Blogger Friend Assignment #103

Memory Verse: 1 Timothy 4:15 (NIV)
Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.

Intro: It keeps going, and going, and going…. (Marketing credit: Energizer)

Housekeeping: that household mess, it keeps going and going and going. It’s a perpetual chore that we diligently need to keep going on to stay on top it. We all have different ways of keeping ourselves energized.

Assignment: How do you keep energized so you can get it all done? bouncy music? treat it like a workout? Do you use a schedule?, a housekeeping binder system? luck of the draw system?.. or is this an area where you need encouragement? Do you need God’s help to keep order and beauty in your dwelling place? Take this week to tell us how You diligently keep going with your housekeeping chores.

Oh, I am far past needing encouragement in this area. I need serious, SERIOUS prayer! Housekeeping is not a talent that I possess. Especially housekeeping while homeschooling and raising six children under eight. I am constantly pushing this to the back burner.

My goal is to have morning chores, afternoon chores, and after dinner chores. In the morning the kids have a morning routine which includes making their beds and cleaning their rooms. I'd like to make my bed at this time as well, though more often than not, I am nursing the baby and/or fixing breakfast at this time. My daughter is supposed to put laundry in and out of the washer/dryer two times a day and fold the clean clothes. I still have to oversee all of this and more often than not the clean clothes lay unfolded in a laundry basket. I do clean the kitchen after every meal, but often let the dishes pile till the evening. (Our dishwasher doesn't work so we have to wash all dishes by hand.) In all honesty, most evenings my husband is the one who washes the dishes and puts the clothes away...if they get put away at all. I'm desperate for the help, but I hate that he has to come home from a long day at work to a house full of work.

I've always saved Saturday as the day to do our really deep cleaning (mopping, windows/mirrors, dusting woodwork, tubs/toilets, etc.). This works well except for the Saturdays we have something planned. About once a month everything builds up so much that I explode and go into frenzy cleaning mode. All the kids are enlisted, which usually means they are given Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and ordered to scrub every visible surface. This happened on Tuesday of this week. All schoolwork stopped and we considered it a day of Home-Ec. I'd love to post pictures of all we accomplished, and we really did accomplish a lot of cleaning...but it's Friday now, so there's no evidence of cleanliness or order left. Pin It Now!