Embracing the Schedule

Welcome to the June edition of the Simply Living Blog Carnival - Around the House cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. This month, we write about what we do to keep the little things from overwhelming us. Please check out the links to posts by our other participants at the end of this post.

The greatest thing my family ever did to keep up with our housework was our system of 5 Things. Not only was it the first "New Year's Resolution" to ever make it out of the month of January, we are now 6 months into it with only a few adjustments needing to be made for our surprisingly nice spring and our drive to start family biking. So, if you haven't read that post, go do read it now. Then come back and I can tell you how we created a system for keeping it up with the rest of our schedule.

Soon after starting our 5 things, my 3 children came down with the chicken pox. It was a very mild case for them all, and it was a solid month of quarantine, waiting for them all to finish. In that time, I learned I needed to embrace The SCHEDULE.

My husband and I are not schedule oriented. We like to go with the flow, see what happens, and just enjoy. Turns out, that is harder to do with kids. Even homeschooled ones. The first thing I had to look at is how to display our schedule. Some people prefer the ease of online calandars, so everyone can sync up and know what is going on, wherever they are. Unless you are my husband, who does not want a smartphone, or even one that connects to the internet. So we went to the great, old fashioned wall calendar. A giant one.

I filled in our recurring events, and found a day for each household chore (aside from daily dishes and laundry). I also arranged things for plenty of open days so it would be easy to move around if we decided to ride, or didn't feel well. You know, Life. Then I used a highlighter to make it easy to differentiate between chores, homeschool group, adult nights, and meetups. I also keep an updated planner to take on the go.

Then each evening at dinner, we look at the calendar, discuss what our plans are, and write our 5 Things on the refrigerator white board. It is great to include our children in the process, and they really get into participating the planning, making them more apt to help in the execution.

Who knew something as simple as a giant wall calendar could have such an impact on how our house is run.

Thank you for visiting the Simply Living Blog Carnival cohosted by Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children, Laura at Authentic Parenting, Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy, and Joella at Fine and Fair. Read about how others are incorporating simple ideas around their homes. We hope you will join us next month!

• Embracing the Schedule - Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy writes about how her family learned to keep on top of household life by creating a family calendar.
• Simply: Car Free - On the one-year anniversary of selling her car, Lyndsay from ourfeministplayschool, reflects on her family's decision to go car-free in urban downtown Toronto.
• The Importance of Finding Your Housecleaning Rhythm - Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama outlines how she keeps her housecleaning under control with a daily rhythm. Even her 4 year old gets in on it!
• Keeping It Simple At Home - At Living Peacefully with Children, Mandy shares some tips for keeping the clutter and cleaning at bay.
• Cleaning? - In her post, sustainablemum outlines how keeping clutter to a minimum makes for an easy life when trying to keep her house clean and tidy.
• Simply Downstairs - Jorje of Momma Jorje has found a way to simplify laundry AND bedtime... all with one simple move.
• In Shares, not Chores: Helping your Kids Help You Without Coercion Laura from Authentic Parenting tells us how she gets work done with two little kids and without coercion.