A System that Works

My mother, she did her best, but she never really had the chance to teach me the skills I needed to take care of a home and family, with me being away at school most of the time, and in actuality, I was much more of a tomboy anyways, and could be mostly found helping my dad with yard work and building things. So I have always struggled with the hows of keeping my home. But I am thankful that as I have been trying to learn, that I've had the oppurtunity to have my girls right by me learning as well.

Over the years I've tried many "systems" to keep my home clean. The first one that really worked for me was Flylady. She helped me to establish routines and zones and order in my home. She explained to me what keeping a home was really all about, and gave me the details I needed to be able to do it. For the first time, I had a system in place, and not just a haphazard way of dealing with the chaos that came with running my own household.

That worked for me for many years....though, I often fell off the wagon, and slowly struggled my way back on many times. It was what helped me establish order. But over the last year or so, as our family dynamics and size has started to change, I felt a need to change our system for keeping up with it all as well. We are after all a homeschooling family of 6, now soon to be 7 people.

I was thankful to find the book by Kim Brenneman called Large Family Logistics. She was similar to Flylady, but a bit different in her approach, and she included much wisdom on dealing with a large, homeschooling family. So I started to adapt her system to our family. And just like Flylady, I have repeatedly fallen away from doing what I should be doing each day. But when I have managed to follow through, I have seen the fruit that comes with that.

So my goal in the coming weeks is to really work hard at putting this system into place, and learning the daily routines that come with it, so that when I come home from having this little one, not only will I have a clean and organized home, but children and a husband who will know how to help me keep it this way while I am recovering, so we don't slip right back into the chaos that we are currently dealing with. Over the next week,  I will be posting each day, sharing what our daily routines look like for that day, along with some extra goals I'd like to work on during this time as well. Then if I am able, I will post weekly to share our progress in how we're doing, and like I said before, perhaps post some pictures of that progress. I hope you'll join me!

Blessings,
sara