This past Monday I woke up and was going to do a video blog of the shape my house was in, I chickened out!! What I should have done was take shorter video clips of my productivity during the day, it would show how we go about accomplishing things in our day.
Usually the weekends are NOT spent cleaning and keeping things in order. Even though I do try and maintain some sort of order, I do not want the only time my husband is home spent cleaning. Plus I would love to get back to doing NOTHING unimportant on Sunday. God does say it is a day of rest. I do know that we are ALL in different seasons of life and when I had many little ones, if I deviated from the schedule, even on a Sunday, my Mondays would amount to double the workload and it was hard. But I do know that my life HAS gotten easier and I CAN have more of a relaxing time on Sunday. So for you Mom’s of little ones, remember that even if it feels like your seasons have gone on for weeks, maybe months, or sometimes years—life will get easier!!!
My kitchen…….wasn’t looking too badly, the counters had a few items out of place but not a crazy amount. I am learning the power of LESS. Less items to complicate my lifestyle, less items to pick up each day, less items to create clutter in my home. Blog post coming soon!!:)
Dishes, the unexplainable amount of dishes. Even if we wash AND put away the dishes after every meal I still am amazed at the amount of dishes we use. We of course have snacks at night time and that can lead to many more, on this particular Monday, I was pulling out leftovers from the refrigerator to be heated up for lunchtime and that is the reason for so many. Now the sink was ready for breakfast dishes to accumulate. 
Here was the laundry pile. I haven’t gotten a plan down that I like for laundry just yet. We keep 2 hampers, one in the boys bathroom and one in the girls bathroom every Monday and Thursday I drag them out and separate them on the floor–darks, lights, towels, and work clothes. As the piles get smaller, I know I am almost done!! This morning I started the loads at 7 am and put the last load in at 7 pm at night. I diligently kept the washer and dryer rotating, oh how I miss my larger washer and dryer.
Our home is equipped with a washer and dryer. Even though we have a much LARGER high efficiency washer/dryer that washes laundry at a much faster rate, I decided for now to put them in the garage for storage and use the ones provided. Less wear and tear on mine, plus will keep me on my toes for doing laundry regularly.
As we were putting laundry away, I had each child count the amount of outfits that they were hanging up. I said that it has been only 3 days since our last laundry day, why is it that you have 6-7 outfits that you are hanging up? I let them know we were going to work on not wasting so much of the laundry time to clothing that was not dirty. That will help us ALL to be more effective.
KOMBUCHA…….Oh how I have missed drinking kombucha. I brought all of my SCOBYS with me but it has taken some time to help build back up our stash. Here I was making 3 new gallons of starter and turning my 2 gallon container to a second ferment with fruit. I know there are not any “miracle” foods out there, but I do believe in foods and drinks helping us. I KNOW my body and energy level benefits hugely from drinking kombucha regularly. I am also careful to mix that with a good diet and regular exercise.
Then it was time for the children to wake up and start their days. They had breakfast and chores then it was time for school.
We were able to glide back into school fairly easily. We usually start in the morning and by lunchtime most of them are finished. In the afternoon I like to have them do some extra reading or we watch educational videos to enhance learning.
I usually do ALL of my baking on Wednesdays, but this particular Monday the children were a little more full of energy and it was too cold to go outdoors. We decided to mix up a batch of pretzel dough and let the children create.
They had fun making letters for everyone, we even had some “blobs” and snakes. Good fun plus educational:)
After this we cleaned things up and had dinner ready. Dad came home and we ate together. Let me share, that is probably one of the greatest blessings that we have received by making the move down here. In Michigan my husband worked long hours and had a long drive home each evening. We almost NEVER had meals together. I would sometimes pray and long for “family” meal times but knew it just wasn’t for our situation. But God heard that prayer and desire and answered it. Since living here in North Carolina, we eat almost always every dinner together as a family. A strange thing for us, but enjoyed by all. Dad’s job is 15 minutes from home.
Desiring a lifestyle change? God WILL give you the desires of your heart. Pray and diligently seek Him and He will be faithful.
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