Tag Archives: organization

Organizing your Chores {Blog Hop}

chores

If you’ve been following me for very long, then you know I am a huge fan of training children to work.

Here is a chart from my friend Toni over at The Happy Housewife—a list of age-appropriate chores that children can do.  This does not mean that they do every chore, but it’s a list of ideas for you. If you’re wondering, “What can my four-year old do?”, this this might help you:

chores

Around here, we use a weekly rotation for the “big things.”   Here is what ours looks like this year:

Chores_Fall2013

If you like this one, you can download a printable version of it here!

Bottom line:  Have a plan. Teach your children to help and the value of hard work.  You’ll all be better off for it!

Work the Plan,
signature-heidi

Read all of the posts about “Organizing Your Chores” on these blogs! And read all about the Blog Hop going on HERE!

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Heidi St John Guide to Daylight

Organizing your Laundry {Blog Hop}

laundry

Laundry gotcha down?  Say the word and even seasoned moms like me cringe. It’s just.so.daily.

Or not!  Unfortunately, when I don’t do laundry every day, it piles up.  I was in fall-decorating/school prep mode this week and so the laundry was sorely neglected.  We paid for that today when all the piles of clean laundry were dumped out on the family room floor to be folded and put away.  The upside: five people folding and putting way makes short work of Mount Never Rest.

Families are all different, and different methods work during different seasons of life.  Here are a few quick tips I’ve learned for beating the laundry blues!

LaundryBlues

 

  1. Don’t leave your laundry to chance.  Develop a system!  I wrote about our system in my book: The Guide to Daylight
    1. I’m a fan of chore charts.  Here’s a printable chore chart with many suggestions.
    2. Get your children involved in doing laundry. In our house, everyone is responsible for running their own laundry through if they are eight years old or older.  One person is assigned to make sure the hampers are being run through and then the clean laundry is given to it’s owner to fold and put away.
  2. Organize your laundry room
    1. Use hampers to sort clothes.  In our house, each bedroom has it’s own hamper.  We keep a wicker hamper in the kitchen for kitchen laundry and two in the laundry room for towels and clothes I find strewn around the house. 🙂
    2. Put laundry detergent within easy reach.
    3. Use laundry baskets for individuals or for particular rooms (we have a basket per each bedroom).
    4. Install a hanging rack if at all possible.  We found one that I love two years ago.  Now clothes to be hung up can be hung up straight out of the dryer.
  3. Choose a regular day for washing sheets.  Children can strip their own beds and put clean sheets on with some help. We chose Thursdays—since Friday is errand day and we generate the most laundry over the weekends.
  4. Try to be consistent with the schedule you come up with.  We do laundry every day at our house, but there are 10 of us here on a regular basis. Remember, everyone has bad days/weeks. Sometimes, it just piles up because more pressing things need to be done.
  5. Let go of perfectionism.  That’s all I have to say about that.  You can have your perfect laundry scenario back when the kids are grown.  (We’ll miss this too, I’m told.)

I have never come up with a system that I love for socks.  I’ve tried them all—and right now we just put the mismatched socks in a big basket.  We dump it when it gets full and try to match socks.  About twice a year, I throw the others out.  (I know I can save them for all sorts of Pinterest projects, I just know that I won’t ever do them.)

I’d love to hear your ideas!

Scrub-a-dub,
signature-heidi

Read all of the posts “Organizing Your Laundry” posts on these blogs! And read all about the Blog Hop going on HERE!

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Heidi St John Guide to Daylight

Do your days need some breathing room?

You know how it goes, we schedule something for each day this week. Then one more really great opportunity comes along. Then the kids get invited to a last minute birthday party and you get an email about a makeup soccer game… Pretty soon your week has flown by and you hardly looked at each other!  Or maybe I’m the only one who does this! :blushing: See what Friday’s Friend, Steve Lambert, has for us today about overscheduling:

Did you ever watch your child running with a too-full cup of water or juice? How long did it take you to clean up the mess?  Spills are inevitable when we’re moving too fast and our cup is too full.   Life is like that, isn’t it? When our cups are too full and we are moving too fast we end up creating a mess that needs to be cleaned up.

We tend to schedule our lives until they’re spilling over at the brim allowing ourselves 20 minutes to get from the piano lesson to the dentist and promising to make a dinner for the nice family at church who just had a baby on the same day we’re already committed to having guests for dinner at our home.
To paraphrase one of the many popular Facebook posts of late, “I have too much spare time and wish I had more to do, said no mother, ever.”

Margin - Page 001

Our children need time to just “be” rather than always having to be “doing.”

Life may be like a box of chocolates for Forrest Gump, but I’ve found it to be more like an all you can eat buffet. And I’ve found that when I eat at one of those buffets I end up with dozens of different foods on my plate(s) but can’t really remember any of them when I’m finished; overstuffed and bloated. I’ve eaten so many different foods but I never really tasted any of them. They all just ran together on my plate and the meal ended up being thoroughly forgettable.
But when you sit down to a simple salad and a well prepared steak or seafood entree’ each bite melts in your mouth, the flood of flavors washing your palate in the refreshing taste of lemon, or basil, or garlic; mouth watering goodness to be savored and enjoyed… and remembered for a long time to come.
Are your days like that? Do you pack in so many activities in rapid fire that neither you nor your children really has time to enjoy or savor any of them? By bedtime have you already forgotten whatever you did this morning? Can you even remember the things you did last week that seemed so important at the time? Most of us can’t because we’ve overscheduled our lives.
And then the unexpected phone call or interruption occurs and we end up with a giant mess. We allowed ourselves no margin and once again we stumble while running with our cups too full.
Make time this week to look at your calendar and take intentional steps to simplify. Schedule one activity instead of two. Cancel several existing commitments that you knew you shouldn’t have made at the time. Plan an unclaimed hour or two between events so you have time to savor and enjoy each happening.
We want it all. It’s only natural. But as someone once said, “You can’t have it all and even if you could, where would you put it?”

Purpose to fill your cup less full beginning today.

Plan to walk from one event to the next with a margin of time built in to savor and enjoy the scenery and the companionship of those who are with you instead of scheduling yourself to race from one commitment to the next.
In America we’ve come to believe that if a little is good then more is better and “way too much” is too wonderful to even imagine. I’ve found the opposite to be true in my life. Have you? Sometimes less is more. Sometimes more is less. And if it’s true for you, it’s true for your children as well.
Blessings,
Steve Lambert
stevejaneA busy working father of two, Steve found himself “along for the ride” when his wife, Jane, first began homeschooling more than 30 years ago. But he quickly saw the benefit to Jane’s unique approach to teaching and became an enthusiastic cheerleader as he watched his children’s love of learning blossom. By the mid-nineties, Steve had become a popular author and speaker at homeschool conventions nationwide as his wife’s popular curriculum, Five in a Row, had also become a favorite in many homes across America. Today Steve remains involved in a variety of family-related ministries, public speaking and writing while enjoying the wonderful role of grandfather.  Find audio encouragement and more from Steve Lambert, Publisher of Five in a Row, over at www.fiveinarow.com.

Heidi St John Guide to Daylight