IN PRAISE OF ORDER

~~~

Drop Thy still dews of quietness

till all our strivings cease;

take from our lives the strain and stress

and let our ordered lives confess

the beauty of Thy peace.

(John Greenleaf Whittier,  from the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind)

Browsing through the tables at a used curriculum fair a couple weeks ago, I found an autographed copy of Elisabeth Elliot’s book THE SHAPING OF A CHRISTIAN FAMILY.   You can be sure I snapped it up since she is my favorite author.  (Her missionary novel, NO GRAVEN IMAGE, totally shaped my world view when I was in college.)  What intrigued me about THE SHAPING OF A CHRISTIAN FAMILY is that it’s not just a “how-to” book but the story of her Christian family heritage, starting a few generations back.  What is it that made these generations so productive for God’s kingdom?  Mrs. Elliot traces many themes, but one of the most prominent is orderliness – including a respect for authority, disciplined child training, wise time management, and organization of the home.

As most of you know, orderliness and organization are constant challenges for me.  I often have to be reminded that there is no virtue in living sloppily, and so many benefits to getting things together.   We do need structure in life.  Flexible structure, yes, but structure nonetheless.

Home school moms cherish flexibility and autonomy, but some of us overdo it to the point of rejecting any structure.  We try to wing it, making up our lives and school from scratch as we go along.  We end up feeling frazzled, exhausted, unproductive, unfulfilled -- and guilty.  We start to wonder if we really need a system after all, and relish the new idea of taking control of our lives with a schedule, routine, budget, and lesson plan.  We realize that we don't have to be victims of circumstance anymore.  Now that I am finally in the process of putting my life in order, I realize that this gives me peace from the storm.  Life makes sense when I follow a plan, and an added bonus is that I now have more liberty to focus my newfound spare time and energy on creative pursuits.  My brain is less cluttered by loose ends.  Order and organization allow us to live “on purpose,” to see our dreams and goals come to fulfillment.  We can make a plan and make it happen.

I still haven’t arrived.  I have to keep at it.  Summertime and pregnancy provide real temptations to let things slide.  Thad continually encourages me to add structure to our days and keep the kids busy.  I figure that one way I can do this is to have an afternoon cleanup time each day when all of the kids are working together in one room at a time – and I sit on the couch and give out orders while I fold laundry!   In this way, we can grow in four vital areas at once: tidiness, diligence, obedience and cooperation. 

Here are just a few other things that I’ve done to organize our home recently:

• I put a small bookcase in my bedroom near my comfy recliner chair.  This holds my Bible, my Bible study and prayer notebooks, my very favorite books and current home school magazines, and my main “Mom’s Brain” organizing notebook. I also have a small trash can and a few basic office supplies to add functionality.  I do supposedly have a desk in our computer room, but found I wasn’t working at it.  We ended up putting a bookcase on top of it to store commonly used family items.  I am much more comfortable working in my bedroom – a little haven of refuge in our busy house.  DO YOU HAVE A QUIET PLACE TO READ, THINK, AND PLAN?

• I labeled the edges of our wooden inset puzzles, to make it easier to find which one we want or to put away stray pieces.  Then I reorganized our game bin.  Most of our boxes have been squashed and discarded over the years, so I store game pieces in zip-closure plastic bags in a big plastic bin, and put all the boards together on a shelf.  I store puzzle pieces the same way in another bin.   I also moved the boys’ workbooks to a bookshelf in our living room.  We rarely do these at the dining room table anymore since I’m pregnant and will be nursing soon.  It’s much more comfortable on the couch, so I wanted to store the materials nearby.  However, I banned colored pencils, scissors and tape from the living room because they were always scattered on the floor.  Art projects must now be done at the dining room table.  A place for everything, and everything in its place!   HOW CAN YOU MAKE YOUR LEARNING AREAS MORE EFFICIENT?

• I rounded up my stray paper piles and organized them into their appropriate notebooks or file folders.  I also consolidated all of our immunization records into one notebook, in order by child.  I still have a few bins of papers to go through, but none of them are high priority current stuff, so I can get to them later.  CAN YOU FIND YOUR IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS EASILY?

And, here are a few things we’ve done for a while to increase our efficiency:

• I log on to our public library’s web site to search for what books I want.  I put them all on hold, and a couple of days later, they are ready for me (or someone else) to pick up at the front desk.  Because it is hard for me to walk around and bend over this late in pregnancy, this simple process has been a Godsend.  And yes, we sometimes check out 100 books at a time!  WHAT ARE SOME WAYS YOU CAN USE TECHNOLOGY TO MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER? 
• I delegate! Our children do most of the housework, such as dishes, sweeping, bathroom cleaning, etc.  The older ones are responsible for their own laundry from start to finish, and the younger ones at least fold and put theirs away.   Some of my girls also know how to paint bedrooms, buzz cut their brothers’ hair, plant flowers, weed the garden, and numerous other valuable life skills.  Mary runs errands for me, too, making my bank deposits and sending out book shipments.  WHAT CAN YOUR CHILDREN DO TO GROW IN RESPONSIBILITY AND LIGHTEN YOUR LOAD?

• I try to organize and simplify grocery shopping.  I have a computerized master grocery list organized by aisle.  I can print it out, check it off, go to the Wal-Mart Super Center with Joanna (12) and Lydia (10) and have them do the food shopping while I pick up what I need from the other part of the store.  It works!  When we get home, I rest while all of the available kids put everything away.  They also help fix meals, though we could do a lot better organizing this.   Lydia and Joanna blessed me yesterday by making whole wheat pizza and peach cobbler for dinner while I was running errands. HOW CAN MASTER LISTS MAKE YOU MORE EFFICIENT?  HAVE YOU TAUGHT YOUR CHILDREN TO SHOP AND COOK?

So is there time for recreation?  Yes!  Thad recently installed an above ground pool in our backyard so the kids could get some fun and exercise without me having to cart them all over town.  This gives me a healthy workout, too!  A few of our kids will attend basketball day camp at church next month.  And there’s often a good Scrabble game going in the afternoon!  The older girls go on frequent outings with friends, but they still take time to read aloud to the little ones.  One book choice this week was FLAT STANLEY, a very old but hilarious picture book.  Mary chose different dramatic voices for each character, which I could hear mixed with raucous laughter from the boys. 

If you’d like to explore the topic of order and chores more, please check out these blog articles by Lori Seaborg (thanks to Cindy Rushton for these links):

Raising Servants (…er, I Mean Children)

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/KeepingtheHome/606/

Chores: You Are NOT Doing Them All By Yourself, Are You?

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/KeepingtheHome/1054/

Chores: What 1-2-Year-Old Walkers Can Do

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/KeepingtheHome/1053/

Chores: What a 3-5-Year-Old Can Do

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/KeepingtheHome/1052/

Chores: What Elementary-Aged Children Can Do

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/KeepingtheHome/1051/