Tag Archives: time management

5 simple ways to start your day well

A few years ago I was pretty sure that I had mastered a morning routine. I was in a good rhythm, and rarely missed a beat. But after my third kiddo was born, I couldn’t find a way to get back into a routine. Having three was my tipping point, and the morning routine went right out the door.

Over the past couple of years I’ve come to realize that there will be no such thing as a perfect morning routine. Especially when you have a handful of children. But, you can find a way to start your day well.

A the list maker that I am, I decided to jot down key elements that needed to come out of my morning routine in order for me to start my day well and put my best foot forward each day. These were:

Feel Awake
Be Alert
Feel Healthy
Be Mentally Refreshed

I’ve found that these things combined were not only a benefit to myself, but also to my family, and anyone who comes into contact with me. I kept it simple, and uncomplicated. I left out the list making, the workouts, and anything I considered busy work.

5 SIMPLE WAYS TO START YOUR DAY WELL

1 – Get up before your kids

I know, I know. Sometimes, it’s not that easy. But having time without the kiddies jumping all over you first thing, is super important and essential to helping you start off your days well. It doesn’t matter if you work outside of the home, or are a stay at home mom – you should try and get into this habit. I’ve been both a work-out-of-the-home mom and now I’m a stay-at-home-mom (working from home). Waking up before my kids is a make it or break it for my day.

Are your children early risers? Gradually get them into the habit of staying in their rooms until you call them out. Or, if they are old enough, put a clock in their room and tell them they can’t come out in the morning until “x” time. If that isn’t an option, set them up in the living room with some quiet toys like coloring books. The key is to get them into the habit that until Mommy is ready for the day, they should try and stay calm and quiet.

2- Shower/wash your face

A shower first thing in the morning always wakes me up – mind and body. But sometimes I don’t have time for a shower first thing, or I’ve already showered at night. That’s when I make sure to at the very least – wash my face. It won’t have the exact wake-up effect as a shower, but it will take you from “bed-face” to “I’m-awake” face!

3- Drink a tall glass of cold water

You have gone 6-8 hours without fluids and you need to give your body water. Dehydration messes with how you feel and look. Your body needs fluids first thing in the morning.

Why cold water? Drinking cold water first thing speeds up your metabolism! Your body has to warm up that water as it enters your system. Which means you will be increasing your metabolism in the process.

4- Drink Green Tea

I’m a coffee junkie. But for first thing in the morning I prefer some green tea with honey. Green tea is loaded with antioxidants, it improves brain function and doesn’t contain as much caffeine as coffee. You’d think the less caffeine would be a deal breaker, but for me I feel lighter when I drink green tea first thing. I’ve also read the green tea helps with fat burning and lowering your risk of several types of cancer.

5- Read your Bible and pray

Starting the day off in the Word and prayer helps to set the right tone for the day. Refreshing yourself daily in the Word keeps it as a constant reminder throughout the day. If you don’t know what to read, or what to pray about, check out the different reading plans on YouVersion. They offer them by topic and you can listen to the audio version right from the app. I would also check out Heidi’s podcasts. They are all so encouraging, and she takes you right to the Word where you can read the verses yourself and pray over them.

A tip if you have little ones: Take it one step at a time. If your kids are not in the habit of being calm in the morning while you get ready for the day – you can’t expect them to get into that habit instantly. They’ll need time to get into to the new routine, so don’t stress it and don’t overwhelm yourself.

These are my 5 must do things in the morning if I want start my day well. When I skip any of these, I feel it throughout the day. Without these, I can’t even begin to tackle to-do lists, workouts, homeschooling, or chores. I would LOVE for you to share what are some of your must-do things in the morning to help you start you day off well.

A Busy Mom’s Guide To A Home Gym

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Fitness. Work outs. Losing weight. Five words most of us homeschool moms laugh at because come on – what homeschool mom really has the time to head to the gym every day and get a workout in? I try, trust me. But more often than not, I just can’t swing it!

As a homeschool mom, kind of shifts your time availability for these sorts of things to very little, or none at all. By the time your school day is finished, you’re getting dinner ready, the house picked up and looking forward to when the kids go down to bed. And in the morning, even if you did have a half hour or an hour to work out – it just seams impossible to get out the door to head to the gym. Or maybe, you just can’t afford the monthly gym memberships, and if you can – the gym day care is never open when you need it to be.

I think I’ve faced each and every one of those obstacles. And for those of you who share the same obstacles, I’ve compiled a list of items that will help you set up your own home gym, and easily get a full body workout without ever having to step foot in a gym.

1. Free Weights

Free weights are the essential to get a good work out. I wouldn’t be surprised if you found a pair or two at your local thrift store. I would even check out Craigslist or local garage sales. You ideal set would be a light weight, medium weight, and a heavy weight. For the heavy weights, you don’t really need two. I use my heavy wight for overhead tricep extensions. It’s easier to grab one heavy weight with both hands, than trying to isolate muscles with two individual weights. But, it’s totally up to you.

2. Resistance bands

I think I avoided resistance bands like the plague. But when I finally picked up a pair, I ended up loving them! The best kind are the ones that come with three options for resistance – light, medium, and heavy.

3. Medicine Ball

Over the last year, I’ve really fallen in love with medicine balls. Ideally, you would toss one back and forth with someone else as a warm up. Fully extending your arms on each throw. If you don’t have someone to do that with, you could do the following as part of your warm up:

Stand straight up. Arms relaxed. Now bring them to the front of your hips, just right below your belly button, where they fall naturally when your hands are holding each other. Right there is where you will be holding your medicine ball.
Next, do a squat. When you are in the seated position, fully extend your arms (medicine ball in hands).
To end. Stand up, and extend arms above your head, with the medicine ball in hands.

That’s the whole move. Repeat about 10 – 15 times, or more if you feel you can go more. It’s a great warm up!

4. Balance ball

I have a love hate relationship with my balance ball. Most of them come with ideas for workouts you can do with them. I like to use them for sit ups, push-ups (legs on the ball, hands on the floor), and to balance on while I work out my upper body with free weights.

5. Pull up bar

A pull up bar can be a bit intimidating, but it’s awesome for upper body workouts. I would suggest buying this pull up bar because it has multiple grip options allowing you to target specific areas of your upper body, working muscles from different angles. If you have ever done P90X, you’ll recognize it.

So that’s it! Just those 5 things and I promise, you’ll be fully equipped and ready to do full body workout at home!

Time for Mom to Stay Sane During the Holidays

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The stores are alive with the glittery, sparkly beacons of Christmas. Carols hum through the speakers, adding a jolly skip to the step of the shoppers. Can you feel it? “Holiday” is in the air.

I love this time of year–deeply. At the same time, the busier calendar and the growing “To Do” list can easily weigh me down and suck the joy – and the meaning – out of the holidays. I love this time of year so much, sometimes I overextend myself.

Meanwhile, bickering children hyped up on on sugar and Christmas Anticipation, can “ruin” my perfectly planned Intentional Moments and Special Memories. Low on time and patience, I soon find myself frustrated and bitter over ruined plans.

If I don’t watch my back, and my time, “tis the season to be jolly” can turn into “tis the reason to be grumpy.” It’s not pretty.

In the middle of my to and fro and bicker and grump, I sometimes wonder if I’m doing it right. Am I missing something?

Here’s the thing we have to remember, Sweet Moms–there is no one “right” way. There is only “as the Lord leads us each to do.” As long as we are following God’s lead and giving Him our very best, then we are doing this right.

God didn’t choose Elizabeth to be the mother of John the Baptist because she was perfect. God didn’t choose Mary to be the mother of our Savior because she was sinless. But God did use these righteous and obedient women for His Glory. Most importantly, it was GOD at work in their hearts that enabled them to be righteous and obedient – not something they inherently contained within themselves already.

We may not be an Elizabeth or a Mary, but God uses us, too. We are raising and growing children for God, too. He takes our obedient and willing hearts and enables us to go and do and serve. If we seek His will for our days, our calendars, our holiday seasons, and our memorable moments, He will lead us to make wise decisions and give us the patience and grace we need for the stressful moments. In Christ’s strength – not my own.

I have noticed that, as usual, time is key.

When I am low on time, when I am running late, when I am overbooked – the time crunch leads to stress and craziness.

When I spend my time on the wrong sorts of things, make unwise decisions, procrastinate or waste time – I feel overwhelmed.

When I let the busy schedule take the time I’m supposed to spend with God, when I forget to stop and seek His will for my day and His presence in my activities – I feel like I’m failing. One stressed out Crazy Mom.

Three Tips To Stay Sane During the Holidays

Don’t fill up the calendar.
Don’t focus on the “stuff.”
Spend Time With God

Fill up with prayer and The Word before you give and give and find yourself running on empty. Seek His will and His wisdom when choosing which activities to join and which to forego this season so that you leave plenty of room in your calendar. Remember that neither getting it “right,” nor having a great holiday season with your family, nor serving God and glorying Him is measured by the “stuff.”

It doesn’t matter if you forget to do a Christmas craft, if you have to separate squabbling kids in the middle of an Advent reading, if you have many presents under the tree or if you have great decorations. What matters is the time. The time we spend with our family, our kids, and serving others. And yes, taking time for ourselves, time to refuel and refocus and reorient.

Yes, time is, indeed, a very key factor.

This holiday season, let’s make sure that we make enough time for ourselves that we don’t go crazy, shall we?

Image Source Credit: Christmas Table by Petr Kratochvil

Balance for Busy Moms

All I Want For Christmas…is My Sanity!

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“Holidays can be fairly bloody”…a great quote from one of our favorite Christmas movies. Sadly, there can be some real truth to that statement. When our daughter was very young, she would refer to this time of year as the “holler days”. In many families, that can also hold true.

I do enjoy the holidays…I love the baking, the decorations, the traditions we have established, the gift buying and the anticipation of Christmas Day. But that joy can quickly be sucked into the vortex of unmet expectations…sometimes our own and maybe someone else’s. Often it can be the members of our extended family.

So as wives and moms who want to honor God, what do we do when we have expectations and obligations heaped upon us? What about that difficult relative that we have to spend time with?

First and foremost, I think it’s a priority to pray about what God would have you to do and talk with your husband about the way that you want to spend the holidays. What are your priorities as a family? Although we do not want to be selfish with our holiday time, we also need to preserve our own family core unit. We need to have time for our own traditions and enjoy part of that time together. If you have younger children, making sure that they are getting enough rest and aren’t being pushed to the point of sheer exhaustion is important. That goes for you too, Mom! The best way that we can really be engaged in the activities we ARE doing and honor God through them, is to guard our hearts and sometimes that means resting, taking time to process and refresh.

Secondly, pray that we will have the ability to be gracious with others. We all have family members that are difficult to get along with, maybe thoughtless, even rude. I was thinking about this the other day and praying for wisdom as to how we might have grace toward people like this and I was led to Psalm 25. I encourage you to read the entire chapter, but David is crying out to the Lord for guidance. “He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way”. I need to humble myself and remember that I have been saved by grace alone. And though I sometimes feel like others are “worse” than me, it’s the same grace that saves each one of us. Jesus loved me while I was still a sinner. I had nothing to offer him, but he offered himself in my place. If the Son of God would humble himself in that way for me, I certainly can do this for that difficult person. Maybe for no other reason than out of gratitude to God for saving me.

Another thing that can be very helpful is to think about what that difficult person has taught you. Even if what he/she has taught you is what NOT to do, say, etc., that is a blessing. It’s something to bear in mind and be thankful to God for and the spirit that comes with a thankful heart can be a way for God to pour out His grace through you.

Lastly, never forget that our first purpose is to honor and glorify God. May your heart be able to rest in Him throughout this busy time of year and find complete and utter joy in the fact that Jesus is “Emmanuel”… God WITH us. He is right here walking with us, not expecting perfection, just wanting to fellowship…we are His. We welcome you Lord Jesus!

“We will keep our eyes on you

We will keep our eyes on you

So we can keep our hearts on You

Lord, we will set our eyes on You”

-A Mighty Fortress is Our God

Finding Balance {Part 4} Setting Boundaries

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Have you ever struggled with setting boundaries in your life?

Today, we are on step 4 of the four-part steps of finding balance. Remember, we are using the acrostic word HATS, because of all many HATS we wear as women. Here they are:

H- Have right priorities
A– Act according to your priorities
T– Take the pulse of the relationships in your life … and finally …
S– Set boundaries

I think there should be a verse in the Bible that talks about how every one of us will have struggle with this in their life, everyone is going to have a difficult person they have to deal with, because we are constantly learning (as women, especially) to set boundaries. We need to set boundaries with relationships with the opposite sex; we need to set boundaries with friends and family members that sometimes suck the life out of us I wrote about this a few posts back. We need to be a NO DRAMA MAMA! That means that we learn to say “no.”

As Christians, we have a sometimes hard time setting boundaries because we want to be godly, we want to be gracious, we want to be good, and we don’t want to say no.

The good news is, while it is hard to set boundaries, you can learn to do it!

Jesus set boundaries, too! There are verses in the Bible that talk about Jesus getting away by Himself to talk with the Lord, and to bring back His spirit into alignment with the Holy Spirit so that He could do what God wanted Him to do. There are many times when Jesus says, “Father, help Me.”

As women, we need the Lord’s help, don’t we?

I love this verse in Proverbs 29:25. It reminds us to seek God’s will. If we’re trying to find balance, the place to begin is to listen to God first and not other people. The verse says, “The fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.”

Mom, love is not always giving people what they want. We see this in Jesus’ life that He often set boundaries. He drove sellers out of the temple, He rebuked the Pharisees’ hypocrisy, He turned away potential followers, and He left the disciples so He could spend time alone with His Father. If Jesus needed to refresh and come away, surely busy moms need to do the same thing.

We need to set boundaries in our own life. Often times when we forget to use boundaries it leaves us despaired and exhausted, and we look at the end of the day and wonder where did our time go?

Part of setting boundaries in our own life is learning what our own limitations are. When was the last time you asked “What are my limitations?” Knowing our limitations helps us set boundaries. What drives one mom crazy is going to make another mom happy: we are not the same.

I have a dear friend and we’ve been friends for about 25 years, and…she thinks I’m crazy. Mainly because she could never live my life. She thinks my schedule is crazy, she thinks me having all these children is crazy, and I look at her life and think I could never live her life—after all—it would be so boring!

The reason our friendship works so well is that we get each other. We know that we are different people with different temperaments, and we each have a set of different limitations. It sounds easy enough, right? But learning to set boundaries according to your limitations and your priorities is a lifelong pursuit for most women I’ve met.

Don’t forget about priorities, either. Once you have figured out what really matters to you, you can begin to build those boundaries around your priorities, and base your boundaries on what is important in your life. For example, if having too much on your calendar stresses you out, you’ll struggle in the more important role of taking care of your children the way you want to. In this case it’s time to let some things on the calendar go or push them to a different season.

Speaking of seasons, remember the tree in Psalm 1? Among other things, it reminds me to bend, not break. I love the imagery of a tree planted by the streams of water. I can imagine the wind blowing and that tree bending back and forth but it doesn’t break, because its roots go down deep in the soil of God’s Word. That’s what we want in our own lives—to be so rooted in Christ that our priorities and our boundaries come from Him.

If you’re in a place where you need to make some changes, start today. Take some time, if you haven’t already, to ask yourself those four questions:

What is important to me?

Where am I going?

How do others perceive me?

What are my limitations?

We can constantly feel a pull of wanting to do what other people want us to do, but, in the end, we need to do what God wants us to do.

Are you ready? You’ve got this!

Balance {Part Three} – Relationships Always Come First

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Do you ever wonder how others perceive you? Are you keeping a finger on the pulse of the most precious relationships in your life?

Today, we are on part 3 of 4-talking about finding balance in your life. I want to direct you to Colossians 3:12-14. It says,

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones (that’s YOU), holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

The “T” in this series that I am doing is for Take the pulse in the relationships in your life. Remember, the H is for have the right priorities and A is for Act accordingly upon those priorities, and now T is for Take the pulse in the relationships in your life.

Moms, relationships always come first. I have said many times, especially to my homeschooling friends, we should never let a math book come between us and our children. The relationship of the child will always be more important than the math lesson. So, relationships always come first. People come before processes, people come before possessions.

It’s so easy in this life to carelessly railroad our way through as we try to get school done for the day or tasks completed that are weighing on us. We say things that we shouldn’t say. We’re unkind to those who are closest to us. Most moms I know want to set an example for people who are watching. Let’s be real—and start with those whom we are closest to. It’s often easier to be kind to the man behind the counter at the bank than it is to treat our own family with kindness.

I believe this is because we’re most secure with our closest relationships. The guy at Walmart doesn’t have to live with me, so he can call the manager over and throw me out of the store if I’m rude to him, right? Our kids don’t have that option—so it’s easier to show the ugly side of ourselves to them.

We have a choice about how we treat others. Colossians 3 starts with, “Put on then…” I love that! It means we have a choice! We either put it on, or not. Paul is saying, put it on, as God’s chosen one, a holy and beloved. He is trying to make a point to us! He’s saying God loves us, and because of God’s great love for us, we can put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.

I love this one, because it’s the hardest one for me:

“If one has a complaint against another, forgive each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

It makes me wonder, how many times have my children seen me be a person I would not want others to see? How do I react to them when they sin against me, when they disobey me, when I’m frustrated? It’s easy to lash out and say things that I do not mean, or (let’s be honest) things I do mean them but I should not say.

Are we keeping our finger on the pulse of the relationships at home?

Ask yourself, “How do others perceive me? How do my children perceive me? How does my husband perceive me? How am I treating my husband?”

As you go about your day today, ask the Lord to put others first in your life; take the pulse of the relationships in your life.

When I was a young girl, I went to an evangelical free church and we used to sing a song called Jesus, Others, and You, some of you might remember it. The point of that little song was to help us learn to prioritize our relationships. Jesus comes first, then others, and then ourselves.

We don’t live in a culture that backs that up anymore, but the Bible says that we are loved with an everlasting love. For the Christian, this means that we not only have the privilege, but also have the responsibility to share that love with the people around us.

We live in a world that is hungry for real relationships. Not online relationships, but the kind that survive missteps and hard times. Relationships are worth investing in. Take the pulse of the relationships in your life, moms.

As you work to find balance in your life, remember that relationships always come first.

Heidi St. John

Speaking the Truth in Love