Assigning My Days

Recently I read "Large Family Logistics: The Art and Science of Managing the Large Family" by Kim Brenneman (Vision Forum, Inc.: 2010).

While I feel like we are a small family (compared to those of our friends and community), this book had much to offer me. Now having three children, I am finding that (1) I must be very organized and (2) there simply is a lot of work to do and there is no way around that. Therefore, adapting home management tactics used by this mother of nine is very useful to me. I was so enthused when reading this book that when I closed the last page of the book, I desired to open up the first page and start reading it over again!

To my religious friends, I will point out that this author is Protestant. My Protestant friends will love it because she hangs all her home management (and parenting) advice on a framework of Christianity, citing Scripture often. My Catholic friends will love it because of the above and because she never says anything that goes against Catholic doctrine.

Ms. Brenneman describes with humor the situation all too familiar to many of us that when she had one baby, she could get "nothing" done, but mothers of large families tend to be more and more efficient and productive. And what of the mothers of yesteryear who had virtually none of the conveniences of modern life (e.g., dishwasher, clothing washer and dryer, vacuum cleaner), yet they were able keep their houses clean, make the clothing, make the food from scratch, and be sane and basically happy and content, all the while having more children on average than we have today?

I could review many aspects of the author's home management advice, but I will limit this post to the old-fashioned habit of assigning chores to certain days (Chapter 18). For much of time, it was traditional for mothers to do particular chores on particular days each week. If you read "Little House on the Prairie," you will notice that Ma Ingalls does this. Now many of us feel "constrained" and "confined" by such an idea. I won't have some calendar telling me what to do! some women think.

However, I am a couple of months into trying this experiment and I am very pleased with the results so far! Two of my worst weaknesses are the paralysis caused by indecision and perfectionism. So, I stare around my house full of innumerable projects, chores, and tasks, and I feel overwhelmed. I don't know where to start, I know I don't have time to do everything perfectly, so I do nothing at all. Then I feel depressed about my doing nothing and I hover my dark cloud of sadness over my husband and children. And the state of the house gets worse.

In an effort to exercise my vocation more diligently, I have assigned tasks to days and weeks. For me and the way our family works, my week goes like this:

Monday: Laundry and Mending Day (laundry is still done 5-6 days per week, but this is the major catch-up day for laundry)

Tuesday: Office Day (paperwork, pay bills, computer time)

Wednesday: Kitchen Day (bake bread, do any cooking preparation work for the week [boil eggs, grate cheese, make and freeze meatballs], do batch cooking, make a meal for a new mother or sick person)

Thursday: Errand Day

Friday: Cleaning Day (again, some cleaning is done daily, but this is the major day for cleaning)

Saturday: This day is unassigned, but tends to be used for gardening and house chores with which I need Chris' help.

Sunday: The Lord's Day and Family Day

In addition, I have been following a cycle of five weeks, in which each week I am looking for pockets of time to work on projects in particular rooms.

Week 1: Bedrooms

Week 2: Den and Chris' Office

Week 3: Bonus Room and Garage

Week 4: Kitchen and Dining Room

Week 5: Bathrooms, Laundry Room, and Sun Room

Since I designed my own routine with much thought, I know that it is not my calendar or some external source telling me what to do. I am telling my time what to do! This shift in perspective causes me to move from a feeling of rebellion to one of conquering. Ms. Brenneman points out many times that if you don't have a goal, you'll hit it every time. (This reminds me of Dave Ramsey saying that if you don't tell your money what to do, termites will eat it.)

Now I don't have to be paralyzed by indecision nearly so much. I open the closet to get something, see my clothing needing to be mended, and I feel panic. I feel I should drop everything and do all my mending (which leads to many started projects all over the house and no finished projects). But then I tell myself, 'no, Monday is mending day. I will mend on Monday. I might not get it all done. If I have 15 minutes, I will do 15 minutes of mending.' And then I feel calm. I know that my work will get done slowly and steadily and eventually will probably be at a very manageable level. I have seen that progress occurring already in only a couple of months. No longer am I finding a project sitting on the dining table or on the guest room bed for three months because I know when I'm going to get to it and I do. Now, maybe it sits there for three weeks, but not three months!

Now today is my Office Day, so I will end this blog post so that I can log the week's receipts into our budget software, pay some bills, log items going to the Goodwill, do next week's meal planning, and do some home school planning for the week!