Finding a routine.

 

I had found what I thought was the perfect routine for our family.  We would get up and moving about 8:30 or 9am.  I was so proud.  I always wanted to be an early morning homeschool family, but this was as early as we could do it.  By 10 am everyone would be working on their schoolwork.  They would work until about noon.  That’s when we would break for lunch.  The kids would help me make lunch, we would eat and then take a small 30-45 minute break.  By 1 or 1:30 we would do a “family quick clean” that’s where everyone would clean for about 10 or 15 minutes.  The house would look clean enough after that and then we would sit down and watch CNN Student News and then discuss things.  Then we would read aloud a chapter in a book. Then we would each go back to individual works.  In the morning I would spend my time helping the younger kids with what they needed me to teach or needed my help on.  The afternoon was left for the older kids and what I needed to teach or help them with.  We would be done with school every day by 2:30 or 3.  Some days we had co-op and our routine just got smooshed together a little more, but stayed basically the same.

Then we moved far away. Our lives changed dramatically.

We moved toward the end of the “school year”  so no co-ops to join or classes to get involved in. 

Our schedule changed.  We started waking up later, like 10 or 11am.  Ahhh!  I know.

We are much slower to get going in the mornings.

We have cut out things like CNN Student News and our read aloud due to not having enough time. 

We generally don’t even start schoolwork until after lunch, which is about 1:30 or 2.  So we are now working on schoolwork from 2-6 or later each day.  And having to do some on the weekends. We eat dinner about 7 (instead of 6:30 like we used to). 

This leaves my children doing schoolwork in the afternoons and while it’s working, I DON’T LIKE IT!

I was us to go back to when we are getting done with school about 2:30 not just getting started then.

I need a fresh start in the routine department for us.

7 Life Hacks for the Over Scheduler.

 

I am a chronic over-scheduler.   I almost always feel like I can fit more into a time than I actually can. This quickly leads to burnout.  Don’t let that happen to you.

Over time I have found some tweaks that have helped me. Here are some suggestions.

 

• Make your to do list fit on a 3x3 post it note.  If it takes up more than that, it’s too much.  Prioritize and downsize.

• Schedule around “hard edges”.  Each night I write out 2 index cards.  The first one has my plan from 7:30am-1pm.  The next one is my plan from 1pm on. My hard edges are at 7:30am.  I am up and fully ready for the day.  Thanks to The Miracle Morning.  My next hard edge is 1pm.  That is when we are done eating lunch and having a break.  It is also when some of our co-op classes start.  So that time is convenient for me. I have a hard edge is when I run.  I like to go running either at 3 or 4pm if I can, each day the time of this “hard edge” changes as to what we have going on.  Another hard edge is dinner time.  We eat between 6 and 7pm.  So nothing is scheduled from 5:30-7 for the person in charge of cooking that night.  Everyone is in bed by 10:30pm.  This “hard edge” scheduling, where I have set edges has really helped me to not get behind in what I am supposed to be doing.  I feel just enough pressure to get the items done before the next set of items comes up, but not so much pressure that I stress about it.

• Time blocking. This is very similar to hard edge scheduling, it is just based on certain times.  We don’t always eat lunch at 12:00 on the dot even if it’s written on the schedule.  Time blocking works for me on some things and not on others.  My favorite time blocking sheet is free right here.

• Focusing on one thing at a time has proven for me and is scientifically proven to be more productive.  I am a multi tasker by habit.  I still try to focus on just the one thing I should be focusing on at any given moment.

• Schedule in nothing.  This may seem crazy.  This may seem simple.  It may seem like you don’t have the time to schedule in nothing.  Trust me, if you don’t schedule in down time, you will stress more.  Believe it or not, the down time will help you be more productive.

• Don’t spend more time on a task than needs to be.  Sure I can load the dishwasher in 5 minutes good enough or I can spend 15 being a perfectionist.  Depending on how relaxing I am finding do the dishes being that day depends on how fast I do it.  I am not saying do all tasks as fast as you can all the time.  Some tasks need our utmost attention to detail, other tasks will be just fine if we lessen our time spent on it.  You decide.

• Delegate.  Delegate.  Delegate.  You are not required or expected to do it all.  Life is crazy. You know the saying “It takes a village to raise a child”.  That’s because moms need help.  If you don’t want the village raising your child then delegate something else. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.  Don’t have volunteer vomit.  Be strong and work on yourself first.  Let others take on some of the work load.  Would it make your life easier to hire a cleaning person?  It doesn’t have to be a professional company that you shell out hundreds a month for.  You can pay a neighbor girl $10 an hour to come for 2 hours twice a month.  You can have your older kids help your younger kids with reading. You can use the TV as a babysitter sometimes.  You don’t have to do it all.  You are good enough. 

Do you have any tips for over schedulers?  Share them in the comments below to help people out!

How I became more productive by doing less.

 

I have been working this year on finding balance in my life.  In an effort to find that balance, I have decided to almost completely stop multitasking. 

• No more cooking dinner and blogging at the same time. 
• No more paying bills while I am supposed to be helping the kids with schoolwork.
• No more having my phone downstairs during the day.
• No more cleaning during school hours.

Now I didn’t just stop doing those things all together.

I still have to cook, I still enjoy blogging, I still have to pay the bills and help the kids with schoolwork. 

I just focus on the task at hand and each task has been taking me less time. Instead of taking an hour to pay bills while helping kids with schoolwork at the table.  We do schoolwork for 20 minutes and I can have the weekly bills paid in 20 minutes. That saves me 20 minutes, or 1/3 of my time. Instead of cooking dinner and blogging at the same time, where cooking dinner would take 1 and a half hours and blogging would take 2 hours.  I can cook dinner in 30 minutes to 1 hour and blogging only takes about 45 minutes.  That saves me anywhere from 30-45 minutes together. Also my blog posts get more attention and I can pay more attention to details then.  And… our dinner doesn’t burn.

While often we think that multitasking saves time, I have found in many areas of my life that is actually costs me time as well as costs me giving the task my best.

I have recently found time to get my house as clean as I like it and I have organized my sewing supplies and set up a sewing area and I have even done quite a bit of mending and hemming of my pants for the cooler months.

Do you multitask?

Motivation and Encouragement for moms! Social hour!

It is truly amazing and interesting how much my social life has turned around in the past year, or two.  I will share with you how I reached out and found friends who like me for me. 

I will share with you where and how I get my encouragement.

Finally I will share with you where I get my motivation from. 

Just having friends can make a huge difference in my frame of mind.  3 1/2 years ago I moved to a small town where I knew literally no one.   I joined a local homeschool group on yahoo. Which I quickly found out was very slow.  No one really got together.  Then I decided to jump out of my comfort zone and plan a Valentine’s Day Party. It was a huge hit.  Things were still slow on the Yahoo group and then someone created a group on Facebook and it just exploded. 

The year I held the Valentines party at my house we had 5 families.  The next year we had 60.  This past year we had 120.  As of now our local Facebook group as reached over 200 families.  They are screened that they have to live local and be homeschooling or looking into homeschooling. 

This group, I call a co-op is really a commonwealth of parents.  It works for us.  It has gotten so big now that classes fill up super fast and some moms have chosen to start smaller co-ops within the commonwealth.  This group is usually just used for homeschooling teaching and questions.

I also am a moderator of my local moms group on Facebook.  This group is a lot more strict.  We have a code of conduct, an application process, participation requirements and more.  We have activities weekly.  This group does things like park days, freezer meal swaps, craft days, moms night out and more.

I am also a part of some online groups.  The biggest and best one in my opinion is The Schoolhouse Review Crew.  Along with the review items we get, we are part of an amazing forum and it keeps me blogging.  I am part of some smaller homeschool and homemaking pages as well.  I read blogs because I feel like I can relate and it makes me feel social.  

I am a member of a local Teaching Self Government Circle.  This is a very small group of us (10).  We meet monthly for this. This is great and probably my favorite one.

I have actually been so busy with my kids and these social things that I have had to cut back on some social offerings in order to be a mom and homeschooler.

How do you meet friends as a homeschooling parent?

Check out some of my awesome bloggy friends, who are also blogging in the Back to Homeschool Hop!

 

Laura @ My (re)Viewpoint
Anne @ Upstate Ramblings
Julie @ Nurturing Learning

Wow! - is it really that time. Burnout from last year and changes we are going to make. Curriculum

 

Last year was rough on me. Along with life’s regular hiccups, I ended up working almost full time for a few months, and then cut back to part time.  My brother moved in with us.  My husband switched jobs.  We had to find a new normal, and every time I thought we had it, we didn’t. 

We are in a good groove now and I hope we can keep it up! I have faith!

This year I have made my curriculum choices based on what has worked for us in years past.  My older kids do really well when they have independent work that is different from each other.  I do better when they have curriculum that is the same.  I am attempting to fix it by meeting in the middle.  They will both be doing Lightning Literature, but I will have Tommy through about 1 month worth of it before I start Emily in it.  Science, they will still just work out of the same book to make labs more interactive and fun.

Their personal finance class will be done together through our co-op.  The Promises of the Constitution will be done together as a family.

We are changing up our schedule this year.  In years past we work independently in the morning.  Things we did as a family, read alouds, character lessons, discussions, etc, were all done after lunch.  This caused this to get pushed to the wayside often, as the kids wouldn’t be done with their independent work, or I would have an errand to run, or my husband would come home and interrupt our schedule. 
This year we will meet at 10-11 every morning, except Wed. (Co-op Days).  We will do family school first and then they can do their independent work around that schedule.  I will also be starting my youngest in 5K.  He will need me with him for about 1 hour a day.  I plan to devote about 1 hour to each child per day.  Some of the kids will get the hour in chunks throughout the day.  Not that I am limiting the time to an hour, just that I am devoting at least one hour.

To see an entire list of my curriculum for this year, check out this post!

The crew is blogging about this same subject!

I’m not the only one blogging about this!  Check out some of my awesome bloggy friends.

 

Laura @ My (re)Viewpoint
Anne @ Upstate Ramblings
Julie @ Nurturing Learning

Flourish ~ Balance for Homeschool Moms by Mary Jo Tate {A Review}

Okay – I have to admit I absolutely begged for this book when I saw Apologia Educational Ministries offering it for review.  All that begging definitely paid off. This book is everything I had hoped and more.

You know if you are a blog reader that Balance is my word of 2014.  You know that I have been struggling to find this so called balance.  Well, after reading Flourish: Balance for Homeschool Moms by Mary Jo Tate ($15), I am one huge leap closer to achieving it.



About The Company:

Apologia has been a well known company in the homeschool world ever since I have been homeschooling. They offer everything from curriculum to books and resources to online classes to retreats and more. They are worth checking out.

About The Product:
Flourish is a 289 pages that is full of simple yet genius ways to balance your life. Each of the 16 chapters is divided into smaller subsections.  They are labeled in such a way that if you need to review a section it is so simple to find.

At the end of each chapter is a take action section. This is where you apply what you have read and learned into your own life. These are not always simple tasks and often require quite a bit of thinking and contemplating on your part. I mean, think about it.  Balance is an ongoing process.  It is not just boom, fix it and done.  It is something you have to constantly work on.  The author realizes that and she makes sure you realize it too.
Sometimes to do the Take Action items a worksheet would be nice.  You got it!  There is an appendix in the back of the book with the lay out of all the papers she refers to. Also once you purchase the book you will have access to some bonuses on the authors website.
My favorite part of the book is the Take Action section.  The very biggest eye opener for me was the Time Log.  Now here I will really show you my real one!  No Judging!
I completely realized my waste of time on my phone, either playing games, checking Facebook, moderating a moms group, searching the web, etc. I knew I’d want my time log to last, so I laminated it and wrote on it with wet erase markers.  I knew this would be key in finding out where all my time goes when I feel off balance. I knew I’d want to use it again after each season of my life changes.  Like say, around September, when we start back to school. I know that time management is one of my weaknesses and I will constantly have to work on it.
The whole book is based around the Time Log, there are actually many concepts that you can put into place in your own life to make huge differences.  This Time Log was just so eye opening and life changing, as in my day to day life, for me!

You can see what is tipping your scales to one side or the other and reevaluate which item or area things need to change in.
Our thoughts and feelings:
I am certain that I will read this book again and again, even if it’s just a chapter here and there to refresh my memory on how to stay balanced. I feel like Mary Jo Tate was writing this book with me in mind the entire time.


Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FlourishAtHome
Twitter: https://twitter.com/maryjotate

To see what others think of this check out this post. To see a wide variety of reviews check out our crew blog.
   

U is for UP!

 

I feel like I am beating a dead horse here, but I am just not happy with how our homeschool went last year.

I feel like I focused too much on making money. Don’t get me wrong, we needed it.  My husband had switched jobs and then was injured on the job shortly after that. For now, I am in a position where I work because I like it.  I realize I will probably have to cut back on that.

I feel like I focused too much on other peoples children.  I completely enjoyed teaching my co-op classes and they benefitted my children as well.  I understand that we all have to take our turn in order to create successful group classes.  I think I am going to have to cut back on that too.  Not only the co-op classes they take, but I just don’t think I can teach any this year.

I feel like I focused too much on my phone.  I always had it on me.  I got caught up in the games, and in Facebook.  I realize this and have made a commitment to leave my phone on my nightstand until after we are done with school next year.  This is actually going to go for my children’s phones as well.

I feel like I focused too much on to much.  This year we are completely going to simplify, and while I haven’t made all my curriculum decisions for next year,  I have made some.  The goal is going to be simple (on me) and efficient.

So while I feel like this, my 5th year of homeschooling was a total bomb, it can only go up from here! 

I am excited for the future!

 

T is for Timing!

 

Things in my life have been hectic to say the least.  I have tried and tried to focus on bringing the balance back.  This has not necessarily come easy for me.  I am the type of person that takes on and tries to do way more than I should.  From simple things like, going to many places, traveling to much, over planning, I always buy way more then I need at the grocery store. 

I have recently read a book by Carol Tuttle.  Remembering Wholeness is the name.  This book has taught me about positive affirmations and creating the life you want.  I have struggled with deciding the type of life I want.  I struggle with narrowing it all down.  I don’t want to have to give up the fun things in order to have more money in the bank, but I want more money in the bank.  That kind of thing.  

I have been doing quite a bit of pondering on many things.

I took another job.  This one is cleaning a doctors office nightly.  While I am at the job I often listed to audiobooks or podcasts.  I have began listening to The Savvy Homeschool Moms Podcast and it is amazing.  I feel so normal!  I feel like they are talking about me.

I have received and read the book Flourish – Balance for Homeschool Moms by Mary Jo Tate and this book has been a life changer for me. (Review coming very soon!)

I keep being asked what co-op classes I am going to teach next year and honestly, I don’t have any idea.  I’m not even sure if I will.  I think I may focus more on just my family and create the homeschool life I want.

R is for Routine

 

I would like to start with a truth. 

My original idea for R was to write about rebellion. 

Since I’m a rebel and all I am not going to write about what I had planned. 

Routine is what has saved my sanity lately. 

Remember back when I posted about how I wanted to be more spontaneous.

How do you plan for something like that?  Well next time I will write about other ways I plan so that I can be more spontaneous.

But the biggest way is by having routine.

If every day when my kids get up they follow their list then I know they are ready for the day and whatever we decide to do. 

With a bedtime routine if no matter where we are or what time we decide to go to bed they know the routine and can do it whenever, where ever.

The way I have began incorporating routines is with the bedtime routine. 

I found this great premade one, which is the one we use for bedtime.  I like this one because it is simple enough and has no bedtime snack or drink.  We don’t do those things.  I also like it because it has no time.  If we stay up late because we are watching a family movie, or went for a drive to the mountains to have a campfire it’s fine.  If we need to go to bed early because we spent all day at the pool or park and are just worn out, we can.

Our morning routine is a little more complicated and I am still working out the kinks of it.  I will post more about it when I have it done.  I will explain what I think I am going for though.

I want it to be like

• Wake up
• Eat breakfast
• Get dressed for day

Can I watch TV?  You must answer yes to all of these.

• Did I do all of the above things?
• Have I read for 15 minutes?
• Have I done something helpful?

Can I play outside?

• Did I do all of the above things?
• Do I have sunscreen on?

These routines are for my kids.  I am also incorporating routines for me.

Routines are allowing us to be spontaneous while still having some structure. 

 

J is for Just Great!

So I am not going to lie.  I had pre-written a bunch of posts for this challenge.  I knew I had to blog in bulk to get many of them done.  That has been working just great! 

Then…. I took to long of a break and it caught up with me.  Then I got behind.  Just Great!

Anyways, life has still been treating me well.  I am still feeling good about everything.

We have been wrapping up our end of the year stuff just great!

I have made quite a few decisions about our learning next year.  I have even already purchased some of our curriculum, just great!!! 

I have read and book that is simply just great.
It is Creating Homeschool Balance by Lee Binz. 


This book really has changed my outlook and help me to take the pressure off myself, or put the proper amount of pressure on. Just Great!

Balance

 

 

I’ve been having a hard time in my life in recent months.  I knew something had to change.  I just wasn’t sure exactly what it was.  I have a lot on my plate. 

I am juggling more than I could ever imagine.  I have thought long and hard about the upcoming year and the word I was going to choose for it.  One day, just like that, it hit me.  Smack in the head, literally.  It’s a good thing too, since that’s probably the only way I would have even seen it. 

My word for 2014 is Balance.

Some things I have already done to help jump start this new “Year of Balance” are:

• I revamped my planners and made the whole planning process simpler.
• I cut back my hours at work.  I was just gone too much
• My husband and I took a budgeting course that will hopefully help our budget balance better.  The substantial loss of income has hit us and we are looking to clear that up!
• I am limiting myself and my family in the things we say “yes” to.
• I made some screen time tokens for my children to help them balance their free time and the use of electronics.
• I have been aiming for more balanced meals.
• I joined a 1000 mile club at work to help balance a healthy lifestyle.

This is a whole work in progress and I realize that, so I don’t expect to be balanced just yet.

I am ready! 

Bring on the balance.

Follow along my Life is About Balance Pinterest Board for 2014 to find many ideas and inspiration to gain balance in your life.

What are ways you find balance in your life?  Talk about it!