First Thing Monday Morning: A Day Late, and...

 ...do you remember the rest of that old saying? (a dollar short, in case you were wondering)

It reflects the frustration of missing an important deadline because you forgot to record the date on your calendar, or you forgot to look at the calendar, or (if you're like me) you looked at the calendar but at the wrong week!

Yesterday I was the poster child for people who are calendar challenged. I got a call early, saying that there was no play practice that morning. That was certainly a relief, because I had not gotten word in the first place that an extra play practice was (as it turns out, it was not) scheduled. I glanced at the calendar and went on with my day...

...virtuously staying away from the computer because I was going to get some neglected things done.

(things can get neglected when you struggle with time-related issues, like calendars and schedules, and self-discipline issues, like routines)

Boy, did I feel good.

...right on up to the point (about 5:30 pm) where I realized what day it actually was, and that I'd missed an important annual event put on by our homeschool group, something we'd all been looking forward to for weeks.

I'm still kicking myself. This is after kicking myself all yesterday evening, diving into housework (scrubbing is a great outlet for anger and frustration) and throwing a grown-up sort of tantrum -- which involves, first, badmouthing oneself out loud, and then when the kids protest, taking it private. The problem with this solution is that it doesn't really solve anything or prevent future flakiness.

I have got -- at this late date -- to establish routines, to get my physical surroundings under control, for starters. I'm so distracted and distractable, I'm feeling less and less of use to anyone (including myself).

One of the reasons for First Thing Monday Morning is accountability, a way to stay on track, though of course you have to get on the track before you can have any hope of staying there. Another reason is to share resources that have helped me. This week's planned-but-not-scheduled-ahead-of-time (I'm learning to do this but I got busy last week and my scheduled blogging time on the weekend didn't happen) was to be a book review. There's this mom who's written an e-book about getting on track. I got the eerie feeling while reading, that we were twins separated at birth.

The book is called 28 Days to Hope for Your Home and has a subtitle of (not for the mildly disorganized). If you want a preview, you can go to this link and see what I read when I first stumbled across the book. (FYI, that link is an affiliate link. If you were to decide to buy the book through that link, I'd get a little pocket money. And thank you.) You can read her latest blog post here. (Not an affiliate link. Just in case you were wondering.)

If you're desperate and want to get started now, and not wait for the book review, you can get the e-book. I'm not trying to hold you to a schedule. (Just me.)

I bought and downloaded her book in a moment of desperation, and have been applying it for about ten days now. It's helping. Things are getting better around here. I've even started the girls reading the book; they need it as much as I do. But I don't have time today to give the book justice, so here's the plan: this week I'm going to be working on next week's post (imagine that, thinking ahead) and First Thing next week you'll see a book review. (If the creek don't rise... as my sister-in-law is fond of saying.)

So, since we started talking about calendars and how slippery and difficult to manage they can be... we'll wrap up with talking about calendars. How do you manage yours? What are your favorite tips for keeping your schedule straight? Share them here in a comment, or please feel free to link up!

Love what you do

"Love what you do." The phrase jumped out at me during this week's discussion at the high school history co-op. (Well, it's "moral philosophy" and not just history, but that's a topic for another day.)

The phrase had made me stop short while listening to Dr. George Grant's lecture on guilds in the Middle Ages, but I'd been busy with something-or-other and didn't really process the thought. I'm often folding laundry or picking up while we're listening to lectures, and the girls are scribbling (or typing) notes, and we don't always pause the lecture to discuss a point.

But here we were in class, and the students were engaged in a lively discussion, along with a couple of the dads who'd come to class to facilitate and guide the discussion time. Love what you do.

All of a sudden, it hit me. The state of our home is a testimony to how much I love (or don't love) what I do.

Don't get me wrong. I say I love what I do. I do love it; I'm privileged to be able to stay at home, to raise my own children rather than turning them over to professional strangers (or strange professionals? ...tongue in cheek; please, hold the rotten tomatoes), to homeschool, with all its many advantages. (And that's a topic for another whole post, or series of posts...)

But I don't do like I love it.

My mom was "stuck" at home. She hated being a homemaker. She was meant for better things. Higher things. She raised her daughters to be professionals. We'd have careers, and we'd make enough money to be able to afford someone else to take care of our homes and our children.

Even though I've chosen home, I'm still following her example, in attitude at least. (Let me just say in her defense that the house I grew up in was well-kept. Not spotless, but the kitchen floor was washed every day, just for one example, and there were never piles of clutter and stuff in the main living areas of the house, and she was always after me to clean my room.)

Love what you do. That's a thought worth pondering, a motto worth adopting. If I were a mantra-chanting type, I think it would make a good one. I have been saying it over to myself periodically through the day, to remind myself where I've chosen my priorities to lie. It's tough to dig out from a lifetime of bad habits. But I think I've found a handle to grab onto.

Monday, Monday

...does that phrase start a tape playing in the back of your head, the Mamas and the Papas, singing in harmony? (showing my age... our girls know what cassette tapes are, though we've pretty much transitioned to CDs now -- I think there's only one working cassette player remaining in our house)

We're still fighting this laryngitis bug. Bought some thyme oil-based wipes last weekend, and Youngest has been wiping doorknobs and computer keyboards and other surfaces to try to kill bugs. We also need to soak our toothbrush heads in hydrogen peroxide, to try to kill any germs so we don't reinfect ourselves. It's on my list for today.

In other news, Monday is laundry catch-up day, King's Meadow lecture day (listen to a George Grant lecture, outline the material together, and have the girls write summaries from the outline), bathroom-cleaning day, and more. Can't overdo, though, or I might relapse.

Still, the prognosis is better than it was last week. Last week, we were disinfecting with Lysol spray, something my mom used to do, and so I've followed in her footsteps. To me, it's the smell of "clean". (Do you have a product that makes you think "clean" when you smell it? For dh, it's Murphy's Oil Soap. Come to think of it, I'm low on that and need to add it to the shopping list. But I digress.) We were getting low on Lysol, so while shopping I picked up a new can and read the ingredients.

...there's ammonia, or something like ammonia, in Lysol. Did you know that?

No wonder I kept getting sicker. Shades of deja vu. Much like my 6-month stint of bronchitis a few years back, I'd start to feel better, do some cleaning, and wake up sicker the next day. A few years back, I discovered it was glass cleaner (many of these have ammonia) that was making me sick. Some time before that I'd had to give up products containing bleach -- they gave me chemical-based pneumonia.

I never would have guessed that there was ammonia in disinfectant sprays...

...anyhow, I researched natural disinfectants and discovered thyme oil. You can buy thyme oil-based sprays and wipes at the store, nestled amongst the more conventional cleaners. The brand we're using right now is Method Antibac for the spray, and Scotch-Brite™ Botanical Disinfecting Wipes.

The smell is kind of strong, but the stuff is supposedly food-grade, meaning you don't have to rinse food preparation surfaces after spraying. We don't mind the smell, actually -- it's less choking than the conventional sanitizing sprays we've used.

So what does "Monday, Monday" mean for you?

Free printables!

How Does She...? is a fun and informational website put together by a bunch of creative moms. Browsing there briefly, I found articles with how-tos for crafts and organizing ideas that range from simple to complex, a sort of something-for-everyone. No, I'm not going to be picking up a drill this week to make the cute children's chore chart, but I can see ways to adapt the craft in a way that my uncrafty fingers can manage.

Anyhow, in addition to projects you can also find free printables at the site to help you in your quest for sanity in a busy household.

They're pretty and colorful and will add a cheerful note to your organizing.

What fun!

Free printables!

While perusing this week's Subscriber Exclusive from Homeschool Freebie of the Day, I followed a link that led to a link that led to free printables from Life Your Way.

They have more than 150 free printables available for download here, including a room organizer chart (I don't know about you, but with the change of seasons we're moving our furniture around into new configurations) and a Home Management Notebook.

So if you feel the need to scratch that "get organized" itch, check out Life Your Way, and if you haven't heard of Homeschool Freebie of the Day, take a look at that site, too, where every day there's a new free download of PDF e-books or mp3 files or links to free resources.