How do I do it? No secrets here.

Recently I attended a party. During the course of the few hours I was there, I was asked "How do you keep track of everything you do?" or "How do you mange all of those kids!?!" more times than I could count. Selfishly speaking, it got very old to answer the same kinds of questions over and over again. My short answer is always, "God graces me in every moment," And, "I take it one day at at time."

I remember when I first got married, I was a little overwhelmed at the thought of keeping a clean house. I had no schedule, no plan. Now, with five kids I have learned quite a few lessons.

My long version in answering the question of "how do you do everything?" is this:

1) Plan- and I try to stay ahead in my planning. For example, dinner is almost always mostly completed at lunch. And, if a meal is pretty complicated, I may even start on it the day before.

2) I try to always stay ahead in the game. I study and plan ahead in the kids school work as well as planning for parties, projects, etc. I plan well in advance and rarely try to do anything last minute. When I find myself trying to complete something last minute, I can feel stressed. I try to avoid that!

3) Follow a schedule. My typical day is as follows:
Wake up, get ready, read before making it out of the bedroom. This is usually pretty brief
I almost always start a load of laundry first thing in the morning before I eat breakfast. I would rather do a little laundry every day to keep up. I consider a day of nothing but doing laundry a form of torture.

Breakfast/clean-up-30 minutes
Begin school and work until lunchtime- 3hours (I read with the little ones first or play a game with them-"fill up the smallest love cups first and work my way to the oldest. this helps the little ones stay occupied better throughout the day)
Break for Lunch (make dinner) and play- 1 hour
Quiet time/time to complete studies- 1 hour
I complete a daily chore in an hour during the afternoon
chores are assigned by day of the week
Monday: sweep, mop
Tuesday: vacuum, dust
Wednesday: bathrooms
Thursday: deep clean kitchen
Friday: catch up
My other motto that we try to live by is, "clean as you go!"
In other words, I try not to let things build up.
If I know that I will not be able to clean on a day, like tomorrow I have a doctor's appointment, then I try to get it done the day before.

The rest of the afternoon is spent usually outside playing with the kiddos. And, I also really try to have most of my work done so that after dinner we can go for a walk or just be together as a family. My kids pitch in too! They help clean pretty much anything and everything.
And, for everyone who asks me how do I read so much? I usually have a book in the kitchen. I read a paragraph here and then, and sometimes get a chance to read in the evenings. I also discuss what I am reading with my kids if it is something that we can talk about!

The times that I think, "I wish there were more hours in this day!"
I know that I have overplanned.

I try to keep things simple,
have a place for everything,
and just a few weekends back we purged "stuff" in our house. I don't like clutter.

I have also contacted granparents to give gifts for Christmas in the form of passes to a local museum and theme park.

I hate stuff.
Enough said. :-)