Saturday, February 22, 2020

Let's Talk About Routines

Hello friends!  Like a lot of homemakers, I have been all over the place with routines in my 25 years of being home.  Probably like most people, I go for spurts and then life happens and I get off track.  When I first found Fly Lady, back in the days of homeschooling littles, I thought my life was set!! I had found my guru!! I remember printing out routines each week with a grid labeled Monday through Sunday.  Nothing would make me happier than checking those boxes off.  And I think along the way I learned to be more organized. 

Flash forward to this past year, again with littles and a house that needs my attention.  (Just an aside here, this stage of life is hard.  As moms, we labor to raise our babies, teaching them to do chores alongside us, and they grow up and become a vital part of the housekeeping team, but then they leave you but said chores do not go away! So here I am with work to do and fewer hands to do the work.) 

It came to my attention a few months ago that dear Fly Lady now has a free smartphone app. Glory be!  All her routines in one place and I can add my own for customization!  Plus I can check them off as I go, a win. 

Right now, my goal is to have my morning routine done before babies arrive between 8 and 8:15AM.  It goes better if I get up at 5:30, but I have not mastered that yet. 

Morning Routine
  • Make bed
  • Ride bike 20-30 minutes
  • Get dressed to shoes (includes a shower, teeth, etc...) 
  • Eat breakfast
  • Empty dishwasher
  • Start a load of laundry
  • Kitty box #1
  • Cat bowls changed 
  • Swish & swipe bathroom(s)
  • Powder room reboot
  • Adjust thermostat
  • Talk to my precious mom
Then, I try to get my afternoon routine done by the end of naptime, usually 3PM. 

Afternoon Routine
  • What's for dinner?
  • What can I do now to make dinner easier later? (Lazy Genius question)
  • Drink your water ( my cue to refill my water bottle)
  • Reboot laundry
  • Fold clothes
  • Homeschool paperwork/emails 
  • Sweep kitchen
  • Be a reader!
I am usually pretty good at getting both morning and afternoon routines done, but my after-dinner routine suffers at times, depending on if there is an after-dinner activity or a dreadful attack of apathy occurs. My future self depends on this routine happening, but so far it is the hardest to make happen. 

After Dinner/Before Bed Routine
  • Check calendar and forecast
  • Hot spot clean up (dining room table is usually the worst offender)
  • Shine your sink
  • Vacuum living room, set up for babies (I do this in the morning a lot.) 
  • Personal hygiene
  • Go to bed at a decent hour
  • Kitty box #2
  • Put away laundry
  • Bible

I am blessed to have Mondays off to get errands run, appointments made, groceries bought and my house blessed.  The key to Fly Lady's weekly home blessing is to do the middles!  Set your timer for 15 minutes and quickly go through each item.  It does take me longer than an hour but I do not mind.  Fly Lady also breaks the house into 5 zones and there are lists to do in each zone as well as weekly missions.  I am hit or miss on those.  She suggests a daily 15 minute decluttering, but I try to at least do a weekly one.  This summer I plan to do a daily one in the garage.  I need to purge in there but it is too cold right now. 

My Weekly Home Blessing
  • Vacuum
  • Dust
  • Mop
  • Windows/sliding glass door
  • Trash/recycling
  • Tend to plants (water, fertilize) 
  • Change sheets
  • Change bath towels
  • Save the veggies (My own reminder)
  • Declutter in this week's zone 
How about you?  Do you have routines?  Do you wing it?  I'd love to know.  :) 

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Five Things Making Me Happy This Week

Let's just jump in, shall we?

1.  FaceTime!
Regularly we have FaceTime calls with Grace and I love it. Valentine's Day, we set my phone in her spot at the table and talked away as we enjoyed our meal.  It really is almost like she is with us. This is the best gift she could give me!  We frequently text, but nothing compares to seeing her smile and hearing her melodious voice.
Pretending I have a woodstove. 


2.  My Fly Lady routines.
This might be a whole other post soon.  I just can't say enough about how having good routines will get you through the day that ends up successful.  I have 3 routines, morning, afternoon and after dinner.  They are essential! More soon.
Valentine's Day gift!

3.  My Instant Pot!
I know.  I can't say enough about my IP.  Just this week I have made soup, yogurt, chicken stock, and cheesecake.  It would have been more but when I am making yogurt it is tied up for 9 hours plus time in the refrigerator, so I had to use my oven and my cast iron dutch oven this week, too.  Haha.  My 6 quart IP is on loan to a friend who is enjoying it so much that if she can fit 2 racks of ribs in it she will keep it.  Otherwise, she will buy herself an 8 quart.  I have enjoyed helping her overcome her fears of the pressure cooker and see her soar this week!
Trevor hard at work. 

4.  My Kindle.
I am reading again.  I am out of my drought!!  Currently, I am reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.  So far it is a pretty good book with an interesting plot.  One of my Fly Lady routines in the afternoon is "Be a reader."  I decided that if I was indeed a reader, the way to read was to set aside some of naptime for reading a chapter as well as other things I need to get done without babies.  It has been working!
Tea after an arduous snowy carpool. 

5.  My stationary bike.
Another routine that is serving me well is getting on my stationary bike every workday morning.  Moving wakes me up at the early hour of 5:45.  For a couple of weeks, I was either sick or nursing a sore knee so I was so happy to be back up to over 50 miles this week. I do not take it for granted being able to ride. 

So there you have the 5 things that are making me happy this week. 
~Jenn

Sunday, February 9, 2020

Visiting Grace

Yesterday, Trevor and I made the one hour, 15-minute drive to see our dear Grace at her university.  She was eager to see us, although it had only been a couple weeks.  I love that!


She wanted to get off campus so we took her to the mall so she could spend Christmas money on a new dress and matching sweater.  Then we had lunch.  Dorm food is good but she enjoyed the change.  What she really wanted was my food. Next time I will have to make that happen.  They do have a dorm kitchen I could use.  That would be a lot of fun to do together. 


After lunch, we cheated and I drove us to a parking space in a central location, another way to spoil her as she is used to walking 5 miles a day now.  We walked to the student center and I treated us to BIG Starbucks drinks, more spoiling, ha.  We hung out and chatted until it was time to walk over to the school's amazing art museum. 


She was so excited to give us a tour before the actual tour by a docent that happens each Saturday.  Grace has spent hours at the museum sketching.  It has an impressive collection on two floors, 10,000 objects!  The building itself is art.  It was built in the 1930s and has been restored, just a delight!


The guided tour was very interesting.  I always learn a lot on museum tours.  This one focused on the funerary art of all things!  Side note:  does it concern anyone else that we have taken these objects from their original location, from their original purpose, to mark the grave of a person.  I mean, what if a thousand years from now people from Italy come here and take our grave markers back to their museums?  Oh well.
 

After the tour, we headed back to her dorm to visit with her sweet roommate, play Uno, and relax until it was time for yet more food.  Again I drove us to the dining hall of choice.  Another little note here, Grace's dorm is the farthest away from the center of campus and it does not have a dining hall.  They are building a dining hall nearby but it is not open yet.  She has to walk quite far to eat. 

Her roommate joined us.  We enjoyed a little more conversation and food and then it was time to drop them off at the dorm and head home.  I do not love driving that far in the dark but it could not be helped.  Only three weeks until her spring break!!! 


Monday, February 3, 2020

Good-bye January, Hello February!

I am not going to lie, winter is not my favorite season.  I used to think it was the cold, but now I think it revolves around lack of light.  Winter is the season of darkness!  Thankfully, I have learned to endure and even thrive.  So it is with a happy heart that I bid farewell to January!  February is here!  I am one month closer to spring.  Rejoice!

One of my favorite podcasts is The Next Right Thing Podcast with Emily P. Freeman.  She sends out a newsletter as well.  Emily has the great practice of looking back and reflecting on her past month in order to move forward into the next.  Here are her 3 questions for January and my attempt to answer them as well.  

1. What was my most life-giving yes in January?
2. What was my most life-giving no in January?
3. What's one thing I want to leave behind moving into February?
What was my most life-giving yes in January?  I think it has to be saying yes to Fly Lady again.  Installing her app and actually making a promise to myself to do the daily routines has given me life.  Last week I fell sick.  The babies had a cold, I was doomed.  Yet, my simple and life-giving routines kept me moving forward.  Last Monday, my hardest physically speaking, I literally just did one thing, checked it off and sat down until I could do the next thing.  I got through my whole routines that day and my whole world felt better.  To borrow a phrase from Gretchen Rubin, "Outer order equals inner calm."  I did not get the whole house clean last week, but I did get to what mattered most. My family even remarked at how well we ate while I was sick, thank you Instant Pot! 
What was my most life-giving no in January?  I struggle saying no.  When I know that I have to or should say no, it can even wake me up at night, especially if I really care about the person I need to say no to.  In January I had to say no to a couple future babysitting dates to a precious family member.  I knew that it was possible to do the work but I would be dreading it for weeks and then the actual dates would come and I would be overwhelmed with 3 babies, all one-year-old.  I hated to say no but after I did, I knew I had just saved my sanity!  I wish I could do it all, but I can't.  Know your limits! 
What's one thing I want to leave behind moving into February?  I felt a great deal of despair while I was sick the last 10 days.  Despair on top of wintery blues is what I want to leave behind.  I tend to catastrophize when I am sick, even with a cold.  I wonder at how people with real sicknesses manage to cope?  I start to think about changing careers, changing locations, wishing I could stop the world and hide until I was well.  See?  Ha!  And then I start to feel better and the sun shines and I am feeling like living my life again.  I know I will get sick again, that is life.  I want to move into February without all the weight of those feelings.  They are past.  February is a new start.  I am healthy again.  Time to look for ways to enjoy this season that I am in.  
And there we have January!   
~Jenn