Organize, Organize, Organize
When you homeschool your children, being organized is crucial. When you work at home, being organized is crucial. To be organized you need time to get organized and this is often where people get overwhelmed.
There are two basic, but very large, areas of organization in a home. One is the organization of time and the other is the organization of stuff. There is also financial organization, but I find that focusing on this, even though very important, is difficult until you’ve conquered the first two. And then there’s the organization of goals, priorities, to-do lists, etc…Again, it is hard to focus effectively on this if you feel scattered in terms of time and overwhelmed in terms of stuff.
Getting started is harder than continuing. If you are swimming in disorganization, where do you begin? I believe it’s with the stuff. There is a wonderful book called It’s All Too Much, written by Peter Walsh. The book offers “an easy plan for living a richer life with less stuff”. It’s too much to spend time here summarizing what Mr. Walsh has to say…so read the book. The plan is simple and clear and he makes his method accessible to even the busiest mom and dad. Once your space feels calm, it is remarkable how much easier it is to function.
As for time. There are two things to look at. The first is the quantity of things that need to be scheduled into any given day or week and the second is the actual scheduling. Since we’re dealing with a family here, get a big calendar. There are some calendars on the market now that have section within each day for each family member. Take the time at the end of each month and the end of each week to write down the appointments, events, commitments of each family member. In addition, block off your homeschooling time, your work time, exercise time, and family time. It’s amazing how things are more likely to get done once they are written down.
Each adult and teenager in the family may also want to have their own “daytimer”. If you are working in or out of the house, this will be a necessity. Take the time set out for work on the big calendar and break that time down in your personal calendar. Make sure you allot time for meditation or taking a walk. Again, if it’s written down it’s more likely to happen.
Do the same thing with your kid’s homeschooling time. Once you have time blocked off on the big calendar, have a separate one for organizing what each child is working on and when. If you are using a curriculum, this is somewhat simplified. If not, you may want to try planning a few months in advance.
Not wanting to overwhelm you with too much at one time, I’ll save the financial organization and the to-do list, for my next post.
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