Her article "The Cart Before the Horse" is a fabulous reminder to put first things first.  I so often get derailed and the things that should be my highest priorities become usurped by foolish wheel-spinning.  I also thoroughly enjoyed her reflections in her "Mommy's Toolbox" on order.   Not every post is abstract and philosophical--several are hands-on, practical application.   If you poke around her blog, she'll even give a detailed account of precisely how she deep cleans a bathroom. 

Sickness preparedness is a key reason chaos taming is such a priority to me as as a home-maker and homeschool mom. I struggle with migraines and auto-immune issues, so it takes a little extra stewardship of my time and energy to ensure I can fulfill the responsibilities God's granted me.  I try to think of health and sickness as Joseph regarded feast and famine, finding ways to store up resources in times of plenty as insurance against leaner times when health challenges slow me down.  

Below I'll touch on five areas that help ease us through sicknesses: 

Life Skills Training:  We train the children in the tasks essential to keep life flowing, jobs that aren't their regular duties, but ordinarily are my tasks.  They love learning these "grown up" jobs!  They thrive on competence and the assurance that they can contribute in such important ways should I need their help.  Of course, should health prevail, they've learned skills and confidence in themselves that will serve them their whole lives.  Unlike monetary insurance the investment pays off in one form or another no matter what.

A six or seven year old can learn to change a baby's diapers.  We waited on this until the baby was three or four months old.  Big siblings "helped" with the newborns but weren't allowed to fly solo.  As the baby got a bit older, a changing pad on the floor (or even a towel) worked well to enable big sisters to help safely. )  

A four of five year old can learn to sort laundry, switch loads from washer to drier, and pair up socks or fold napkins.  (We keep a step stool in the laundry area. So they can join me and "watch the waterfall" when I turn on the washing machine.) 

In the kitchen, "peanut butter roll-ups" can be a child-friendly, speedy lunch.  Tortillas aren't as delicate as bread and stay together as the child spreads on even the chunkiest peanut butter.  The first "meal" my children learn to prepare consists of peanut butter roll-ups, milk, and carrot sticks.  Now the older children make a variety of more sophisticated dishes, but peanut butter roll ups are still a favorite, and the five year old has proudly added it to her solo-cooking repertoire. 

Little ones can unload dishes, stacking things that go in high cupboards on the counter.   They can also rinse dishes and load them into the dishwasher.

The catch is that these things need to be trained over time, working, playing and laughing together as they learn.  The time investment for training is significant, but the child's job satisfaction alone makes it worth while!  It also builds a sense of family unity.  They like knowing that they can "help mommy.  Just as I like to "put hands to my prayers" the children enjoy being able to give in their own small (and large) ways. 

Routine: When sickness hits any member of the family we try to keep at least a skeleton routine.  Sometimes minds and bodies are weary and figuring out "what do we do next" would be a burden.  On days like that we find it a relief to fall back on auto pilot routine.  We scale back from our full schedule as much as needed, but there's a skeleton of routine that remains to give support to our day, and comfort and familiarity to the whole family.

Meals: Healthy freezer meals, or other easy 10 minute meals, help nourish a sick family with wholesome, health building foods.  Like the tips for other categories, it takes advance planning.  I keep a little notebook of my fastest recipes, and try to keep a few meals in the freezer at all times "just in case".  (For more meal chaos taming, see my article from last week!)

Independent Study: I typically am very involved in my children's schooling, but we have a few things each child does on their own.  These assignments are things they continue if I'm sick or tending a sick child.   Whether it is typing drills or math facts on the computer, reading their literature assignments, or working on an essay topic, it seems to help to keep a scholarly rhythm.

Entertainment: I like to have a few games, unread books and a movie tucked away for "rainy" days.  We don't do television, but there's something about snuggling on the couch for a good wholesome movie to take our minds off sickness!  The rub is that when we are sick I don't want to trek out to rent a DVD.  I try to keep a surprise DVD hidden away at all times.  (Gently used copies of the  family friendly classics are almost as inexpensive as a rental--and then we can resell it when we are done!) Knitting, handcrafts, or even a new coloring book can help a sick child fill the hours.

• size house
• amount of clutter
• age of helpers
• other commitments

Hop over to Housewife Workout to see 'Jeff and Mutt' in action! Click here to go to the blog, or here to see their plan!

Domestic Chaos Tamer and Homeschool Mom of Five, Dell writes about home, heart and hearth.

Music is our Front Porch theme this week!  With four children taking piano lessons and playing recorder, one playing harp, and another learning hammer dulcimer, music has to be organized or we couldn't fit it all in!  

Organizing Time: staggering practice sessions is imperative for us.  My youngest children learn best with me beside them, helping them develop good practice habits and keeping practice time interactive.  (It becomes drudgery for them quickly if they are sent off for a 30 minutes in solitary confinement with an instrument, but practicing with a parent is fun.)  For the first three of four years of instrument study I sit beside them for almost every practice session.

My oldest girls (who have developed good practice habits from years of sharing the piano bench with me) do most their practice independently now.  Ideally I'd have liked to  work with them for another year or three, but sometimes we need to compromise a bit to fit it all in, and this worked.   Occasionally my oldest even works with the youngest music student as a "guest music coach" when I'm otherwise occupied or I feel the little guy just needs a change of pace.

If you are particularly curious about seeing how we schedule practice times, you can see our present schedule here on my blog.

Organizing Space: I'd written about our sheet music organization system previously here on the porch, so for long-time readers this will seem redundant. 

A musician friend recently shared some of her tips with me, including her system for organizing sheet music. It delighted me because it is so simple, inexpensive, and tidy, utilizing hanging file containers which can be purchased inexpensively at Target, Wal-Mart, or any office supply store! 

Sheet music can be such varied sizes, from books of 100 pages to single sheets, and this accommodates all of them inexpensively, accessibly, and without fuss. 

Domestic Chaos Tamer and Homeschool Mom of Five, Dell writes about home, heart and hearth.

How do you view time? In small slots or in project flows? How do your children view time when working through the day? If you and your children (perhaps because of your different job descriptions) view it differently, how do you balance the needs of the manager with those of the "maker"? 

First a quick message from Dell, your regularly scheduled Chaos tamer:
I'm AWOL again this week.  I'll let you guess whether I'm:

A) On a Secret Mission fighting Chaos in Uncharted Lands 

B) Joining the Witness Protection Program 

C)  Buried under an avalanche of clutter in the garage. 

In my absence my friend Chautona from Paradoxology is sharing her wit and wisdom on Planning vs. Doing.  Here's CHAUTONA!:

Ok, one thing I don’t think people know about me, is how much I adore planning and organizing.  I absolutely love creating extensive school plans, schedules, and I’d even plan my personal recreation if I could.  I love organizing books, closets, craft and sewing supplies, writing goals, and oh man… I haven’t even started with personal goals and goals for my kids.  I seriously could make planning and organizing our lives a full time job.

On the other hand, I’m sure you can guess the problem with my “secret love.”  I’m not so good with following through on those grandiose plans and ideas.  That kind of negates the purpose of making them… or does it?  I mean, I do get a lot of personal satisfaction from it, but if I’m, as Inge Cannon says, “ever organizing and never coming to the reality of organization,” can I really feel the beauty of success.  I’ll be honest, more often than not, I’m feeling the sting of defeat rather than anything else.

Now obviously, some things must be planned.  Can you imagine going on vacation with no plan?  You’d forget half of what you need to bring, you’d possibly bring the wrong clothes if you didn’t bother to plan where you were going, and you might run out of money before you got home!  All the planning in the world, however, won’t get you out the door and to the beach or the mountains.  You have to actually execute your plan!

I’ve seen planners for everything from weddings (logical in my opinion, but some of the contents make my eyes roll), to babies (I never needed a 2″ thick book to plan my pregnancy and childbirth but okkkkkkk), to homeschooling (makes sense to me if you actually use it), to Christmas (most of which I’d never use but a modified version could save a bundle… if I used it!),  and I even saw a craft planner once.  You were supposed to cut a square of every piece of fabric and trim you owned, put it in the book, write down the pattern numbers you wanted to use, make a supply list of things you needed, the works.  They had several all at the same booth at a quilt show (I think it was a quilt show).  They offered ones for sewing (obviously the one I paid the most attention to), quilting (for obvious reasons… can you imagine a square of every 1/4 yard piece of fabric and the quilt you had ideas for?), knitting and crocheting, embroidery, general crafts, and it seems like there was another one, but it’s eluding me.  Seriously.  A whole 1″ spiral bound notebook with oodles of information to fill out about every single craft/hobby supply you own?  I could get an amazing amount of stuff finished in the time it’d take to catalog all of that stuff.  Oh, I’d love it, but in the end, I’d have more clutter and less of a sense of accomplishment.

Of course, there are also the basic and most widely used planners.  The daily reminders of appointments and projects that have deadlines.  There are also “Home Management” binders that also function much like a planner and I do see a need for them– if you use them.  Not if you write a lot in them and feel good about your “accomplishment” of planning, but actually accomplish enough as a result of that planning that it makes the time investment in them worth it.  Seriously, I can’t help but wonder how our foremothers ever managed to keep a home without running water, electricity, while making their own soap, washing on a washboard, ironing with hand irons, planting gardens, sewing all the family’s clothing… how did they do the myriad of tasks they did without a highly organized planner to keep them going?  Now I realize that they did do some planning.  However, I do know that they didn’t have the time or the money to waste on writing down that they needed to weed the garden the next day.  They knew it, they saw it when they walked by, and they did it as soon as the lunch dishes were done because they just did.  I wonder what they’d say to me writing  “read your Bible” in my daily planner.  I don’t want to know… I have a feeling I’d get a well-deserved earful, but I do wonder what they’d think of a quilt show with a booth dedicated to 6×9 spiral bound notebooks for cataloging and planning future sewing projects.  I wonder what they’d say to elaborate index card systems for doing basic housework or entire binders for Christmas or Birthday planning?

No, I don’t want to return to that life.  That’s not my point.  I do want to make the most of of the time I have here and if a little planning will reduce some stress so that I have more time or less stressed time to do and enjoy the things that I love or need to do, then I definitely want to invest that time for that purpose.  I just don’t want to be “Ever planning and never see the fullness of completed plans.”

Craft Oranizer Armoire- not mine. I'm glad I think.

Organization is a related subject that causes grief and heartache to many.  Where do the pony-tail holders go?  How can I find a button in this mess of a sewing basket?  Is there hope for my craft supplies?  Well, if you look at the Organizer Armoire above, you’ll see that for those with a lot of supplies, they can organize it all in a relatively small space.  Not necessarily for a small price though.

Everything would have a home and be in its place.  It SHOULD be easy to find what you need as long as you memorize where you put everything!  Or maybe after you’re done separating your green jeweled brads from your yellow ones, you can make a detailed schematic of every storage space and what is in it.  Then you can make an index so all you have to do to find your DMC 504 embroidery floss is check the chart, see that green is in bin JJ, go to that bin, find the green box, pull it out, and voila.  Talk about nifty.

Yes, there’s a smidge of sarcasm in there.  I don’t mean to be condemning of people with such a cabinet or twenty.  Actually, I think it’s wonderful.  After all, I just spent two weeks organizing my own little sewing nook which I’ve blogged about a bit extensively (and I’ve got a little blurb about my new chair to go up soon too!).  My point is, are we organizing in order to more effectively use what we have or as an excuse to avoid the work of actually using it.  What is the point of having jars of color coded buttons for your button art if you never make any art?  Why have trays of rubber stamps, ink, and 439 different clear acrylic boxes full of embellishments to make the world’s most amazing cards if you spend all your time shopping for things and arranging where you’ll store them instead of time actually making them!  (Yes, I am preaching to the choir.  Make Cards just went on my “auto-focus” list.  I’ll talk about that in a minute.)  I have at least 20 large totes of fabric.  What good are they if I don’t use them?  I don’t mind having twenty totes of fabric if I’m constantly pulling old stuff out, using it, and adding fresh stuff to replace it.  What I mind is that for the past three years, I’ve “organized those totes” at least five times and I can count on one or two hands the number of things I’ve made from their contents.  That’s just sick.  All the ribbon in the world won’t make beautiful hairbows by itself.  Yes, even if it is hung on perfect little dowels, color cordinated, and with all the embellishments carefully organized in little bins waiting to be used.  You have to actually pull out the scissors, cut off a length, and get to work or you have wasted supplies.

The same is true, of course, of kitchen gadgets, home school supplies, yard tools, and for the men or handy women among us, tools.  Tell me why you have a router if you don’t, well, rout!   Spending two weeks reorganizing your books is a great idea if you actually use them more frequently as a result.  However, if they still sit untouched on the shelf because you’ve moved onto a new organizing project (color coding your socks perchance?), you just wasted two weeks of your life.  You just wasted two weeks of your time with your children and husband, their time with you, and you can’t get it back.  “But once I have time, it’ll be so much easier…”   Yeah, if you ever get that nebulous thing called time, yeah… it might be easier.

I’ve just started playing with a new “Time management” system that I find simplistically satisfying.  It bothers me a bit.  I’m a little OCD about things and this isn’t a pretty system full of boxes to check off, lists of ‘to do” things organized by type, or a step-by-step plan for creating a notebook to think for me.  Instead, it’s a running to-d0 list.  That’s really all it is.  How you use the list is what is so amazing.  Mark Forster has created a system he calls the Autofocus system that is simple, direct, and gets the job done.  So far, I’m quite pleased.  I won’t go into the whole thing.  Go look at it if you’re interested but I did add a shopping list to the back of my notebook.  I tend to spend a lot of time, even with these simple little things, buying a pretty notebook and new pen, tabbing different sections and organizing it because, “I just don’t work that way but I’ll make it work with my alterations.”  I only made one tiny one… Flip open my notebook to the back and it says “shopping list”.  I wrote down things I need to get that I likely wouldn’t remember.  Things like

• 2 pink zippers
• interfacing
• purple pens
• mouthwash (we’ve never used it before so I definitely wouldn’t remember it!)
• new mop

Most of that list has been purchased already.  I just need to get mouthwash and a new mop.  Next time I leave the house, I can glance at that list and add the things I need to my regular list.  Why not add everything to my regular list and just have one?  Well, my regular list is in my brain.  Hence, write down the things I won’t remember so I can get them next time I’m out.  That modification was worth it.  If I keep this up long enough to fill up this 10 cent notebook from last year’s school supply run, then I’ll let me buy myself a pretty one for next time.  Do you have any idea how many pretty notebooks I’ve purchased for “new organizational plans” that never went anywhere because I overcomplicated them?  Yeah.  Not doing that again.

Planning and organization are excellent tools with which women can maximize their potential.  They’re there to help us accomplish something other than organizing and planning.   So, I have a challenge for all of us.  This week, make a very simple plan if you need to plan things or need reminders about appointments or something… but if you’re like me and spend more time planning and organizing than you do living… keep the plans/organization super simple and actually DO something.  Gee.  What a concept.

~ Chautona

The Front Porch has gone buggy!  This week insects are the theme.  I'm sure many will give great insight into the positive educational value of God's creepy-crawlie creatures.  I like insects in their place, but sometimes they are chaos makers--and here on taming the chaos we'll look at how to keep them where they belong.

Click here to go to a website with great natural insect repellent ideas to keep ants, termites, spiders, mosquitoes, and cockroaches away! 

Below I'll list some ideas for controlling pests in the garden.  Most I've merely read about.  Some are folk wisdom rather than researched science.  (I personally put a lot of stock in folk wisdom on things like this--Great Grandma was hard working and didn't waste time with foolish notions that didn't work.).  A few have been tried in our own PrairieFrog garden with good results.  I love planting chives and onions by my rosebushes, and herbs near our vegetables.

Basil: Repels flies, mosquitoes and tomato worm.

Bay Leaf: A bay leaf in each storage container of beans or grains will discourages weevils and moths. I keep a bay leaf in all my grain canisters. 

Bee Balm: Plant with tomatoes to improve growth and flavor.

Borage: Companion plant for tomatoes, squash and strawberries to ward off tomato worms and other pests.

Catnip: Repels Ants, Aphids, Cockroaches, Flea Beetle, Japanese Beetles

Chives: Improves growth and flavor of carrots and discourages pests of many kinds.

 

Cilantro: Repels aphids and other insects.

Garlic: Deters many kinds of insects, especially aphids. (I like to plant garlic and chives near my roses.)

Gopher purge: Deters gophers, and moles.

Horseradish: Plant in potato patch to repel potato bugs.

Hyssop: Companion plant to cabbage and grapes, deters cabbage moths. Do not plant near radishes. (Companion planting guides say it causes radishes to have little flavor.)

Lavender: Discourages Mice, Ticks and Moths. (I like to have a little hedge of lavender at the back of our herb garden, near the foundation of the house)

Lemon balm: Use throughout the garden to deter insects.

Marigolds: One of the best pest deterrents. Keeps soil free of nematodes; discourages many insects. Plant freely throughout the garden. (This is one of my favorites so far for discouraging insects--we planted ours so that wind will carry it across all the plants, and we've been amazed at how "bug-free" our plants are this year.)

Mint: Deters white cabbage moths, and improves the health of cabbage and tomatoes. (I like to keep mint in a pot near other plants, but confined to prevent it invading--it can become quite the weed if given free-reign.)

Mole plants: Guides and internet sources say it discourages moles and mice if planted here and there throughout the garden.

Nasturtiums: Plant with tomatoes, radishes, cabbage, cucumbers, and under fruit trees. Deters aphids and pests of cucurbit family.

Parsley: Discourages beetles.

Petunias: Repels the asparagus beetle, tomato worm and general garden pests.

Rosemary: Discourages cabbage moths, bean beetles, and carrot flies.

Rue: Rue is said to deter Japanese beetles in roses and raspberries.

Sage: Companion plant with rosemary, cabbage, and carrots to repel cabbage moths, beetles, carrot flies, squash bugs, ants and flying bugs. Not suggested for planting near cucumbers.

Summer Savory: Plant with beans and onions to improve growth and flavor. Discourages cabbage moths.

Tansy: Plant with fruit trees, roses and raspberries. Deters flying insects, Japanese beetles, striped cucumber beetles, squash bugs, and ants.

Tarragon: Plant throughout the garden, disagreeable to most all pests.

Thyme: Said to deter cabbage worms when planted throughout the garden.

Valerian: Good anywhere in the garden to deter pests.

Wormwood: Keeps animals out of the garden when planted as a border.