For my type A personality my home probably will never be as clean and organized as I want it to be until the kids are grown. But the Lord is showing me all the time in different ways to enjoy the season I am in while my kids are young. I am enjoying the journey of homeschooling but I also want to have a balance with the cleaning of my home. I do think you can have a clean home and homeschool. I don’t think your home will always be perfect if you are homeschooling because your kids are always there. I loved this sign I saw recently in a store that said “Sorry for the mess, we live here.”. This sign made me laugh because it’s so true when it comes to homeschooling. When I do decide to make an extra effort to have my house be immaculate, you would probably hear one of my kids saying “Mom, is someone coming over tonight?”. In our home the kids are usually doing various science projects, putting together puzzles or creating new worlds with the cushions off my couch. I have to resist wanting to pick up that lovely puzzle that my 7 year old has been working on for a week in the middle of my living room. I have learned in my various years of homeschooling that its okay if there are puzzles on the floor or science experiments in my kitchen, its all part of homeschooling. All that to say I still think its important to work as a family to maintain somewhat of a clean house even with the challenge of homeschooling. It also teaches the kids life skills, so that they can learn what it takes to maintain a home when they have their own family.
One of the ways we implement having a clean house in our homeschooling is assigning the kids chores. This year I wanted to keep it as simple as possible with chores for my kids. I took some colorful 3×5 cards and wrote down all the main chores that it would take to keep the house looking decent. I also wrote down “Lunch Duty” and “Dinner Duty” on one card each to give out to one of my children each day. We have 5 children and 4 of them are old enough to do chores. Each day I give 3 cards with one chore on each card to each child. They are supposed to complete the cards then hand them into their school box by the end of the day. This has worked really well and I have been able to maintain the system because its simple. We told the kids that chores were 5 days a week and then on the weekends we just help each other out as a family if something needed to be done. Each day they get their chores done, they earn part of their allowance. If they choose not to do their chores that day, they don’t get that money for the day. We like to do allowance because we want our kids to learn about managing money.
Another way that has helped keep our home clean is teaching the kids to have a “Morning Routine”. My kids “Morning Routine” has to be done before 9am because we try to start school around that time. The “Morning Routine” is to get up, get dressed, clean their room, eat breakfast and we encourage them to spend time with Jesus during this time. We start when they are little, so eventually I can say to them, “Did you do your Morning Routine?” and they know what I am asking. This has helped them get ready for their day and maintain cleaning their rooms. It doesn’t always work perfectly especially with my teenagers, so sometimes we have surprise inspections of rooms. I have had kids try and stuff everything under their beds or in their closets and call their rooms clean. Sometimes it hard to keep a straight face in the creative way they have tried to hide dirty clothes or other junk in their room. I figure its all part of the process of training my kids.
These are just a couple of ways that have helped us stay more organized as a homeschool family. A couple of resources that I that I have found to be helpful in organizing my home are….
Help for the Harried Homeschooler by Christine M. Field
The author has some great hints and tips on chores and just keeping an overall organized home. The book isn’t just about keeping a clean and organized home but also covers about every area in homeschooling. Its helpful for new or veteran homeschoolers.
Large Family Logistics by Kim Brenneman
I think this is one of my favorite books on home management. It has a ton of helpful ideas on organization and keeping the house clean in the midst of craziness of life. Even if you don’t have a big family, the ideas are still helpful and I would encourage you to read this book.
Enjoy the moments and season that you are in, especially if you still have little ones. I am still in the process of learning its okay if my kids want to leave out different projects and build different kingdoms in my home. This is a short season that I intend to enjoy every moment that I have with them.
Helpful Household Tips:
Do you want to get rid of those pesky fruit flies? I have found a solution that works quite well. Fill a glass with apple cider vinegar and put in about 1 tbs of dawn soap. Put it wherever you are having fruit fly problems and its a trap for those fruit flies. They are attracted to the apple cider vinegar and will fall into the glass and not get out. I have captured a ton of fruit flies by doing this. It needs to be change every couple of days.
Drink Bands
My kids would constantly get a new glass every time they wanted a drink of water. One of the reasons that they would do this is because with 5 kids, they would forget which one was their glass. I have a friend with 7 kids and she has this genius idea that has been around for awhile, but I didn’t know about it. She uses drink bands. They were these colorful bands that go around a drinking glass so that each kid would have their color and know what glass was theirs. You can buy a set of 10 or them on Amazon for around $10. This has helped in the amount of dished we wash and we don’t have kids fighting over whose glass they thought they might have. I assigned a different color band to each kid.
Living the Adventure 