Saturday Sentiments

My friend Catey does this "Making a Happy Home" thing every Monday. I have loved the idea and wanted to do it myself.

This past Monday I had a great plan that I would start with my kitchen floor. I HATE my kitchen floor. It is vinyl and has this texture to it that holds the dirt, so unless I scrub on my hands and knees with a scrub brush it has these little flecks of dirt that stay stuck to it. I know there are those of you that regularly scrub your floors on your hands and knees, I am just not motivated enough to do it every week. I like the swiffer and use it pretty much everyday the the hard scrubbing only happens once in a while. So I was going to take a before and an after picture of my floor. Well, I did scrub the floor around the back door, in front of the oven and the fridge and in front of the buffet, the spots that get really bad. I didn't take any pictures.

Then after I was finished I took my wheat, rice, and oatmeal containers downstairs to the storage room to refil them. I couldn't open the containers on my own and enlisted my brother in law, Mike, to help me open buckets. I was in such a cleaning mood that, with Mike's help, I started organizing the storage room, mostly moving buckets around. The spot right inside the storage room door is where the soda goes, and has really been a mess. I have been thinking for months that if I had one more set of shelves that could hold the soda, as well as the cleaning supplies, and paper products it would make a huge difference in that room. I was planning on going into town anyway that day, so we added Costco to our list of stops. Mike had found some shelves there that would be the perfect size and didn't cost a lot. That night Darren and Mike put the shelves together and then we organized even more. I gained so much storage space by adding the shelves the room for my food storage also expanded. I can see what I have so much better now, and will be able to tell when I need to restock much easier.


This is how my storage room lookes now. The black to the left is the new shelves. This is seriously as good as my storage room can look.

Now, after all of that, the reason I chose this as my Saturday Sentiments post is that organization makes me happy. The storage room has been one of those scarry rooms in my house that I leave as quickly as I can (not just because its really cold in there). Now I go in there and just look around. I can with peace of mind say that it is finished. To make it even better Mike vacuumed the carpet remnants that are on the floor. It looks great. I am ready for a case lot sale, and have room to put it all. That is happiness.

I quit the daily schedule!

If you know me well, you know I live for a schedule, and routine. It is what helped me during those postpartum months, and saves me when things are in limbo. I love a schedule so much that I have gone so far as to map out my day hour by hour, sometimes even by the half hour. I sat down yesterday to type up the new schedule for this school year, and I felt the frustration coming. I don't like having my days mapped out to be that ridged. The problem is, if I get off the schedule somewhere, or just don't feel like doing something, my day is ruined and I feel like a failure. There are plenty of other things that are worth getting your day ruined over like when you buy a 32oz. Diet Coke and your sweet 6 year old spills it right after you get it home, but that's another issue. I think I'm hard enough on myself without some piece of paper making me feel worse.
So, here is my solution. Our mornings are pretty structured, we start with Scriptures at 7:15, then instead of being driven by the clock its more of an order of things that come next. We have Job meeting, breakfast, devotional, and I make the daily school list. I am going to have certain benchmarks, that keep us going throughout the day, or help get us back on task if we stray a little (I'm all for being open to where a new thought will take us, who know what we might learn along the way, and I don't want to stifle any learning). So, we have jobs and school in the morning, then I start Lunch at 12:00, followed by finishing up school. I start Dinner at 5:00, bedtime is 8:00. I have our big calendar in kitchen that has the times of lessons and appointments, and I can glance at that throughout the day so I don't forget anything important.
I feel a weight has been lifted. I don't need every hour of my day planned in order to be productive! I have my school log that I fill in each day, so that I make sure all the really important stuff happens. Its more important that it happens, then what time it happens. I'm still finding my way down this home-school path, and it has only taken me a year to figure this part out. If I am stressed about a schedule all day, I'm not creating the learning environment for my children that I want. This is huge for me!