Homeschool is school, but it's home, too--and housework will be with us always. How do you manage to keep up with household chores while homeschooling your children?

Lower your standards. Two-career families with household help may achieve that pristine designer look, but a homeschooling home is rumpled and comfortable. Accept the fact that a homeschooler's decorating scheme can be best described as "Early Science Experiment." Forget the decorator frills and concentrate on the most important home management tasks: meals, clothes, keeping the health department at bay. You've got better things to do, like teach your children!

Plan, plan, plan! Homeschool families can get by with seat-of-the-pants home management only so long. Savvy homeschoolers set up simple home management routines for shopping, cooking, laundry, and cleaning. Write them in your Household. Notebook, or set up a simple tickler file for household tasks. Get it in writing, and you've taken the first step to getting it done.

Bring your children onboard. Housework is a part of life, and should be part of your curriculum. Integrate math lessons with shopping and cooking. Examine the chemistry of surfactants as you do the laundry. Older children learn about child development as they entertain little ones while you school the kids in the middle. Sending teens to do the shopping or setting them to pay the family bills teaches consumer education in a real-life setting. Harness those little hands to help out at home, and your future sons- and daughters-in-law will rise up and call you blessed.

Schedule the housework first. Add rock-bottom necessary chores to the daily schedule or planner before planning each homeschool day. Meal preparation, child care and essential laundry chores can be delegated to children or planned for breaks between scheduled school activities. Schedule the chores first, and they'll get done without impeding the school day.

Look for new methods to save time. Learn to do home management chores the modern way. Many homeschoolers find bulk freezer cooking saves time each day. Read more about bulk freezer cooking with our OrganizedHome.Com Guide to Freezer Cooking. Modern speed cleaning methods involve team concepts ideal for home schooling families. Find out more about efficient cleaning with our Clean House Guide.

Stoke your own fires with a support group. Being a home schooling parent is a hard, if rewarding, job. With all the demands of children and school and spouse and house, it's easy to burn out. Build time for rejuvenation and renewal into your own home management routines. It sounds paradoxical, but it's true: the more you feed yourself, the more you have to give to others. Find a supportive friend or support group, and feed your soul!

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