A Healer’s Geste

Schedule

After reading and thinking through Managers of Their Homes, I put together my schedule. Mostly it was a reflection of life as it already was. I didn’t attempt a major overhaul of How Things Are Done. My primary concern was figuring out where to fit in maintenance housekeeping, something I am rotten at keeping up on. A week or two previous I had switched from Laundry Day to one load of laundry on most days (I do about 4-5 loads a week, so if I plan to do a load every day, Monday-Saturday, it works out perfectly because I’m bound to not actually get to it 1 or 2 times a week), and I had figured out what really needed to be done and how I was going to break it up. What remained to be seen was when I would do it. Sad to say, it took me two or three months of doing school regularly right after breakfast to realize that the house was falling apart because after breakfast is my normal, natural “let’s get work done” time of the day. I was using that momentum for school now, and I needed a new place on the schedule for housework.

This is the third iteration, but I think I’m done tweaking. I think this works. Or, as I have learned from Elly, who learned from her dad, who learned from elsewhere, “It works if I do.”

Ilse, though “scheduled,” is mostly a wild card. I make her stay in her playpen during the first part of school, then she sits with us for about 2 minutes when we begin reading, then she wanders and does her best to get into paper and crayons and math blocks or anything else belonging to the boys.

Oh, and I have only gotten up at 5am — as scheduled — about 1/4 of the time. I have been up by at least 6am 3/4 of the time, so then I just give myself 15 minutes instead of 30 for each category: exercise/devotions/breakfast&ready/work. However, in reality, I haven’t done it exactly that way probably once. However, “before children get up” is my time to do those things, and generally it mostly happens. I would like to fit in 10-15 minutes of garden time in that early morning space, now, which I will only be able to do if I really do get up at 5. Getting up early starts the night before, though, and I’ve not been good about going to bed at a decent hour.

This has been a good tool for “seeing” my day. I know I have wiggle room time, project time, and I know what I should be doing when I set my hand to chore times. I have been much, much better at keeping on top of things since I set this in motion; although, honestly, the schedule has been a tool toward that, but the driving force of it is a conviction that it’s my job and I need to get off my rear end, stop puttering, and do it. Just do it, you might say.

So, anyway, time to work this for another month or two, then start tweaking again for “first grade” changes.