Homeschoolers use their homes hard. What cleaning tasks give us the biggest bang for our time bucks? What chores prevent chaos best? That’s what today’s list is all about. If only I were as good at doing my lists as writing them. But this month, I’m doing the fun part: writing and sharing my homeschool…
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. The tactics he outlines are brilliantly applicable not only to 9-5 office work, but even to our work at home, even to homeschooling. The primary discipline that Getting Things Done coaches you through is threefold: You must capture all that needs to be done in your…
Because I’m working on the Simplified Organization eCourse and getting ready to start school (August 4th!), I have organization on my mind. And, generally, when something is on my mind, I write about it. So, I thought I’d follow up the series on improving chore routines with a short little series on the basic habits…
This week we’re discussing the final section of chapter 3 in Desiring the Kingdom. Here I really was and am quite curious about what the participants had to say about last week’s reading, but even though it was a break week for us, I was too caught up in keeping life here spinning to go…
This summer I read John Owen’s Mortification of Sin. I enjoyed the delve into older, denser English. There were several places where at first I was a little taken aback at his line of argument, but after continuing on and thinking about it, I realized it was more that he was not saying things the…
So, last week felt like a rough, terrible week. However, the school checklists got done, the house hadn’t really fallen apart, and we’d had no major disasters. Really, it was a typical week. Why did it feel so bad? This week has felt pretty good. Even though I am definitely not getting to everything I…
This is the first installment of what I hope to be a regular Monday feature: A Metaphor for Monday. Each Monday during our weekly meeting, I will be pep-talking my boys with a metaphor with which to tackle the week. I will be recycling the material here, and I hope by that to make it…
I was going through some old papers today and found a printed copy of this post I made a few years ago. I thought I’d repost it here, with a few minor editing tweaks. At a recent church bridal shower, a lovely older lady gave a devotional that stuck with me. She read Ephesians 6:10-18….
Not only was last week a school break week, but we also had and have a string of hosting commitments that gave me the added commitment and deadline to get the house into a little better shape. Of course I had an unreasonably long list, but if I think about what I did get done…
Is happiness an emotion reserved for those who have an easy life? Right now I have a child who thinks happiness is a life without math fact drill pages. And, he’s onto something that misery is dragging one’s feet and taking three hours to do what should take one three minutes. However, cause and effect…