in order to declutter our homes, we need to understand the process of decluttering and it’s really very simple. It’s a little bit scary, but what you need to remember is to start with an amount of space that you can actually tackle in the amount of time that you have. What I like to do is choose a spot that I can actually declutter in 10 minutes or less, because even when I think I have half an hour I often don’t. But 10 minutes I can probably manage that, or at least, if some interruption comes a 10 minute declutter session is easier to come back to and finish up, whereas longer projects not so much. The first step of decluttering is actually removing everything from the space—that’s scary, that’s a big deal, I know, but it’s really the most effective, efficient way to declutter. But that’s why it’s so important to start with a very small space. So, a single drawer (or even a section of a drawer), a single shelf in a closet (and not the whole closet), one container at a time decluttering; not entire rooms or even entire closets—a small space. Empty it out entirely onto a table, or some other space—just move it out. Then the next thing I like to do is to just throw away the garbage that came out in that process. Ideally, it doesn’t even make it onto the table (or whatever other space I’m emptying things out on), but as I’m pulling it out it just goes into the trash. And still, if there is some junk on the counter (or wherever this pile has ended up), I go through and throw away the trash because that’s the fastest, easiest, most obvious step to take first. And the more visible progress you can make quickly the more momentum that you get. You’re seeing that success and you’re seeing progress right away and that helps you keep the momentum and the energy moving forward to get the job done. So, we don’t start with the hardest part (although emptying the entire space might have been hard, mentally or emotionally) but then we do something easy—we just throw away the garbage. And, it’s amazing sometimes how much difference that makes right there. Next, we’re looking at all this stuff that’s out to see. Now, none of it’s where it belongs because none of it belongs on the bed or the counter or the table or wherever we’ve put it, and we see things that belong somewhere else. So they have homes, we know what they are, we know where they belong and it’s not here and it’s not in that drawer that we just emptied. So, we go put those things away. This is where distraction is tempting. This is where we might get an idea, see something else that needs to be done, get interrupted by a child, or something, so we have to be very careful and try to do this very quickly. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSo, what even is decluttering and why is it something that we keep trying to do and keep feeling like we never make any progress doing? Yeah, that’s right—you are not the only one. Decluttering is getting rid of clutter. So, before we can understand declutter, we have to think about what clutter really is. Sometimes we just use it as a generic insult to stuff we don’t necessarily want or want to deal with. But clutter is referring to those things that are not where they belong, or they are some place where they don’t belong. And so, when we’re looking in a closet, in a cupboard, in a drawer, in a whole room, and we say, “It’s cluttered,” what we mean is that it’s full of stuff that does not belong there. So, the process of decluttering, then, means going through the space and removing what does not belong. Organizing the space then is putting the things away well, strategically, smartly, in the place they do belong. But decluttering comes before organizing. And you really can’t organize a space that has not been decluttered because if the space has stuff that doesn’t belong there, it can’t be organized there. It needs to be removed so that the things that do belong can then be ordered and tidied well; so, decluttering means getting rid of the things that do not belong. We keep coming back to this project of decluttering because it’s a part of the process of actually stewarding or managing our resources well. Things tend toward disorder, things fall apart, new things come in, and the way that we use a space or the way that we need to use a space changes. So, the fact that you need to declutter doesn’t even mean necessarily that something is wrong, or you’ve failed in some way, it just means that the task before you is clear—declutter the space. Of course, when we look around our home there are so many spaces that need to be decluttered (I mean, we are not even going to talk about kid bedrooms)! But we just need to be satisfied taking small steps forward, making a little bit of progress in a small amount of space; steadily, strategically, and consistently. And that’s what we’re going to do in this series where we are focusing on decluttering. We aren’t just going to talk about decluttering and we aren’t only going to pep talk decluttering (although we are going to do that as well), we are going to find ways to build decluttering as a habit in our life because our spaces are always going to need decluttering. Things are always going to wind up where they don’t belong because that’s just the way family life works. Not to mention the way that we need to use the space changes—something did belong in a particular spot at one point but no longer does because that’s now not the point of the space. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanToday’s episode is an audio blog for one of my favorite posts: Life is like laundry. If you pop on over to the article on the blog, you’ll also find a follow-up 45-minute workshop on this topic. If you have some extra laundry to tackle and you need a pick me up to accompany the marathon folding session, it’ll be just the ticket to keep you company and keep your spirits lifted. So, let’s dig in. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI think our attitude is the missing link in our attempts at getting organized. So I’m excited to announce my new free download: an attitude adjustment audit. What is an attitude? Every passing feeling is not an attitude. The dictionary says that an attitude is “a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior.” However, passing feelings can become our attitudes if we nurture them and keep them around. That’s why it’s important to reject false feelings and cultivate those based on truth and love. Our actions are produced from our thoughts and feelings: our heart. Self-control - a fruit of the Spirit - includes controlling our thoughts & feelings as well as our actions. Yes, you can actually change your attitude by deliberately and intentionally changing your thoughts – that’s something we have a responsibility to do. When what we feel or think does not align with God’s revealed will for our lives (which is gratitude), the only obedient option we have is to repent, to change them with the help of the Holy Spirit.Our inner lives and our outer lives are not two disparate and unrelated things. One affects the other. Outer chaos creates stress and confusion. Inner chaos works itself out in how we live our lives. Fixing either kind of disorder is the project of a lifetime, not the project of a day, of a weekend, or of a month. Organizing our attitudes is something we must continually be doing.An organized attitude isn't faking a smile.It’s constantly reminding ourselves of truth and not panicking when we notice we sin, and also not ignoring it, but rather repenting of it, receiving forgiveness, and gratefully pressing on to do what we called to do.To organize your attitude is to bring your thoughts into alignment with God’s Word, every day, every situation, every time. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanThis episode is an excerpt from a recent mentoring session that I host weekly inside Simply Convivial Continuing Education. Our topic was mindset habits and how even our thoughts and responses can be habitual - both good and bad. So what we know about habits breaking and habit building applies even to our mindset, even to our attitude.We need to break out of bad attitude ruts and form some new and intentional ruts in our brains. Weeks have passed since the holidays which were a fun break but also exhausting and a lot of work. Then we jump into January with all the energy and good intentions we can muster. It’s no wonder February finds us dull and feeling doomed. February is the time we need to be deliberate with our thoughts, because it’s easy to have them spiral down into lethargy if not worse. So this month we’re focusing on mindset. Think of it like your mega dose of vitamin C and B12. Remind yourself of truth, reject thoughts that are false, and practice turning to gratitude as your habitual response. The podcast this month will be all about how to do just that. So let’s dig in.Support the show (https://www.simplyconvivial.com/membership) 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanJanuary’s podcasts are all about self-care: what it is and what it isn’t. In the medical world, self-care refers to those tasks a caregiver must do for someone, whether it’s a caregiver to an injured or ill adult or a mother to an infant. But when the internet tells you that you need self-care, they basically mean you need to spend some time being self-centered and self-indulgent. What will help us face our real life home duties is a measure of self-control and faithfulness, and organization helps us grow in both. If you think you need some self-care today, maybe what you really need is some organization. Support the show (https://www.simplyconvivial.com/membership) 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanGuess what? Self-centeredness and self-indulgence is never going to make you feel better in the long term, nor will it prepare you for reentering your real life with joy.You don’t need to treat yourself or indulge in luxuries to be happy with your life. Let’s get a grip and a game face on and find not only contentment but also joy in our real life home duties. What will help us face our real life home duties is a measure of self-control and faithfulness, and organization helps us grow in both. If you think you need some self-care today, maybe what you really need is some organization. Today's episode is an audio blog, written and read by Abby Wahl. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean In the medical world, self-care refers to those tasks a caregiver must do for someone, whether it’s a caregiver to an injured or ill adult or a mother to an infant. But when the internet tells you that you need self-care, they’re not talking about using the bathroom and brushing your teeth and putting your own spoon to your mouth. In fact, a CNN article about trends for 2020 outright said that self-care on social media means luxuriating. You don’t need to treat yourself or indulge in luxuries to be happy with your life. Let’s get a grip and a game face on and find not only contentment but also joy in our real life home duties. You don’t need to get away from your life to renew your wellbeing. More than self-care, you need self-control. I need self-control. Getting organized is actually about self-control, and it’s more revitalizing than any kind of so-called self-care. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanIt is true that our selves do need care. We are not invincible. We are not infinite. We are not indefatigable. However, more than our bodies need care because we are more than our bodies. When you feel the need for rest and renewal, remember that both come not by indulgence or through merely physical means. When we forget that we are souls, spiritual beings in need of spiritual things, we go looking in all the wrong places for the restoration we know we need.January’s podcasts are all about what is popularly called self-care. Now, self-care used to mean your ability to do basic things like brush your teeth and use the bathroom by yourself. But when the internet tells you that you need self-care, that’s not usually what they mean. In fact, a CNN article about trends for 2020 outright said that self-care on social media means pampering yourself. You don’t need to treat yourself or indulge in luxuries to be happy with your life. Let’s get a grip and a game face on and find not only contentment but also joy in our real life home duties. The care and restoration you do need might not be what you think it is. It might not be the easy, fun, self-indulgence you were hoping for. Today’s episode is all about how the self-care you actually need is spiritual, not material. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanMoms are told all over social media and advertisements that we need more self-care. It's true that we become easily wearied, easily overwhelmed, easily frustrated - and a break sounds too good to be true. Self-care for stay at home moms seems like a reasonable solution. But the break we actually need to overcome the weariness, the overwhelm, the frustration might be different from a day out or a day off. If a day out or a day off is not happening anytime soon for you, don't worry. That's probably not what you actually need to find relief and satisfaction in your life.January’s podcasts are all about so-called self-care. Now, self-care in medical terms refers to your ability to do basic things like brush your teeth and use the bathroom by yourself. But when the internet tells you that you need self-care, that’s not usually what they mean. In fact, a CNN article about trends for 2020 outright said that self-care on social media means luxuriating. You don’t need to treat yourself or indulge in luxuries to be happy with your life. Let’s get a grip and a game face on and find not only contentment but also joy in our real life home duties. Stay turned this month on the podcast for more on getting real with self-care. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanHomemaking is not about personal style. It's about making a home where people want to be and where people can learn and grow. This replay of the Making Home workshop will remind you of the true calling of homemaker. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanHomemaking has fallen on hard times for the last hundred or more years. Though it’s been devalued by our culture, it’s not lost any value in reality to the family. Homemakers don’t need to be full-time to be vital to their families and, yes, to the whole world and society at large. Homemaking is not about achieving a certain look or state in the home. Homemaking is a process, a service, of love through hospitality to those who live in and enter into our home.Let’s take a deeper look at what homemaking really is, with this excerpt from a member-only mentoring session. Every week inside Simply Convivial Continuing Education, I share about a topic relevant to our lives and work as homemakers so that we can stay motivated, inspired, and on track, learning and growing and spurred on to more love and good works. I’m excited to share this little peek into our community today.Support the show (https://www.simplyconvivial.com/membership) 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhen we think of homemaking, we usually think of housework, but even the dictionary tells us that homemaking is about creating and managing homes as a pleasant place to live. A pleasant place to live - not merely a clean or organized place to live - is the goal of homemaking. Today’s episode is a blog post titled Becoming a Better Homemaker. In it, we will look at three areas we as homemakers need to manage - not so that they are easy and effortless, but so that our homes are pleasant places to be. Whether it’s meals, chores, or hospitality, our focus needs to be on the goal if we’re going to end the day satisfied. And, yes, ending the day satisfied, IS possible. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhen we think of homemaking basics or homemaking hacks, we should not let HGTV or Pinterest or Martha Stewart be the standard or the ideal. Homemaking is not about achieving a certain look or state in the home. Homemaking is a process, a service, of love through hospitality to those who live in and enter into our home. In this episode I’m chatting with Virginia Lee Rogers, my customer support manager and fellow NTJ personality type about unconventional homemaking hacks. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanBiblical Homemaking is not about achieving a certain look or state in the home. Biblical Homemaking is a process, a service, of love through hospitality to those who live in and enter into our home.That means that what HGTV, magazines, and Pinterest call homemaking, probably isn’t. Homemaking isn’t about decor or style or expressing ourselves. Homemaking is, according to the dictionary, “the creation and management of a home, especially as a pleasant place in which to live.”So this month we’re tackling what it looks like to manage our home in such a way that it’s a pleasant place to live. In fact, I have a special brain dump guide specifically about thinking through biblical homemaking. The guide will help you work out these ideas in your own specific context and for your own family’s needs. I think homemaking, old-fashioned as it may sound, is the perfect name for our role as women in the home, whether we do or do not do other work inside of or outside of the home. People need homes. If there is to be a home for people, then someone has to make it.When we make homes, we are imitating God. He made this earth as a home and He prepared a garden as a special home for Adam. Jesus, right now, is in heaven preparing a place for us. When Jesus returns, we will receive an eternal home, a renewed and restored heaven and earth. So when we make homes here in this already-but-not-yet time, we are imitating God and giving those who enjoy our homes (ourselves included, I hope), a foretaste of future glory. Cooking, cleaning, corralling clutter – these aren’t ends in themselves and that’s why we’re frustrated when we make them first things instead of means to the real end of creating a home in which people can flourish.It’s biblical homemaking if we are doing the work not for ourselves, but for God’s glory, as an obedient response to His call on our life to serve him and others. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWe all want to have a clean house without spending all day getting and keeping it clean. It is possible! We just need a good house cleaning routine that works for our lives.Once we figure out the best house cleaning routine for our own homes and habits, we can turn it into a checklist and make it happen regularly.Checklists are even more helpful when the steps they list out are for bite-sized routines, routines that are not themselves overwhelming or perfectionism, but small and doable.So, let’s think about how small routines serve us in our housework more than cleaning frenzies do.Build a good house cleaning routine.When we want to do better and we’re trying to do better at homemaking, we get caught up hunting for or trying to create the best, final, once-and-for-all perfect solution.That dooms us to the boom and bust cycle.Instead, we need to begin with baby steps and doable routines. Bite-sized routines will help us build true traction in our day-to-day lives. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanInstead of doing what feels best in the moment, we take the time to think it through, make it clear, and so save ourselves not only time but also willpower points. Because making decisions takes energy and willpower, having the checklist to work from keeps us on track more consistently. A procedure checklist is the best tactic for overwhelmed moms at home.In the podcast we talk aboutUsing checklists with kidsChore time checklistsHomeschool checklistsPlanning checklistsIt’s less than 10 minutes of practical, real-life help in your homemaking. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanThis month inside the Simply Convivial Circle we’re talking all about procedure lists – when to keep them and how to keep them simple.One key principle that applies is keeping them short & specific. But that’s harder than it sounds! So today I’m sharing an excerpt from a member-only mentoring session where we discussed what a priority is and how it affects our planning. I think you’ll find it helpful as you attempt to choose what matters most and what the right next thing is.When it’s hard to get started because there’s too much to do, procedure checklists help us prioritize our tasks and give us the shortcut to momentum we need.What is a priority? Can you even have more than one?In this episode we discuss how to find your priorities and what it looks like to use them. Enjoy!How can a procedure checklist help you move from an overwhelmed mom to a confident and capable mom growing in momentum? Download the Procedure Checklist Brain Dump guide to walk through my easy process for figuring out that answer for yourself. No one else has the answers that will fit your life. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanAre you an overwhelmed mom? Frustrated with too much to do? A set of procedure checklists is just what you need to get the traction you want. When you’re looking at how to organize your life, getting a few key procedure checklists is the perfect place to begin.This month inside the Simply Convivial Circle we’re talking all about procedure lists – when to keep them and how to keep them simple.We often think we need some fancy or complicated solution to solve our home management woes, but more often than not, a simple, standard practice is all we need.After all, home management is not about achieving your perfectionist ideals, but rather about accepting your responsibilities and your constraints so you can walk in faithfulness and fruitfulness.When it’s hard to get started because there’s too much to do, procedure checklists are the shortcut to momentum you need.How many times have you slumped into a chair or stayed, a bit numb, in bed, because the number of things to do that day was completely overwhelming?Sure, we can declutter our lives, our homes, and our to-do lists, but that’s a process that takes time. What do we do right now? How do we get up and get moving? What is it that’s paralyzing us? Why are we overwhelmed moms much of the time? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanThe truth about any athlete able to maintain balance in awkward positions is that although they look stable and unmoving, their entire body is actually tense and continually on the move, adjusting and twitching to keep their position. It looks effortless, but their entire body is constantly engaged to make it possible.We, however, in our lives, have something better than appearing to be stable. In our lives we can have stability because we are not our own source of stability. God is our rock, and our stability is found in Christ. So no matter how much we wobble, visibly or not, we can have a foundational assurance, trust, and security – not in our ability to handle all things, but in God’s ability to handle all things.This is an excerpt from one of twelve lessons inside Simplified Organization: Organize Your Attitude. It’s called Wobble in Balance. Enjoy.When we say balance, we tend to picture mechanical scales calibrated just right. We’re looking for the proper proportions to keep things “just right.” We want to find that sweet spot where we feel in control of our lives and on top of our duties.True life balance, however, especially for moms at home, is not a matter of perfection, achievement, or equality. It is about making the needed adjustments as you go.Watch a ballerina balance, watch a tight-rope walker balance. Try yourself to balance on one foot. Successful human balance is not frozen or motionless. As you balance, you make tiny compensations throughout your whole body. If you start to topple, you can stay upright by moving back a bit. Even when you look still from a distance, you can feel the tiny twitches within your body as you balance.It is the same in life. We are not seeking a frozen, perfected balance in life as a mother as if our life is a set of scales. We are in a human balancing act much more like a ballerina, who has strengthened her muscles enough to hold a position and then change as needed, but whose body is always making micro-corrections and compensations.For awhile, one vocation or one task might take over. But that time passes and we compensate by putting it on the back burner and putting more attention into what we had neglected for a time. As long as we come back around and make healthy compensations, this is balance. This is living out our vocations and our priorities – doing what needs to be done, and making small adjustments and shifts as needed to keep upright and avoid injury. The more we do so, the stronger we get, and the easier it becomes. The stronger we get, the more it looks effortless or even static, but we know, we can see, the tiny compensations being made as we go.Our life balance is always a wobble, and that is as it should be.The truth about any athlete able to maintain balance in awkward positions is that although they look stable and unmoving, their entire body is actually tense and continually on the move, adjusting and twitching to keep their position. It looks effortless, but their entire body is constantly engaged to make it possible.We, however, in our lives, have something better than appearing to be stable. In our lives we can have stability because we are not our own source of stability. God is our rock, and our stability is found in Christ. So no matter how much we wobble, visibly or not, we can have a foundational assurance, trust, and security – not in our ability to handle all things, but in God’s ability to handle all things.Balance life through deliberate practice.Awhile back I was listening to a radio interview of a musician-athlete. She talked about the willingness to accept the drudgery of deliberate, painful, boring practice being an essential element to her success in both music and sports. To be good at something, you have to work at it even when it is not fun or interesting or exciting. In fact, a majority of the time spent on it will not be fun or interesting or exciting, but the mastery produced by practice will be satisfying.This mentality of deliberate practice is applicable to housekeeping, organization, and to any other learned skill. The actual practice of it is rarely interesting or fun or fulfilling, but satisfaction can be found in improvement, in growing, even when it doesn’t feel like anything is really being accomplished. You’re just doing your scales. Just as in housework, when mastering an instrument or a sport, you very rarely get that moment of something being really completed. It is ongoing, never-arriving, always-room-for-improvement work.Yet with both an instrument or a sport, we assume it is worthwhile and admirable for a person to dedicate himself to mastery. We call such people role models or heroes, accomplished people.Can the same not be said for homemakers? Surely it can be. We can become accomplished in faithfulness.Faithfulness doesn’t imply large, impressive deeds. Faithfulness is all about doing what’s in front of you – your own duty, however humble that i

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanBalance is something that we all strive for – at least sometimes. Sometimes we definitely give up. What’s the right balance in our home management duties? What’s the right balance in seeking balance? Today Virginia Lee Rogers and I are chatting about balance, why it’s so hard, and how to keep it in perspective. We want balance because life feels wobbly. Today my friend and Simply Convivial customer support manager Virginia Lee Rogers are talking about why we feel wobbly and … Read MoreThe post Ep #109 – What to do when life feels wobbly, a conversation with Virginia Lee Rogers appeared first on Simply Convivial.Support the show (https://www.simplyconvivial.com/membership) 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSeptember’s theme topic inside Simply Convivial Membership is balance, and one of our members, Julie, summed it up perfectly: “I think that’s why so many programs and planners and classes or groups are appealing, because they often promise that key to life that we all feel like we’re missing. I always feel most balanced when I am truly centered on the true Center — the more I abide in Christ, the more I am attending to His word and living out the truth of Scriptures, I feel more confident about the decisions I make throughout the day.”Amen!There is no amount of balance that will make all you’d like to do fit into your day. Your time, my time, is limited.This episode is an excerpt of a troubleshooting session I did with Simply Convivial Members on September 2nd, all about time budgets. Several of the courses inside membership give directions for completing a time budget, so we dug deep into why it’s important and what traps we’re likely to fall into as we work on them. Every week inside Simply Convivial Membership we do a thirty minute topic-specific troubleshooting session. The full replays are added to the member-only podcast, but here’s a clip of a couple best-of moments for you as you consider balancing your time.Balance is such a tricky topic, because when we uncover what we mean when we talk about it, we uncover our unrealistic expectations that usually boil down to perfectionism.So if we want to work on realistic balance, that begins by assessing and managing our time effectively. I do this by creating a time budget. Just like a money budget, a time budget isn’t about wishful thinking. It’s about looking at what’s actually available and how best to spend that. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanBalance.The dictionary defines the verb to balance as "to keep or put something in a steady position so that it does not fall" or "to offset or compare the value of one thing with another"The first definition is the one we usually mean when we talk about achieving balance in our lives. We want to be steady, regular, diligent, consistent. We hate feeling like we're scrambling, dropping the ball, and never getting to what matters. So we think that balance is the answer. But what is that something that we're putting in a steady position so it doesn't fall? Is it our to-do list? Is it our various roles and responsibilities? Is it our attitude? Or is it C - all of the above? In seeking the first definition of balance, we often settle for the second, which basically means we make trade-offs and hope everything will come out even in the end. We didn't get to the laundry, but the schoolwork was done. We didn't mop, but we did get dinner on the table. Does the value of what was done make up for what doesn't?Sure, we want all of the things done so that we never have to make trade-offs like that, but it's just not going to happen in this life. It's an idealistic dream. We can continue honing our skills and getting better at what we do. We can expand our capacity and align our expectations. But we will always be making trade-offs. We just need to make sure those trade-offs are done in favor of the work with ultimate value. And, if we're going to keep anything in a steady position so it doesn't fall, let's make it our attitude, not our chores. Keeping an emotional even keel will keep the scales balanced no matter what it is that suffered in the day's survival mode skirmish. Having a balanced emotional life is the best kind of balanced life to live. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanLearn how to organize your calendar! If you’re a busy mom and you want to be organized, you absolutely MUST have a working, accurate calendar. These 3 tips will have you using an organized calendar and bing more in control and aware of your time. Time management is an important skill for both the stay at home mom and the working mom.These organization tips will boost your productivity and enable better home management. Whether you use a wall calendar, google calendar, or a pocket planner – these 3 calendar organization tips will make the calendar of your choice work for you.There are three things your calendar must be if it is going to be organized – and the only way to keep it organized is to keep using it, keep updating it, and keep looking at it.#1. Organize your calendar by putting all appointments on it.If you’ve made a commitment to someone else to be somewhere or do something at a particular time, it should be on your calendar.Don’t assume you’ll remember or put any appointment – even sports practices or regular club meetings you think you’ll never forget. Put them all on the calendar. These are not clutter; they are reminders that your time is spoken for.What is calendar-clutter is non-obligations or anytime-commitments on the calendar. These should be on a to-do list, not on your calendar. Your calendar should be an at-a-glance chart of how much time you have available to you, in what chunks, each day.#2 Make your calendar easy to see.Your calendar will do you no good if you don’t look at it.You can use a large wall calendar, a portable planner with a calendar, or a digital calendar – but the key is that it is easy and convenient to look at it.And then we must look at it – multiple times a day.#3 Organize your calendar by color-coding itIf you do have a lot of people or a variety of commitments that make it hard to see at-a-glance what’s on your plate when you look at your calendar, you can use color-coding to make visual distinctions.Repeating, regular obligations can go in a lighter color so that the one-off appointments stand out more boldly.Commitments that simply involve you dropping off and picking up your kids can be in a particular color, separate from your own obligations.Your Calendar Is Your Most Important Organization ToolWhen you want to get your life organized, what’s the first step? If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you know the first step is always a brain dump.But then, once you have a brain dump that fills an entire notebook, where do you begin? What do you do with all that? Where does it go.There are 5 important bins you need before you can start sorting and processing that brain dump, but the one you should set up first and the one you should make your priority is your calendar.Your calendar is your most important organizational tool.“Good!” you might think, “I already have one!”But, do you?Are you using it? Is it 100% accurate?Do you look at it?Yeah, that’s the kicker, isn’t it? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanA mind is a terrible thing to waste. Don't let useless thinking waste your mental energy, your time, or your brain power. Get your thoughts organized with these organized mind tips that will help you have an organized mindset and mom life. You need to know how to organize thoughts so you can problem solve and keep track of your thoughts and ideas, whether you're a sahm or a working mom. Every mom's mind is full and so we need mind organization for mom brains. Organize your thoughts for GOOD!Organization is not about our stuff, but about our minds.So you have thoughts - what happens with them? Our minds are a place where ideas swirl, information comes and goes, and what do we do with it all?Here are 3 things I do to manage the mess that is the thoughts inside my head. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanPerfectionism kills productivity and progress. This strategy will help you beat perfectionism with action and improve incrementally. Perfection is a mindset. It is all in our heads. So we beat perfectionism by starting with our attitudes.We need a thinking strategy that will help us to talk back to perfectionism. I call this strategy iteration. Iteration means that we take a small steps forward, looking back to assess and learn after each step. Instead of holding out for the ideal or trying to jump to the final goal, iteration looks for progress and learns and grows and adapts as progress is made.Iteration isn’t just baby step by baby step progress, but also includes evaluation so that each step is informed and so that we remain flexible.One way to start iterating is to break down your year into chunks and do interval planning. Instead of making a large, ambitious goal and a long-term plan to get there, you make incremental goals, work on a smaller chunk of the project or outcome, then assess and choose the next right small goal between intervals. By continuing to move forward and remaining flexible, we can beat perfectionism and see momentum in our lives. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanA weekly review is my secret weapon to stay organized. It’s a time reserved for big picture thinking, planning, and list making. More importantly, it’s a time to LOOK at those lists – and my calendar.A weekly review does not need to take an hour. You can take 15 minutes to get your stuff ready for the week ahead. A weekly review is the key, the linchpin, to all other plans, all other planners, all other systems. Without it, none of the rest will work.Someone who is organized has responsible self-control, is diligent, and likes it.A weekly review is the key for all other planning. Without it, your plans will not work. A weekly review is time set aside for looking at your lists. It’s crazy, but it turns out that your plans, lists, and calendar will not do you any good unless you look at it.We wrap our minds around our lives as they actually are right now so we can be prepared to handle what’s happening. We also view our upcoming obligations in light of the big picture. It helps us get focused on what needs to happen so we can enter our week with calm clarity. That’s how we stay organized. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanTo get more done at home you need to keep your to do list short. It will help you focus on priorities and feel success, day by day, at home. Every stay at home mom needs a to do list, but we have to do it right if we’re going to experience productivity.These tips will help you get organized at home as you focus on a daily top 3 to do list for optimal sahm productivity. I’ve been a stay at home mom for 16 years – let me share what I’ve learned about how to get more done at home.Keeping a short to do list forces you to do two things.First, we are forced to recognize that we cannot do all that we want to do. We likely will do more than 3 things, but having to choose three forces us to choose what’s most important, write it out, and put our attention there, where it matters most.Second, a list of three is attainable. It’s not overwhelming, and so it’s easier to actually get started. When the list doesn’t look impossible, we’re able to get over ourselves, choose self-control, and just get started.A small space for a to do list reminds us that our time and our energy are limited. We need to be careful to choose what we focus on in a day, because our ability to focus is limited.Making a to do list is something we will get better at with practice. So start today and build the skill of making a prioritized list and following through. Grow in organization. You’re practicing, learning, and growing in the skill of being organized. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanA brain dump – which means write things down – is the best way to declutter your mind. Clear your mind so you get get organized more effectively.Whether you use a brain dump journal or just a cheap spiral notebook, a brain dump strategy will clear your mind and prepare you for organization at home. It’s the first step to declutter your mind so you can declutter your life. If you want to know how to get organized, start with a brain dump.Write things down. All the things.The first step for getting organized isn’t to buy containers or a label maker. The first step is to declutter your head.We start every project and start getting organized by writing down everything in our heads. All those swirling thoughts and big ideas need to be written down on paper. When we write things down on paper instead of keeping them in our head, we can see them and think about them better.When we write things down, we see first why we felt so crazy. We’re trying to keep track of and trying to work for too many things. When we see them on paper, we’re able to more clearly and deliberately choose where to place our attention. It gives us more objectivity as we think about what we ought to do next. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWant to get organized at home? I have 5 essential practices you need to be organized – this is tip #1 and it’s all about your attitude and mindset in being organized and getting organized – and even staying organized.Declutter your home by decluttering and organizing your mind first. When we try to organize and declutter, we usually start with the stuff, but we need to start with ourselves. These organization tips will get you ready to organize your life and be happy.When we are trying to get organized, we need to start off by clarifying what our definition of organization is. Because if we get our definition of what organization is from Pinterest or the magazines, we will think that it means having life go our way.When we think that being organized means that our life will go our way, we are bound to be disappointed and bound to fail. Newsflash: Life will not go our way.Being organized does not mean life goes your way and it doesn’t mean you have matching containers in all your closets. Being organized means that you are prepared and exercising self-control, not control of others or the situation.Organization is simply shorthand for managing life’s resources to the best of our abilities. It isn’t a magic bullet that changes everything. It’s not a goal to be checked off once reached. It’s not a status to arrive at, after which we can do as we please.Organization is on-going, just like laundry, dishes, and sweeping. It is a set of actions we must continually, consistently take. Organization is a state-of-mind as well as a state-of-home. There is no end-point goal, but there are always baby steps and further developments to make.So how does one get from a state of chaos to a state of organization? How can we actually organize life when it feels like a jumbled mess? By taking it one day at a time, one step at a time.There is no sudden overhaul to make or popular bandwagon to join or new leaf to turn over.There is learning to take the right next action – and then taking it – each hour of every day.There is only one kind of control we must have to be organized: self-control.We might not control our homes or our lives, but we should be controlling ourselves.If you want to organize your life, you need to start with your self, not your stuff. Being organized is a set of practices and mindsets, not a status to achieve. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWho doesn’t want a life that is smooth and easy? Years ago, when I had only quite small children and I had immersed myself in books on educational theory, I latched onto an oft-quoted bit of wisdom from Charlotte Mason:"The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days."She’s right, of course, but also wrong. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanTo blaze a trail or to lay down the rails is to intentionally decide and built the habits that we know will make our lives more effective. It will not make life easier – building the habits is hard work and paying attention and doing what’s called for in the moment requires attention and effort – but once intentional logistics become habit, then it takes less energy to maintain your equilibrium and consistency. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSo, last week felt like a rough, terrible week. However, the school checklists got done, the house hadn’t really fallen apart, and we’d had no major disasters. Really, it was a typical week. Why did it feel so bad?This week has felt pretty good. Even though I am definitely not getting to everything I think should be (like exercising), still most of the school was done and the house hasn’t fallen apart. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanMy bedroom was a wreck. Again.I might make my bed consistently, but I just can’t keep my room clean. Maybe I should not sigh so much at the children’s bedrooms.Usually, when faced with this situation, I set aside a morning or an afternoon and dig in. I take care of everything and get the room back in order.Then, inevitably, begins the slide all over again.But this time was different. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanAlthough the hope of a fresh new year often expresses itself in new planners, pretty markers, and a renewed resolve, the reality of life lived with and for others often undermines our planner-related ambitions. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanOver the years I’ve read numerous parenting books, mostly focused on the early years – those years where you feel like you’re going crazy and really, really want to do it all Right. Once you get a teen or two, it’s easy to drift into tired mode and say, “Well, whatever. I tried.” Sometimes you can pull off formula parenting with toddlers, but teens won’t let you – and that’s a good thing. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanCharacter is one of those words we toss around often. Too often, we do so without a clear understanding of what it is.We say we care about character, perhaps even homeschool for the purpose of shaping our children’s character, but what exactly does that mean and how exactly do we go about such a task? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanAs homeschooling moms, our sanity is vital and often at-risk, isn’t it? Here are five strategies I have for keeping my mental and emotional buffer padded. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanNo matter how good our routines are, there are times that they slip. Everyone in the family gets a stomach bug. There’s a flurry of trips and activities in the summer leaving us no time to keep up at home. There’s bed rest or a newborn that turns everything upside down and zaps our energy. A big project or a family emergency need takes all our attention. There is no routine and no resolve that is bullet proof against such times. They will happen. There is no organization secret that will prevent entropy.Organization just means you know what to do to recover and you set aside the time to do so regularly. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanHomeschool life is a muddle, there’s no denying it.I think we are all familiar with the feeling of being overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done and frustrated by how quickly everything needs to be done yet again.We’re always wondering if what we’re doing is right or the best way or if there’s some magic sauce we’re missing that will smooth the path for our daily business and daily interactions.I’m sorry. I have searched and searched, but I have no magic sauce.However, I do have some hard-won principles. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean“No, I’ll do it.”We often associate these words with two-year-olds, eager to enter the larger world and assert their independence.However, too often mothers are the ones saying it – perhaps not in so many words, but by their actions.Would you rather do it yourself? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI’m not the most naturally affectionate or tenderhearted mother. As much as I do love my children dearly, it is hard for me to remember to show kids love like I ought. As far as Myers-Briggs typing goes, I am an INTJ, and one personality description I’ve read specifically calls out INTJ as not an ideal type for mothering. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanYes, read a novel. It doesn’t even have to be a Great Book. Just a story.Get out of your own particulars, relate to someone else, and gain perspective.When we read novels, we are able to see the world from another point of view, experience different settings and lifestyles and circumstances, and are better able to see how small circumstances build into a big picture – into a story. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean