The Importance of the Schedule

“Housekeeping is a real job – a job that needs to be planned carefully if one would avoid becoming a slave to housework or have free time for social activities and outside interests.”

– America’s Housekeeping Book

Everything I’ve ever read about housekeeping and homemaking have always expressed the importance of having a schedule. So as I’ve thought about what I want to do, and the kind of homemaker I want to be, I decided that if I wanted to do it right, and incorporate homeschooling into the mix (I’ll talk about the decision to homeschool later), I would need a really good, tight, schedule. I know I had come up with a “home routine” and I think it was one of the last  things I posted, but I felt like I needed to have something more formal than that. And the below is what I came up with.

When you look at it, it’s overwhelming. And I’m sure I’ve allotted too much time for some things, like homeschool (when I taught a student one on one we would get done with almost everything in 2 hours), and some other stuff. But right now, this is what I’m starting with. It doesn’t allow for much throughout the day. And you’ll notice that I didn’t allot time for TV. You’ll also notice that I didn’t allot time for myself during the day except for the 30 minutes that I’ll have on the Kinect (for working out) and the hour of quiet time, which is really meant to be me time, while the kids relax and just chill. A lot of women would look at this and go “are you crazy?” But there’s a method to this madness.

Moms and wives are the heart of the household. Don’t believe me? Think about it. When you are happy, I bet everyone’s happy. When you’re not, it’s like your whole family is off. I’ve known that for a while, because it happened often enough when I was a child. When my mother was happy, everyone was happy. When she wasn’t, no one was.

But this means that Mom has a huge responsibility. You set the tone for the household, and if your household runs smoothly, your family will be happy, and you will have a harmonious home life. When it doesn’t it shows. Trust me. I know what an unorganized household looks like, and it’s chaos, not only on the outside, but on the inside of each of our family members.

Hence the schedule. I know that vintage housekeeping books never schedule anything on Sundays. And I wanted to do that, because that’s supposed to be the day of rest. But in making sure that my family gets out the door to church on time, I always feel like I’m doing more work than resting, so I went ahead and embraced that day as a family day.  It’s about going to church, and baking, hopefully with the whole family. Or at least with the kids.

Monday through Friday is scheduled like a workday would be, with a very specific goal for each hour of the day. My husband gets up and goes to work on those days, and I wanted to have the same goal for myself. Those are the days I get up and “go to work”, even though it’s in the home. I thought about setting different days as cleaning specific things, but my home is so small that as long as I keep up with certain maintenance activities, there shouldn’t be an issue with cleanliness. Also, with the transition into homeschooling, I didn’t see where I could schedule it in, unless I did it on the weekends, and I refuse to do that. If I do find myself with chores that aren’t being done, I’ll start working it in. Also, once we start the new school year, in the fall, I will start creating chores for Isabel to do, so that way at least some things like cleaning her room she’ll be taking care of.

You’ll notice that grocery shopping is done during Isabel’s bath time on Fridays. My idea is to pop her in the bath and go out and get the groceries we need at the grocery store. I don’t know what it’ll do to Olivia’s bath time, although I’m sure the hubby will be amenable to helping out with her, so I don’t worry too much about that. He understands that it’s easier and faster for me to go out by myself to get this stuff done.

You’ll notice that Saturday is either a field trip day or an R&R day. I want to incorporate weekly activities outside the house. I want us to be out of the house at least once a week, preferably outside. Kids need fresh air, and if we could walk somewhere I’d probably take them out to a park or something more, but where we live now this would be impossible (we currently live on a very busy, and very unsafe, road). However, there are times when we need to stay home, because the hubby needs some time for his school work, and then Saturday will be for catching up on TV, and I’ll probably take the girls out to play for an hour at our local park. You’ll notice Saturday is the only time without a specifically scheduled bedtime, which I did on purpose. I’m really consistent when it comes to what time I go to bed, but sometimes on Saturdays I like to stay up a little bit later. I didn’t change what time I woke up on Saturdays and Sundays though, because you notice that Olivia’s feeding time is at 6:15am, and since she’s only on one to two 8 ounce bottles a day, I wanted to be sure that her feeding times were consistent, since she’s eating almost exclusively solid foods now.

It’s a tall order, I know. And it feels like a lot to do. But I started with it this morning, and I was very surprised how much I got done before 8:30am. I’m remaining a little bit lax with the schedule this week, because we’re not doing homeschool yet, and I want to give myself the option of resting when I need to, and not getting overwhelmed. However, next week, I expect to follow this as closely as possible. I’m proud of this schedule, and the creation of it, and I hope think know it will work out.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for the Menu I created, which I’ll discuss tomorrow, since it falls into the category of health, and tomorrow is weight loss Wednesday.