1. Jr. Church Crafts and Stories Weekly - as well as SS and other Church services attended
2. Organizing the house so my Aunt can move in (See the August Goals Post)
3. Attempt at organizing the school room
4. Trying to do 1 or 2 school goals daily
5. Gardening
6. Daily Walk
7. Watering
8. Maintenance Chores for 3 trailer houses (two of those are bolted together to form one big house) - This makes 2800 sq ft of rooms crammed with sorting, piles of stuff to go through or find a new home, and furniture in transit to a new location, and narrow spaces, as well as stuff that was knocked over and not picked up. Roughly 16 to 18 rooms, depending on how you count the hallway parts and closets are included in the bedroom count.
9. Our Blogs (our one thing we do for fun and relaxation)
10. Sorting and posting what needs to be sold.
11. Pulling Weeds
12. School Planning
13. Finding things on the computer for other people
14. Family Chores for 6 people
15. We spend an insane amount of time trying to keep things put away in our tiny areas. I'm pretty sure things spontaneously jumps into the floor and tables while we are not looking!
16. Kill bugs (and occasionally mice and snakes).
17. Visits from friends and family - not always planned. This is actually a very short list. And we thoroughly enjoy the visits.
A typical (6 days of the week) daily schedule looks something like this.
Between 6 and 7 - Song wakes up, starts her day, devos, and does some school goals. Takes care of her part of the garden and the barnyard. On a good day, she's got 2 - 2.5 hours to work.
Between 8 and 9 - Everybody else wakes up. Song does breakfast. Story gets the kitchen (dishes). Scholar helps Story. Somebody usually dresses Sunshine once she wakes up. I get on the computer to get the posts all done for the Kindle (as I've found the most traffic hits fairly early in the day.) We are not morning people. On a good morning, whoever's turn it is to do supper, will get food into the crock pot for supper.
Morning Hours (10 - 12) - Story, Song, and Scholar do morning chores - make beds, bring laundry to the washer, swish the bathrooms, dishes away from the night before, breakfast dishes, pick up and sweep the floors, water the dog. When this is all done - Scholar goes outside with Sunshine to play until it is hot. Song does some school work. Story works on organizing (right now she's doing her room.) I play with Sunshine until she goes outside with Scholar, while working on the Kindle Blog. Once the blog is finished, I start organizing some portion of the house. I just finished the office so the Ref can move into it. Currently, I swap days working on the schoolroom, taking pictures and setting up sales for my sister to run on FB in the bunkhouse, and working on Sunshine's new room. I hope to have school running during this time come September - but I'm not holding my breath. Song and I run loads of laundry until they are all hung up for the day. When it gets too hot, Scholar and Sunshine come in and either listen to Song Tapes or/and play with their toys (Tinker Toys, Legos, Kitchen, Dolls, Little People, Trains, etc).
Lunchtime - Story is in charge of lunches. Scholar and Sunshine pick a lunch video (educational). Song and the littles clean the livingroom. Song hands out drinks (she helps with this all day). I hand out vitamins, check progress for the day, and check messages (friends and relatives often ask me to look things up for them - I enjoy it). Story and Scholar clean up after lunch. Song puts food away and cleans the livingroom area from lunch - which is not in the same house as the kitchen.
After lunch (1:30 - 4pm) - Scholar and Sunshine return to playing. Sometimes they play on the computer. I return to cleaning and sorting, or looking up something for other people on the computer. I'm pretty good at finding information, so I really enjoy doing this. I hope soon to be doing School during this time. Story gets on the computer and while school is what she is assigned, I don't say much about it right now - I'm pretty sure she is blogging and writing her books. Song helps me (Story if we need her), or cleans her room, does laundry, checks the barnyard, and sometimes takes a nap.
Late Afternoon (4 - 5) - Afternoon chores - Dishes, Sweeping, Vacuuming, Sorting, Cleaning up the Toys, Laundry, and whatever else is on the To Do list. Some days we are more successful than others.
Supper Time (5 - 7) - Take turns cooking supper. If the crock pot got started, then we have extra time for chores, or a little while to relax. Supper is served around 6pm. Sometimes we watch a movie, or something educational - usually history, science, or literature. By this time in the day, we are exhausted and just want to unwind. (Keeping the houses at 80+ during the day can really zap your energy.)
After Supper (7 - 8:30) - Baths, Dishes, Finish and put away the laundry, Giggle a lot, Bedtime stories and Prayers and Bible, Walk, water the Garden, Final Pick up of the house and sweeping if needed, feed and water the inside pets (fish and dog).
Bedtime - Song and Scholar go to bed around 9pm. (At least on a good night). Our nights often get away from us.
Story spends extra time doing school work. Sunshine mucks around until she starts rubbing her eyes, then I turn off the computer for the night (unless I'm in the middle of something) and I go lay down with her and read a book. Then I'll check to make sure Story went to bed, turn out lights, adjust thermostats for the night (we sleep better if the house is cool and not mucky), and go to bed ... or finish what I was doing on the computer if I need to. Any night I'm in bed by or shortly after midnight I'm doing really good. There are plenty of nights that I zone out into what I am doing and I'm still going at 1:30am!
Saturday's Doubles the chores lists, and we add getting Jr. church ready.
We've been doing some variation of this schedule for over 4 years. Though I did get a break when Sunshine was born.
It doesn't sound like much .... so a lot of friends and family help us fill up our days with extras that need to be done.
You will notice that there isn't any shopping on the list - the Ref does ALL of the errands. Song gets to leave and do volunteer work on Tuesdays. And there is church. Otherwise we stay home. ... We have also given up our Library time as we could no longer fit trips to the library or time to read the books or watch the movies into our days. .... With the super hot days, and not running school, the two little ones have been watching more TV and playing more computer games than normal, but they are outside as often as they are able to be there, and if the number of toys out at the end of the day is any indication - they are playing a LOT too.
Right now, I'm really needing to reevaluate who does the chores, set up a new chore system, get the school area usable so we can at least find the books and papers that we need to do a few classes. I've not even started to plan the next school year, and I need to do that at least for Scholar and Sunshine as soon as possible.
We usually only get about halfway through our goals for the week - so I need to sit down again, and try to figure out ways to cut out stuff so we can get the necessary items into the day. We do manage to keep the laundry, dishes, and eating more or less caught up.
This is a matter you can pray for us on ... I'm a schedule dependent person, but not all of my children are schedule people. Right now, I'm spending more time trying to figure out where people are and who is doing what task and how finished it happens to be .... than I would like to be spending. .... Maybe I just need to remember how to relax.
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