Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is place in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into it's soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no others hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller

Monday, August 02, 2010

My Scheduling journey

I invested in "Managers of the Home" by Teri Maxwell a couple of months ago and have read it thinking it's great but it's taking me a while to actually implement it, so I thought that if I blogged about it I may find more motivation!!!

Today I was filling in the activity worksheets for Mum, then I started on the children's and hit my first problem - I wanted to schedule the children some chores but to be honest although I believe in children having chores I've never been much good at implementing it, in fact to be totally honest I'm pretty clueless - I find it hard enough figuring out what chores I need to do let alone assigning them to the children! And recently I have been feeling really down, like I'm going round in circles, I'm busy doing one job, sorting something out in the house while the children are off making more messes for me to clear up! They have also (and I hate to admit to this) been showing a real lack of care for their stuff recently (or mine) and things are getting broken. I know part of the problem is I need to have a really good declutter but with a needy baby and trying toddlers it can be difficult to find time (one of the things I'm hoping will change with the scheduling)

So, I turned to the chapter on managing your chores and I made myself a master chore list - I didn't use their diligence worksheets for this one but just made a list then created a table on ms word, I listed all the chores (for now as I've decided to take it slowly) and how often they needed to be done and who I was going to assign.

I'm not planning on implementing it fully straight away as I think to get it to work it is going to have to be small changes a bit at a time! But today I asked my eldest (8 yo dd) to get the washing in for me as this will be her job and she did a smashing job!! And I told my son (6yo) that his job will be the vacuming and off he went to get the vacum and get started!!

So we're off to a good start but lets see how it goes - I've also assigned a meal preparation helper for each meal - my 6yo son for breakfast, my 4yo daugher for lunch and my 8yo daughter for tea I'm hoping to implement that from tomorrow, and tomorrow my plan is to make a weekly menu to aid me in shopping and knowing what to cook each day!

If you're interested in looking at the book - you can see it (and purchase it) here

And if you already have the book/plan to purchase it and want to share your journey with me then let me know and maybe we can set up a link to each others blogs to glean ideas and encouragement on our journey to make our homes the best places we can!

5 comments:

Our Family for His Glory said...

Sounds like a great book- I'll have to check that out! And I love how you are taking steps to reach your goal- way to go at getting your kids involved!
Blessings,
Jessica

Homeschool on the Croft said...

Hi,
I don't have the book, but over the years, I have found that when something is written is seems to get done more regularly and with less fuss. Whether it was the 'clearing up after dinner' chores for our older 3 (they rotated on a weekly basis who did which job); or the 'day to day' chores the older girls do, I really found that having them written somewhere for me to check and for them to check was a great help.
Hope it works well for you.
Love, Anne x

Homeschool on the Croft said...

Sarah,
do you mind if I use your 'quote' (well, JR miller's quote!) at the top of your blog? I know it's not strictly *yours*, but still - want to ask?!

Sarah D said...

Don't mind at all, it's a great quote and I wish more mothers would catch the vision :-) xx

Sarah D said...

Don't mind at all, it's a great quote and I wish more mothers would catch the vision :-) xx