I've come to terms with my inability to keep up with this blog. ;) But for some reason today I felt the need to come say something. I think it is because I lost my voice and haven't gotten enough words out today. I totally stopped talking at 5:00 after I realized that I was really straining by having to say everything more than once to everyone. This family has ONE volume level. VERY LOUD! I'm certain any other family would wonder why we are always yelling at one another! E says that our family is yell-ful. LOL Anyway, my lack of volume was not getting my point across, so I just started writing everything down on a notepad. Except E can't read fluently so that's been difficult because he is the only one home with me right now. He’s sounding everything I write out and then writing notes back to me.
So, anyway, we've been working on some things around this house. A few weeks ago I read, More Hours in My Day: Proven Ways to Organize Your Home, Your Family, and Yourself. It didn’t help immediately. In fact, there wasn’t much in it that I didn’t already know. But I was really drawn to her chapter on having a family mission statement. We spent part of this weekend working on that and narrowing some things down about this family. We love to work with kids and our time certainly reflects that. But we need to come up with a way to balance that with the rest of our life. Laundry has to get done. Meals must be cooked. Dishes done. You get my point. So while we can’t cut much out of our scheduled, we had to come up with something to make our house function better. We all agreed that we will stop what we are doing at 4:30 to start dinner and clean-up. The clean-up is based on what is needed. Most nights this means that we are off to swimming, exercising, or scouts by 6:30. So these two hours are devoted to getting our act together. We also have decided that nothing can be added to the schedule unless it fits into our mission as a family. I know it’s easier said than done…
Of course the first couple days of this new plan have been a complete mess. I came down with the killer cold that has caused me to lose my voice. While I haven’t been a totally lazy bum, I certainly haven’t felt like doing much around the house. And yesterday I had to go pick up my glasses (which I’ve been told look really great on me!!!) from Wal-Mart. The only time I could get out of the house was at 4:00. I threw in a couple other errands so we weren’t home until after 5:00. Ooops. And then today, I set the boys to work but my Sudafed stupor has been less than helpful. Plus, I had to leave L and Classical Conversations Challenge class this afternoon. Her ride couldn’t bring her home until 5:30. We would normally be home about 3:45ish depending on how long after CC we chat with friends.
I will not be defeated though! I’m doing what I can to keep it all going. Laundry is pretty simple, so I’m keeping up with that. This summer I made a laundry schedule that worked pretty well (see the picture). But it went by the wayside when L’s schedule became consumed with her CC school work. She really doesn’t have much time left in her day after she finishes her work. She even is doing school work in the evenings which is fairly new to our schedule. So, now I’m trying to get back at it rather than the survival laundry we’ve been doing. I like doing one room per day because then everyone gets some laundry done. When we dump it and sort it into one pile, it seems that my favorite jeans are always on the bottom and never get washed because we just keep dumping and piling.
That’s my housekeeping saga for my 2 readers. 
Hopefully I won’t go 6 months before another update. Blogging will hopefully help me sort this out and keep on track!
More to come…
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