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

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSo much has to be done in a homeschool day and the homeschool management struggle is real. How do you keep track of the daily work in your homeschool and manage to juggle the work? If you have multiple children and multiple subjects to teach (and that’s pretty much all of us) then we have a lot to keep track of and a lot to make happen. So, I thought that we’d talk about different methods and strategies for keeping track of all that stuff. So, how do you keep things straight in an average homeschool day? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSo, I like to say that all organization projects should begin with a brain dump. So, I thought that the best place to start would be to talk briefly about what a brain dump is and then we can start talking about tips and hacks and troubleshooting and what works for us and that sort of thing. A brain dump is basically sitting down with a pen and paper and just writing down everything that’s in your head, either everything everything or just everything about a particular problem or a project, maybe, that’s driving you crazy. So, when you get it down and onto paper it really clears your head of the details and lets you look at what’s going on more objectively, it gives you a little perspective. David Allen, author of GTD (Getting Things Done) says that when you use paper to hold the information and the details then your mind is free for creative thinking and problem solving. So, it’s kind of like decluttering your brain.Virginia Lee: Which we could all use.Mystie: Especially with Christmas over and the New Year, it’s time to declutter.Virginia Lee: Most definitely. Well, I have a question for you about that.Mystie: OK.Virginia Lee: Do you have any brain dump tips about doing it on paper or can it be done in an electronic version or way? I’ve always been curious about that.Mystie: I’ve done it both ways. It’s kind of depended on what I’m brain dumping about because sometimes I just need to make a list. If my mind is really working fast I can type faster than I can write so then I’ll just open up something in Evernote and just start typing. I think it really depends on the person and the way you think and process. If I’m going to be writing sentences at all then I probably want to be typing because I’ll write better sentences, I’ll think through what I’m thinking about better if I’m typing, fingers move faster, but if I am not sure of the idea, like I’m trying to figure something out and brainstorm, maybe I want this thing over here and then I want to put something over here and make it a little more visual then writing it down is the better way to sort those ideas. And then, also, there’s just sometimes I’ve just had a notebook on the counter with a pen so that just here and there I can add a little bit.Virginia Lee: That makes sense because on paper you can do things like draw arrows and circle things and sometimes, that definitely if I’m doing a brain dump, helps me to have something circled or this drawn over there, just because I’m visually seeing that I’m moving it that direction.Mystie: Well, at least I know if I’m doing a brain dump into Evernote I know where it is, which is not always true if I started on the back of an envelope.Virginia Lee: That is true. I think one of the biggest times I do brain dump is in the middle of the night. Sometimes when I lie down to go to sleep my mind is just going fifty miles an hour so I find that I, a lot of the time, do a brain dump, and then I lay back down. That’s definitely one of my biggest brain dump tips.Mystie: Does it help you get to sleep?Virginia Lee: It does, because I’m not trying to remember anything or flush out an idea because I don’t want it to go away. So, I feel like, OK, I’ve put that all on this pad by my bed or I’ve started using the Notes app in my phone because my husband’s sleeping and probably doesn’t need me turning on a light in order to do a brain dump.Mystie: I think that’s the real power of brain dumping: it just puts it somewhere where your mind isn’t worried or stressed out about keeping something. It’s safe, it’s right here, it’s outside of my mind. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI’ve created a few iterations of a chore board over the last year and a half. First it was a poster board frame, and I wrote directly on the hard plastic frame. That worked well, because I could tuck it away quickly and easily when I didn’t want our schedule, consequences, and school assignments on display.Then, my 3-year-old used it as a slide (which means he was climbing up it). The frame and plastic cracked. I tried to salvage it by simply sticking printed pages on it, but that simply didn’t work as well nor look as good. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanOk, I just can’t get enough, and I hope you can’t, either.There’s more than one way to menu plan, and your personality will predict which one is most likely to work for you. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanKeeping track of what each student is supposed to be doing, and making sure they are doing it is one of the struggles of homeschooling moms everywhere. Here’s how we’re managing it with a free online (and mobile) app called Trello.Some people use spiral notebooks for a daily list; we use Trello for weekly lists. Here are the details and even some video tutorials to get you started! 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanA decluttered kitchen is one of the first projects to undertake when minimizing and simplifying your home life. If you’ve ever wondered how to organize your life, you’ve probably thought of your cluttered kitchen. A decluttered kitchen helps with an organized, prepared life.So let’s take a look at the steps to achieving the goal of a decluttered kitchen. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanYou know I love lists. And I also love books. So what could be better than a list of books?How about a list of my books?I won’t try to convince you that you need to catalog your books, because you probably don’t. But having a catalog of the books on my own shelves is something inherently appealing to me, and it might be to you, too. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI know it seems overwhelming.I know even just planning dinner sometimes seems overwhelming.But, seriously, who wants to wake up and decide in the pre-coffee fog what to feed the troops for breakfast?It has to be decided ahead of time. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWe homeschool without a schoolroom. Like many homeschoolers, the kitchen table is where much of our work happens. We use our kitchen table, we use our dining room table, we use our couch, and we make due with the space we have.I could write up a great-sounding post about why we don’t have a school room on principle. Something about school blending in with real life and not being contained in a separate box.But the truth is that I’d rather have a playroom than a schoolroom, a place for the toddlers and preschoolers to freely set up a block city complete with railroad tracks, a place for the air hockey table we inherited, a place for the computers that are used both for work and for play. And our house layout doesn’t have the space for both a playroom and a schoolroom. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI think taking the kids with me on my grocery excursions is a valuable thing to do. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t exhausting. But, my kids are homeschooled, and they do need to get out just as much as I do. Plus, they are homeschooled, so they think going to the grocery store is a grand day out. Plus, I am a homeschooler, so I think it counts as a field trip and “real life learning.” 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanThe real trick about having a tidy or organized house is for everything to have a home. Things without homes are clutter. Things with homes can be put away, leaving space for life to happen. Mid-day, the house might look chaotic, but by evening, if everything has a place to go, it can look decently in order again. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanAck! No milk! Off to the grocery store!Was there something else you needed? There was, wasn’t there? What was it? Oh, look, this is on sale. That isn’t, but I think I need some. Might as well wander down this aisle to shortcut to the other side.Oops – walked straight past the pasta, and we definitely need some of that.How many grocery store trips feel like a random grab-bag and confused wandering? It happens to us all, but if feeding our people and keeping the shelves stocked is an important part of our service – and it is – then we need some better strategies for making the most of our grocery trips. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanMystie: That’s fun. So this season, season 8 of the Simply Convivial podcast is going to be about organizing homeschool stuff. So I thought we’d just have a brief conversation about how stuff gets organized in our homes. I think it’s easy when you say “organized” to start thinking of the magazines or the Pinterest where organized means everything looks really pretty and looking pretty is nice especially if you’re a personality who’s good at that but I’m not. Really, being organized is about having a home for things and knowing where things go. So everything has a place so that then you can put it away because it has a place. So we’re going to talk about some of the ways that we give stuff homes in our homeschools. Virginia Lee, what kind of homes do you have in your homeschool?Virginia Lee: Well, I guess one of my biggest things is that I’m not a big stuff person so if I have the stuff in my house it has to have a home and if I can’t find a home for it, it probably means I don’t need it. So I guess that’s one of the biggest ways I look at stuff. In fact my kids give me a hard time, “Don’t throw this away, we’re going to put this here so mom can’t throw it away!” But the other big thing of what I think of when I’m going to organize stuff is I need it to be practical. I’m not very good, like you said, I’m not one of those personalities where everything is pretty and maybe always pleasing to the eye but with the way our crew works is that it needs to be practical, it needs to be sturdy, and it needs to be in places where we can actually use it.Mystie: Right. I think that’s key. Because we have a basement so I could reserve a shelf in the basement and put things away on the shelf downstairs where they’d be out of the way but if they’re too much out of the way I’ll end up not actually using them.Virginia Lee: Yes, we are the same way. We do school in all different locations in our home and so we don’t use a schoolroom, that doesn’t really work well for our crew. So, for instance, we do Morning Time in our living room and I have a bookshelf in our living room and one of the shelves in that bookshelf is reserved for all of our Morning Time books and that shelf is placed right where I sit to do Morning Time normally and then our piano is in our living room as well and the piano bench has a … you can lift the top up … and so that’s where we store all of our Morning Time binders. So that works really well for us. They’re out of the way where little hands could reach them or mess them up but they’re very accessible and it’s something that we already had that we could use, I didn’t have to go buy something else, which I always love that, rather save the money to books. And then for some of our other stuff (we live in a tri-level) so we definitely have different things on each level of our home. So we have one of our levels has those shelves from Ikea that are sort of more like cubbies. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWe’ve done grocery shopping a couple of different ways and I think you’re right it really does depend do you have a baby, do you have older kids going with you, you know, that kind of thing. For awhile we used to, at the bulk store that we have, you can put in online orders so you can just get online, choose every single thing you want, and place the order, and you do have to be prepared because you can’t do it the day you want to pick it up, I mean, you have to do it at least the day before, they need a day to get it and process it but what we used to do is I would stick that order in on Saturday because dad was home and so that allowed me a chunk of time to get online and have complete thoughts without interruptions, get that put in, and then we’d go to church on Sunday and then when church was out the bulk store was sort of near our church so we’d just go as a whole family over there, then we’d check in at the little kiosk and they’d bring our order out in carts, and they would have to go gather frozen or refrigeratable stuff but since we were all together we would often time get a slice of pizza, then we’d have lots of helpers to load and unload but we didn’t have to do any of the shopping and so it really cut down on the amount of time, my sanity 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWe recite mottos during our Morning Time.I think the first place I encountered the idea was when listening to ACCS teacher training audio (back before there were CiRCE conferences or podcasts). The elementary classes of Logos School, at least back in the old days, had mottos they recited daily that then the teacher could call to mind when they were relevant.As a family, we already had a few little sayings – ways to keep a frequent command familiar, memorable, and pithy.Over the years I’ve collected mottos, adding to and subtracting from our repertoire, but finally settling down on a select few for this year.This year, these mottos are behind the daily tab of our binder, and most days we go over them quickly. We alternate this selection with a selection of pithy Shakespearean proverbs each term. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWe are often encouraged to set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. It sounds great, and those goals do have a place. But when much of our lives is about developing people (ourselves and our children), we can’t put ourselves or others into such neat little boxes. We must treat people as people instead of as projects. So for many of our hopes for the future, we’d do better to focus on our processes – what we do today and tomorrow and the next day – rather than on reaching a particular outcome. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanIn the first episode of The Scholé Sisters Podcast we talk about how levity – lightheartedness, humor, cheerfulness – is a burnout prevention method. When we sink into seriousness, into get-it-all-done mode, into self-importance, we’re bound to be pulled down, lose our joy, and want to give up.To prevent burnout and also to recover from it, we need to shed our anxieties and pride – and we do that through laughter. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhat does being productive even mean?It’s not simply getting more done, but getting the right things done, done well, and done cheerfully. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanYou’ve met her. Maybe you’ve been her. Maybe you are her.Some homeschool moms might scare you. Some homeschool moms scare their children. But I think we’ve all experienced another kind of scary homeschool mom: the one who scares herself.Are you scary? Who do you scare? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanRather than grandiose goals for a new year, we should be focusing on small habits that we can build upon. These new year habits continue giving, because they become automatic. So we can gain their benefit without expending much energy to do so.A habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSometimes it’s weather, sometimes it’s illness, sometimes it’s simply fatigue. If you’ve been homeschooling for awhile, you’re probably familiar with the feeling: homeschool morning blah.It’s normal; it’s natural; it’s bound to happen.But it’s also one of a homeschool mom’s most insidious enemies.No, I’m not exaggerating. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI’ve written before about making my bed and why it is a goal worth pursuing, two and a half years ago, actually, and while I make my bed occasionally (which is a great improvement upon never, by principle), it is hardly a habit. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanIs happiness an emotion reserved for those who have an easy life? Right now I have a child who thinks happiness is a life without math fact drill pages.And, he’s onto something that misery is dragging one’s feet and taking three hours to do what should take one three minutes. However, cause and effect might be different than his perception. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanKeystone habits, according to Charles Duhigg, are habits that give “small wins [that] fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.” Incremental change is the best approach, and keystone habits are the increments that have the biggest impact. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanIt was about 5 years ago now that I deleted my old blog and started over from scratch, choosing the name Convivial Home for my new effort. A real estate agent promptly offered me a large sum for that domain, so I sold it and switched my name to Simply Convivial.I did not want to let go of the word convivial – though perhaps it is a more unusual word than I realized. Convivial has been a stake-in-the-sand word for me: it does not come easily, but because my principles and philosophies continually point me back to it, I need to build it in our practices and also in my own attitude. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSo much goal setting advice out there focuses on achieving certain outcomes. We’re supposed to set our eyes on a particular result we want to reach and work until we get there.Maybe – maybe – this works with projects, but very little of our lives at home are project-based. Most of our time is spent in the day-in, day-out routines that build our home and family. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSome homeschool moms – maybe those with school-teacher backgrounds – have elaborate homeschool lesson plans – full sheets of papers full of ideas, notes, references, activities, and objectives.Many homeschool moms have no lesson plans at all.I have never been in that first category, but more often find myself in the latter. Even though I love planning, lesson plans seemed more like a waste of time than anything else. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanOver at Simply Convivial I’m in the thick of a series about using Evernote for homeschooling, and I thought I’d make a companion post here at Simplified Organization about household records and plans with Evernote. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhat, out of everything in the plan, is essential to make our homeschool day count?Because more often than not, at least at my house, the entire plan doesn’t get checked off. So what does need to happen, without fail? Here’s my version. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanQ: "When you scan things to Evernote, is this time consuming? Do you scan it to a PDF file and attach the file? I’d be very curious as to what this process looks like for you. I tried with a manual the other day and it seemed to take forever, and I had to try several different ways to get it to work."A: It’s fast and easy, I promise! 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanIt’s one thing to buy the books and supples, to make a plan, to create a chart and quite another to actually pull it off in a typical day.Days never go exactly as imagined, but it’s worth the time to imagine it even so – and the more you practice imagining it and planning for contingencies before the heat of the moment, the better you’ll become and rolling with the punches of a real-life homeschool day in a household bustling with people. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSo, there’s no doubt that I love Evernote. I’ve been writing a long series about homeschooling with Evernote, I include tips and strategies for using Evernote for home management in Paperless Home Organization, and Evernote is simply my external brain. Everyone should have an external brain of one sort or another, and Evernote is mine. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanDoes the word schedule make you break out in hives? Do you picture yourself harried and deflated at the end of a day on a schedule? Maybe for you, like me, that’s a vivid memory, not a theoretical picture.There’s a lot of visceral reaction against schedules in the homeschool world, and I totally get why. I mean, can I schedule diaper blowouts and my doorbell ringing and the toddler pulling an open bag of powdered sugar onto herself? Where does that go in the schedule? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI know.Menu planning is a pain.I am all about the tips and tricks to minimize the time and brain-power we pour into menu planning. It’s something we need to do, something we need to become consistent with, but it doesn’t have to drain us or take an entire Saturday morning. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhat I really, really wanted was a system so perfect that I wouldn’t have to expend any effort at all, I could just hum along doing whatever I wanted and everything would just work out.Turns out life doesn’t work that way. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI’ve written before about the benefits of writing a daily to do list on an index card, but for several months I’ve experimented with using Evernote for my task list instead of a daily index card – just to see how going all digital would work out for me.I have gone back to writing out a short daily to-do note, but I learned a lot from my little experiment. Using Evernote for a daily to-do list and journal is definitely a viable option with several benefits. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI love new year goals and resolutions, but they can lead to discouragement unnecessarily.Sometimes we conclude that because we can never reach and maintain our ideal, then it is the ideal bringing us down. We’re tempted to stop trying to clean the house, organize the toys, lose the weight, balance the budget, or train the children because we never reach our desired (usually unrealistic) goal, or if we do, it doesn’t last long. However, the primary problem is our own paradigm, not our goal. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanThere is so much to keep track of at home.Not only does everyone want to eat three times a day, but the house also has a fast trajectory down Entropy Lane.There are apps for home routines. But will we really check yet another app consistently and regularly? Do we need one more place to keep information? Whenever feasible and efficient, I think it’s best to consolidate into using as few apps as possible to manage your home and family. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhat sort of elderly person will I be? Of course a large part of the situation will depend on circumstances and what my particular physical or mental ailments will end up being. But what of the different temperaments? Will I be a sweet old lady, grateful and encouraging up to her dying day? Or will I be a fault-finding, cranky old lady?When whatever my infirmities will be come upon me — no matter the age at which it happens — what will it do to me? Can hard circumstances turn you into someone you were not? Or do they reveal who you actually were by removing your defenses? 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhy do we do what we do?Sometimes, an end result can look the same even when the motivations behind the action are opposite. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanKeeping short accounts leaves no room for resentment, no room for bitterness. It also means that even in the midst of argument, I am more careful in how I express myself, or where I let myself go — better to not sin in the first place than have to ask for forgiveness and make it whole and right again. It also means I can express myself openly and honestly and have confidence that we are both striving to reach unity and oneness, and in the ways we fail on our way there, restoration will be sought. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI set the timer for fifteen minutes.Surely in fifteen minutes, I thought, I can make a difference in this room.The room was mine. The mess was an assortment of laundry, books, accumulated junk, out-of-season kids’ clothes, and random bits.I knew there was no way I was going to finish cleaning the room in fifteen minutes, or even that day, but I had to make a start. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhen the Bible says things like “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”God means it. It’s true. It’s what we are to strive to attain, and what we need to confess when we fall short.There are no excuses, only repentance. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWhat happens when we organize something?It gets messed up. Inevitably.We catch up on the laundry, but more clothes hit the hamper within hours.We wash the dishes and clear the counters, then dinner is over and the kitchen is in ruins, with stacks of dirty dishes.We put the kids’ closets in order, but by the end of the week the neat stacks are in shambles.We put our own closets in order, but then comes a busy day, and it all falls apart.We clean out the fridge, and then the next day a big spill happens.It is so tempting to think that our work is undone, a waste of our time, useless, futile.But it isn’t. I promise. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI don’t feel guilty for not doing the things that I have to do, I feel persecuted that I have things to do.The pesky homekeeping tasks should just all evaporate and leave me be, leave me to do whatever I want, whatever I feel like, all day. Stupid housework. Down with housework! Up with play! Housework is boring. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanMy tagline is “organize your attitude,” because I think our own mindset as moms is crucial in our homes. This theme fits well here, too, because an organized attitude is at the root of having a convivial home. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanSometimes “purposeful” and “intentional” can turn into “taking oneself too seriously.” Anything that doesn’t go as planned (and isn’t that usually most things?) is a temptation to discouragement or at least to the laser-eye of analysis. Instead, it might just be a reminder that God is in charge and we are not, and we need to be willing to laugh at ourselves. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanWe really must begin with organizing our attitude before we organize anything else.We might think that making a plan and working a plan is all about the planner, the app, the method, but the truth is that how we think about our planning going into it matters tremendously. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanI wanted answers, a formula, a guarantee. Do this. That works. This will guarantee results. I thought it was a dichotomy. Either what I do as a parent will guarantee certain results or how I parent doesn’t matter, is inconsequential. It was either find the Right Answers or give up. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean

3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/cleanMany of us are task-driven. We want to see things done, accomplished, finished. This is what the world tells us is productivity. 3Rs of Meaningful Housework: simplyconvivial.com/clean