Schedules

In the old days (two hundred or so years ago), a Home Maker (then called a “Good Wife”) not only did the cleaning, she had a vegetable garden, often cared for the chickens (and sometimes milked the cow), cooked all her own food from scratch (including baking her own bread), sewed all the families own clothes and linens, washed them by hand, hung them out to dry, ironed them (no polyester yet), grew most of the medicines her family needed for every day ailments (peppermint for upset tummies, red raspberry for female problems, Echinacea for the immune system, etc), taught the children at least up to what we would call Junior high level and often until college level, all while nursing babies and caring for the sick and elderly. It was a lot of hard work, but oh so rewarding.

There is no reason today’s modern Home Maker can’t achieve the same things and more. We just need to know how to manage our time.

First of all, get your house reasonably under control as outlined earlier. Have a habit of keeping things under control and clean, and good meals on the table. Do some research to see what method of homeschooling fits your family best (if what you try at first doesn’t work, just try a different method. It isn’t that you can’t teach your own. Every parent is a teacher. It is that you just haven’t found your style yet.)

Once you have a pretty good idea what you want to do, it is time to make a plan.

1)   Make a list of everything you want to accomplish in a day. Be sure to devote time to God, eating and sleeping, bathing, teaching, hand crafts such as sewing, cooking, gardening, your own education (more on that in a minute), and some free time (though we need far less than most Americans think we do.)

2)   Make a list of what you want your children to accomplish in a day. Include each school subject.

3)   Figure how much time these things will take and cut them down until they fit into the twenty-four hours God gave us. This is a very important step. You simply can’t get thirty hours of work done in a day, no matter how organized you are.

4)   Prioritize. List each item in the order of importance.

5)   Tweak the previous list until is begins to resemble a schedule.

6)   You don’t have to assign actual time slots to things. Some people do work well that way. However some people work better with routines or to-do lists than schedules. 

For example, I work best if I get up at 5:00 and read my Bible until 5:30. Then I organize my day and practice my guitar until 6:00; write until 6:30, milk the cow, process the milk and start supper until 8:00; eat breakfast, clean up, do my quick-cleans and big cleans until 9:30; Bible lessons and practice poetry until 10:45, etc. 

Other people work better with getting up and reading the Bible until they have read three chapters, practicing one song, writing four pages, milk the cow, process the milk, start supper, eat, clean up, quick-clean, big clean one item, Bible lessons, practice poetry, etc. they may start at 5:00 today and 7:00 tomorrow. They may finish the day’s school at 1:00 or 3:00, just depending on how that day’s work went. This is a routine instead of a schedule. 

(Honestly, I do a mixture. I have a schedule of time slots with meals and bedtime fixed firmly in place. Then I have a list of routines to do within each time slot. I do the most important things first within each slot and if I don’t get to everything, that’s ok. If I practice my guitar longer than normal or over sleep and don’t get time to write before the next time slot (cow milking) I just skip writing for the day. I seldom have a day where I actually get to everything, but over the course of a week or two, everything gets done.)

7)   Add in an extra, unscheduled 5-15 minutes every now and then throughout the day. This is your emergency cushion. You don’t have to panic if Great-Aunt Myrtle calls you unexpectedly for your cheesecake recipe or the toddler decides to build flour castles in the middle of your living room. You have it scheduled in; you just didn’t know what it was for when you made the schedule.

8)   You may need to make different schedules for different days. For example, we do “normal school” Monday through Wednesday, but the children spend Thursday nights with Grandma. So they do work on the on the computer Thursday while giving the house an extra cleaning. Friday they do school with grandma and we run errands. Saturday, daddy will either have a day trip planned or we will just hang around the house or go work at the church. Sunday we have service. I have different schedules for each of these (I don’t actually have them written down except for our basic routine. I just have it in my head what needs to be done when.)

9)   Make sure you leave time to study a new skill. For example, let’s say you want to learn to sew. Set aside fifteen minutes a day to read an instruction book on sewing. When you get it finished turn that same fifteen minutes into your actual sewing time. If you want to learn to garden but don’t know a spade from a rake, get a good book or two (Square Foot Gardening is good) and spend you garden time during the winter reading. When spring comes you will be all ready to get your hands dirty.

10)       Speaking of gardening, make sure you allot time to work in your yard. It needs the attention and you need the fresh air, sunshine and exercise.

More on scheduling next time...