Busy about the Father's Business!!

I feel I haven't had much time to post on my blogs lately. I've been doing some homeschool book cleaning. Yep, getting rid of my large collection of school books. It was hard at first to let go. I am glad I let them go because I made some money!! I listed most of the books on Ebay. I made about $250 bucks. Boy, was it stressful though. This was my first time being a seller on Ebay. The picture taking and listing them wasn't stressful....but the packaging, figuring out shipping and then delivering to the PO. It took a lot of my time. I guess that is why I haven't posted on my blog.

The house has been manageable. I've been making the kids work a bit harder than usual. I have made Monday's my cleaning day. It used to be Fridays but decided that Monday's worked best. I will come back and post some more about my Monday cleaning day when I have a bit more time. We'll see how much I actually do have. I need to get school started and this will wipe out a lot of my time. This whole time management thing is quite a challenge. Learning, learning, and always learning to be a better steward of my time. Aren't we all?

Till then I will be about the Father's business,

Chris

Getting on A Routine

For this week's post I am going to discuss getting on a routine. This is very important for the entire family. I am preaching to myself here. Children as we all know, thrive on routines. For some reasons though, my children don't understand the importance of this. I daily tell them "Ok, get started with your chores." or "Come on, don't wait for mommy to tell you" or "How come you are sitting on this couch and 30 minutes have passed and you are still haven't even started?!" By this time, I am a bit flustered with them.

Let me fill you in on a little secret...shhhh....i do the same. Yes, I confess, I am not the greatest schedule or routine keeper. I don't blame my children when they basically are following after mommy. "I Know God, you told me to get up at 5 am this morning." God, speaks to me like this. He is my coach and I love Him for this. He tells me to get my butt up from bed and hang out with Him in the mornings. But when I disobey, boy oh boy, do I feel it later. Not that the Lord is correcting me...or maybe he is. He is just making me walk out the consequences of what happens when I am not sensitive to hear Him and obey him in this area of my life. Basically what happens is things around hear get a little bit ....just a tiny bit....teeny wheeny bit....Can you read this small writing...Chaotic!!! Ok well maybe I am exaggerating just a bit.

I guess in my eyes, I see these giant mountains of messes. I see the tiniest specks on the walls. I see my children acting like a bunch of jungle animals swinging on trees....well, actually they do this sometimes....you get my picture. Now what was I discussing? Ahhhh, yessssss, Routines. So very important to wake up when the Lord says or else you will have children who swing on trees. Seriously though, to survive living in a large family or really any family, we need to not take staying home for granted. God has given us this opportunity to train up our soldiers for battle. To train them to be the best that they can be. You are training them to join the Army, or is it the Marines. LOL....actually my oldest son does want to become a marine.

Running a home is not a thing you do flippantly. It takes much prayer and guidance as to what to do each and every day...each and every minute. With the more children being added in the home. The home becomes sort of like a 24 hour school. Sometimes I feel like I have a 24 hour daycare or I am a sergeant at boot camp...."Alright....MOVE IT, MOVE IT....GET DOWN AND GIVE ME 20!! You might laugh, but I have done this with my teenager. There are times where he needs to exert energy so I tell him to run a block or two and sometimes do push ups. Does he listen....no, not always. I guess because most of the time I am joking.

Back to running the home....... Routines are a must! Break them up into blocks. For example: morning routine, after breakfast, afternoon routine, dinner routine, bedtime routine....etc.. you get your routines down, then you time them to see how long it takes to: Get up, make coffee, do a bible study, computer time (which I have limited myself to 30 mins which is not enough time..working on this though) or what ever you have planned into your routine.

I actually have taken my daily routine and put times next to them. For example....

5:15 Got up

5:28 Made coffee and breakfast (mine--children are not up this early)

5:30 ate breakfast and listened to my favorite preacher

6:15 Prayed

6:30 Computer time.

This helps me to see how long a task does take and to help me manage my time.

Speaking of time....yikes...I should be making kids breakfast right now but I am posting this.

Alright gotta run.....until then

Chris, who will be joining my kids in the trees......

Keeping up with Laundry, not the Joneses

I was wondering what I was going to type this week. I guess we'll discuss laundry. Ah, my favorite past time of all times! Who doesn't love doing laundry? Hmmmm?

Actually, it isn't all that bad when you keep up with it. I rather enjoy folding laundry. I like the smell of clean clothes and I like looking down into an empty basket knowing the day's laundry has been completed. The one thing I don't enjoy doing is putting clothes away. This is something my kids do for me. Each child, with the exception of the the short ones, put their own laundry away. I wash, fold and they put it away.

The key to keeping the clothes manageable is doing them every day if you are a large family, and folding it at a specific time during the day or folding it as soon as it dries. I've tried both. For some reason I can't keep to my scheduled "folding time" which is in the afternoon. I might have to schedule this in the morning...we'll see. Since schools been out, I've been washing and folding as I go and then having the children put their clothes away. So far it's been working great....no more baskets of clean unfolded laundry or baskets of dirty, stinky laundry.

To manage, I usually do about 2-3 baskets of laundry daily. If I don't wash clothes for a few days....I regret it later. If I can wash on a daily basis it doesn't become an untamed mountain of clothes. So I've decided to treat laundry management like my kitchen cleanup. After every meal, we wash dishes, wipe counters, sweep floors, etc... If I tackle laundry like a chore that MUST be done every single day then I guess it seems more manageable. I guess, I've always viewed laundry as one of those chores that when it's overflowing then I do it. I found I treat some of my household chores like I still have four people in our family. I don't know why, it's really strange. I do this with time management as well. Alright, alright....I am learning. Slap! I know I have eight kids, not two. Wake up Chris...HELLO!

So, I finally got it!! Beeeee Con-sis-tent! Aha!! Not hard. Ok, we'll see what happens after this holiday weekend. He, he!!!

(laundry room--before)

(Laundry room--before...my Goodwill pile was in the upper lft corner bags and boxes of stuff!)

(laundry room--after....ahhhh, no more dirty clothes, floor swept...it still needs more order... that will soon come to pass...for now this will do)

(laundry room--after...notice my Goodwill corner...I am down to one small bag that needs to be filled and sent away to Goodwill..need to find a place for the baby tub. I do use it...just don't like it in my bathroom)

Chris