“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1
Dearest Daughters,
As we continue our journey through housekeeping tips, tools, and graces, I thought I’d tackle a few more today: scheduling, deep cleaning closets and drawers, and quick cleanups with the kids.
When I first got married, I loved to schedule every minute of the day, every day of the week, and every week of the month. I think putting it all down on paper somehow made me feel in control of everything.
The problem is, when you schedule every fifteen minutes and you are a midwife, a pastor’s wife, growing a garden, raising animals, and raising lots of little children, you discover you’re a failure every fifteen minutes, because life doesn’t fit into fifteen-minute boxes!
There may be places and seasons for scheduling every fifteen minutes, but a full family life in an agrarian lifestyle doesn’t seem to be one of them, as far as I can tell.
As long as I had that schedule in place, I felt like a failure, and I also felt I was giving you children the impression that you were failures.
“It’s 8:15, and we don’t have the laundry on the next load yet.” Well, it wasn’t quite dry yet. And on and on it went.
One day I had a revelation. Our days really revolved around landmark moments. Breakfast at 8:00. Family devotions at 8:30. Lunch at 1:00. Dinner at 6:00. Bedtime at 8:30. Those were the anchors of the day. Instead of piecemeal scheduling, I began saying, “We want this much accomplished by breakfast.”
Everyone should come to breakfast with beds made, hair combed, teeth brushed, and animal chores finished. Everyone should come to family devotions with their places cleared from the table. By lunchtime, we accomplished family reading, Bible, math, and spelling.
During nap time, I worked one-on-one with the high school students. Before bed, we all tidied the rooms.
This method of scheduling brought so much more grace and flexibility to our home. It even gave the older children more responsibility to organize the spaces between those landmark moments in whatever way suited them best.
As they grew older, I would even give them entire weeks. As long as they appeared faithfully at those landmark moments and had completed a certain lesson in math or another assignment by week’s end, they could organize their time however they wished.
The more responsibility they demonstrated, the more responsibility I gave.
Another thing that brought grace to me was realizing that deep cleaning didn’t all have to happen twice a year in one exhausting marathon.
Instead, as we moved toward those seasons, I would look for opportunities to deep clean one drawer or one section of a closet.
As a midwife, healthcare provider, and pastor’s wife, I’ve spent a great deal of time on the phone, but I didn’t want that to deprive my housekeeping. So I would set the phone on speaker beside me on the bed, pull open a drawer, and dump out its contents while I talked. By the time the conversation ended, one little corner of the house had been restored to order.
It was a freeing realization that two good things could happen at once!
Another quick cleanup tool came recently from a dear friend of mine, Becca Groves.
Whenever she needed the kitchen, living room, or schoolroom picked up quickly, she would gather all the children together and secretly choose one item among the clutter to be the prize item. Whoever happened to pick up that item would receive a reward—a little money prize or some other treat. No one knew which object it was.
Was it the glue? The scissors? The notebook? The shoe? The sock?
Since no one knew, everyone eagerly picked up as many things as they possibly could.
At the end she would announce, “The prize item was the scissors!” or “The prize item was the notebook!” Whoever had picked it up won the prize.
I thought that was such a clever idea.
I’ve played similar games with you children over the years. Sometimes we’d simply see who could pick up the most things.
Other times I’d divide the jobs.
“Ari, you put away all the toys.”
“Nicolas, you put away all the laundry.”
“I’ll, gather all the books.”
Then we’d race to see who finished first.
Little games like these help make housekeeping feel more like family fun than chores, because after all, that’s really the goal. That we would be a family. That we would work together.
God has given us all these ordinary responsibilities as places where we can meet Him, connect one to another, and discover Him in His creation.
So let’s not forget what it’s all about.
With all my love,
Mom