Tag Archives: time management

4 Keys to Finding Balance {part one}

Have you ever struggled to find balance in your life? Balance is an elusive thing for many moms, because mothers wear so many hats. Recently I spoke at a conference in South Carolina and my audience was primarily working moms. Now, we all know that every mom is a working mom—can I get an amen–but there are many moms who work both inside and outside the home. It is challenging to try to juggle so many things and to try and please so many different people, isn’t it? From our children to our husbands, employers, We tend to put an awful lot on ourselves, and the weight of struggling to be “everything to everyone” causes so much heartache and so many difficulties—more than I could have anticipated.

This fact resonates with other moms. No matter where I’m speaking, I hear the same stories of women trying to wear different hats throughout their day: mother, lover, teacher, chauffeur, coach, cook.

Finding balance while juggling a family, marriage, homeschooling, career, children… it can be overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be. Continue reading →

When Five Minutes Becomes Two Hours

2 Replies

You all have seen me lately talking about being in real life more and online less. My children are growing and moving on right before my very eyes, and I don’t want to miss these years, these days, these moments… because I know I can’t get them back. Well, I’m not the only one. And one mom even wrote a book about it. I asked her to come share her heart and book with us here so we can all encourage each other in swimming against the current.

“I often wonder what my kids’ memories of me will be.

Will they remember me playing with them, cuddling, reading, cleaning, going places and spending time with their daddy, or will they remember a mom who was on the computer? What will the bulk of their remembrances be?

I want to pay attention, daily, to how I’m spending my time. How I spend my time will add up to my life, and it is just this one earthly life that I have – this one life that my babies will remember and think about one day when they get older. What if someone were to ask them, “What does your mommy love most?” Would they think of their daddy, or themselves, or Jesus, or would they think of my computer? How do they see me spending the majority of my time?

My babes are important to me, and I want them to grow up knowing how to live a real life in the real world. I want them to have strong, lovely memories of me because I know they will be healthier for it, emotionally and spiritually.

How much time I spend online means something to them.

And it means something to me, because I want to really live. I want to live where God has placed me, with the people He’s placed me with. I want to get outside

myself and get uncomfortable and do things that matter. In the real world. For real, hurting people.

And for the people in my care.

So that’s why five minutes matters.

That’s why it’s important to use this gift of time well, because it all adds up to something or nothing. And I want something.”

~ Sarah Mae

{This post contains affiliate links. See my disclosure page for details.}

Five minutes does matter, doesn’t it? Sarah Mae’s book, The UnWired Mom, offers encouragement, vision, practicality, and a two-week challenge designed to equip you with healthy online habits so you can live fully present and purposeful in your real life. Buy The UnWired Mom as a pdf or for Kindle and begin your two week challenge to disconnect today!

Sarah Mae is the wife of Jesse and the mother of the three spunky, beautiful children. She is the author of the best-selling eBook, 31 Days to Clean – Having a Martha House the Mary Way, the co-author of the book, Desperate – Hope for the Mom Who Needs to Breathe, and a contributor to the DaySpring blog, (in)courage.

If you love cozy socks, coffee, Little Women, and candles, you might be her kindred spirit. You can find her blogging {almost} daily at SarahMae.com, tweeting @sarahmae, or Facebooking (is that a word?) at SarahMaeWrites.

Organizing Your Meals {Blog Hop}

18 Replies

meals

I used to dread dinnertime. For me, around 4pm is the hour that I want to throw in the towel and just quit being a mom. Unfortunately, it’s also the time my kids start asking for dinner. Why do they want dinner every.single.night? So, like all good moms, I check Facebook and see all the great dinners that all those “other” moms are making for their families. And then, I feel inadequate. Can you relate?

Lucky for my family, I’ve become a huge fan of slow cooking. I use it all summer, too, for things like pulled pork and slow cooked mac-n-cheese. I’m not much for menu planning but I will say this: when I do it, I’m so glad! It makes my life so much easier! Menus really only take about half and hour to put together, and VOILA! Your brain is free to do other things, like remember to take the toddler to the bathroom on the hour.

So, here are my three top tips for organizing your meals:

Have a plan.
Use your slow cooker.
Enlist your children to help. (See my chores post from yesterday.)

A few of my favorite recipes for slow cooked meals are:

Chalupa
Chicken Curry (Made Simple!)
15 Bean Soup (pressure cooker version)
Split Pea Soup

LUNCH:

If your kids are home for lunch like mine are, keep simple things around to make simple, healthy lunches. We almost always have leftover dinner for lunch, so I like to make sure we have extra at dinnertime. Here are some ideas for easy lunches:

Quesadillas
Sandwiches
Grilled cheese and canned tomato soup
Leftovers!
Mini-pizzas on english muffins (a favorite at our house)
Anything pre-made from Costco (our kids like corn-dogs, which are not very healthy but great in a hurry)

Try making a menu and see if it makes a difference in your stress level. Need a menu planner? Download mine if you’d like and remember, keep it simple! Find a few meals that you enjoy making and use them frequently if you’d like. If you can make it and the family enjoys it, who cares if every Tuesday is TACO TUESDAY?

Download your free printable menu below—be patient, it might take a minute to load 🙂

You’ve Got This,

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

Organizing your Chores {Blog Hop}

10 Replies

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:

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

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,

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

Organizing your Laundry {Blog Hop}

45 Replies

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!

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.
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.
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.
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.
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,

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

Organizing your Spiritual Life {Blog Hop}

5 Replies

spirituallife

About twenty years ago, I remember getting into a fight with my husband. (Don’t look at me that way. There are more where that one came from.) My husband and I rarely have “heated” arguments. They’re more like intense conversations, since he’s the more mellow of the two of us. I used to joke and tell him he was no fun to fight with since he’s so rational and patient. 🙂

This was a little different that our normal spat, though. Here’s what happened:

Right in the middle of our argument, there was a knock at the door. A couple from the church where Jay was a pastor had stopped over for an impromptu visit. Now these two had been married much longer than we had; and they had five children, which at the time put them in the “saint” category as far as I was concerned. I revered this rock-steady couple. So it was just a little bit embarrassing to have them dropping by when my house didn’t look like something out of a Martha Stewart magazine.

I could not hide my emotional state, either. You see, my husband and I were having a hard time with a particular parenting course that was being offered at our church. I am a sort-of “Type A” personality by nature. I like formulas. Jay, on the other hand, felt that much of what was being taught was too rigid and legalistic. Twenty years later, I can tell you with certainty, he was right. But that’s not the point.

My friend Carol sat down on my couch and we began to tell she and her husband why we were arguing. We just laid it out there. I will never forget her words to me. “Heidi,” she said, “I’ve noticed that your coffee table is covered with parenting books and magazines, but I don’t see your Bible here. Your Bible is the most important book. If you never had another parenting book or program to follow, the Bible would be enough. Reading it is the most important thing.”

I was even more embarrassed. I was a pastor’s wife without a Bible on her coffee table. Surely there is some law against that! I’m sure I turned 50 shades of red. But these two, they were telling us the truth.

Carol’s husband smiled. They weren’t being mean or judgmental—there were pointing us to the only place where we can ever find the answers we really need. Parenting books are great, but none of them—not a single one—has all the right answers. As moms, we must be grounded in God’s Word! It’s not enough to read someone’s advice. We must take our concerns and questions to the Lord and ask His help in discerning what is best for our children.

It was the best advice I’ve ever received from another mom—and it changed the way I parented. In fact, it set us on a different trajectory as a young married couple. It’s fine to read parenting and marriage books. In fact, as an author, I highly suggest reading other people’s books! 🙂 But at the end of the day, we listen to the Author of life. We listen to the Lord.

We’re talking about “organization” this week—but I’m here to bear witness to the fact that if I’m not in the Bible on a consistent basis, even my best organizational efforts fall flat. Why? Because without God’s perspective fresh in my mind, the kids are stuck with mine. … yeah, that’s not that amazing.

Listen for the Lord. Read your Bible. Know what it says. Let your children see you reading God’s Word.

That’s the most important thing. Be in relationship with the Lord, Busy Mom. He has the answers you’re looking for.

Be in the Word,

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

Scheduling: Three Tips to Prioritizing Your Day

57 Replies

Years ago, I came up with three priorities to help me decide where I would invest the time I had each day. Today, I use it as a guideline of sorts—a determiner that helps me choose how I will prioritize the time God gives me each day.

With 10 people in our busy household each day, the fact is: I either have a plan or I don’t. If I don’t, chances are good that the day will run me over and leave me on the side of the road for dead.

And we can’t have that.

I am also a fan of something I call “training wheel” schedules. That means that I start out our year with a schedule with the understanding that the job of the schedule is to help me get through the day, not to dictate my day for me. [THIS WAS A HARD-LEARNED LESSON.]

Here are my three priorities each day:

Now, I know that some of you can’t fathom “scheduling” something like time in the Bible, but for me, well, let’s just say it is the gas in my little Mom Car. I need it. As mothers, we are constantly pouring out into the lives of our children and families. We need to recharge our batteries. For me, this means rising early (something that I don’t believe is a biblical mandate but I highly recommend it), getting dressed in my workout clothes and spending a few minutes of solitude with the Lord.

Were there seasons when this was impossible, or at least unlikely? You know it! After seven babies, I can assure you, there have been times when I was lucky to get OUT of bed at all, let alone get up early—but now, with our youngest at 2 and 1/2, I I have found that if I’m self-disciplined, I can do it. Most mornings, I struggle to wake up … but being up early is a gift. The house is quiet. I can think. Pray. Breathe. It makes a huge difference in my life, those precious few moments of quiet each morning.

I can’t stress this enough: good marriages require nurturing. A good marriage is like the “glue” that holds the family tightly bound together. I know this is not always popular but at the end of the day (pun intended), your marriage is the priority relationship in your home. Nurture it. Protect it. Enjoy it.

Honestly, this is an entirely separate post—I’ve written about this before—and I will again; because it’s just.that.important. Don’t sacrifice your marriage on the altar of good parenting. Your kids need your marriage to succeed as much as the two of you do.

This is the “big one,” the one that everyone really wants to talk about. I know it sounds boring and stuffy to some people, but here’s the truth: iSchedule. Scheduling has saved my bacon on more than one occasion. On days when I feel to tired to think straight, out comes the schedule—and the kids know exactly what they are supposed to be doing without me telling them over and over … and over.

On other days, we might have time and energy for some spontaneous unscheduling and I’ll ditch the schedule altogether in favor of reading longer with the children or catching my husband for an impromptu lunch date. Either way, that schedule is there to help keep us moving in the direction we want to go.

Having a system or schedule in place allows my mind to let go of things that would otherwise drive me completely out onto a limb, such as handwriting practice or memory work. If I have it on the schedule, I know it’s going to get done.

Here’s the key to successful scheduling though: there’s not one right way to do it. You’ve got to give yourself freedom to try new things. Your schedule should be as unique as your family is. One season it will work for you, and the next it may not. That, as they say, “is life.”

I make my schedules using TABLES on my computer. It takes some time to figure out the best way to do it—so give yourself time to play with it. I also use planners and I’m a journaling junkie—so much so, that a few years ago, I released a journal just for busy moms like me.

The form you see above available in a editable version, too. If you dare—download it and tweak it for your family. Customize it! Make it your own. You can do it! Remember: the schedule is supposed to help you; not rule you.

At the end of the day, busy mom, only YOU can manage your days well. Be intentional about your time. See your time as a commodity—something you need to spend wisely.

Schedule—with the harvest in mind,

Want to see more? You can find all my books, as well as CD’s MP3’s and other great things for busy moms here:

This post contains affiliate links.

Heidi St. John

Speaking the Truth in Love