This post was written by Sarah of Real Food Outlaws
You know who you are. You’re the one looking on Pinterest at all the organizing pins and craft ideas and practically hyperventilating because your “homeschool room” consists of an old laundry table that’s piled high with last year’s papers and books.
Or maybe you’re the one shuffling through 150 papers looking for that one coloring page that your 7-year old made you promise you wouldn’t throw out. Please tell me I’m not the only one! You visit other homeschool moms and their homes are immaculate, their kids are clean, and their homeschool rooms are astonishingly organized.
Whether you’re a veteran homeschooler or venturing into your first year, organization in some shape or form will have to be learned. If not, you’ll have a year like I had last year…chaotic, couldn’t find anything, never prepared for lessons, prayed that no one dropped by and saw my house. That’s right Mamas, I write blog posts that I can learn from too!
If any of the above applies to you, I bring you hope! Here are some tips that may help you get things together!
1. Pray!
It may be a frantic prayer but God hears those too! Start your day acknowledging that you need help that only He can provide. Even if you have to go through your to-do list with Him and ask Him to help you with every single thing on it. He will give you strength.
2. Breathe!
I don’t know about you but when I am stressed I hold my breath. Taking deep breaths and then breathing evenly can really help calm you so you can think clearly and get back to the tasks at hand. It’s good for your health too!
3. Make Lists!
Lists are your friend! Write down *everything* you need to accomplish in a day, no matter how unimportant it may seem. Eventually you won’t need them anymore because your day will begin to flow without them. Even if you only get through one thing on that list, pat yourself on the back. Baby steps!
4. Make Some Space!
Dedicate a room, corner, closet, shelf, table, or whatever you have available to you, for your homeschool materials. It is so easy for them to end up all over your house to the point where it looks like a school exploded! If your kids do school in different rooms like mine do, either have a central location for all their materials or have a small area in each of their schooling rooms to keep things. At the end of each school day, everyone needs to put all of their materials back in their designated areas.
5. Menu Plan!
Knowing what you are making every day will help ease your daily stress and feel like supermom, at least at dinner. I find that planning and shopping for a week or two worth of meals can really cut down unnecessary spending and streamline mealtime.
To make your life a little easier, at least for a week, I’ve provided you with a menu plan with recipes for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners from myself and fellow Holy Spirit-Led Homeschooling bloggers. Enjoy!
FREE Menu Plan!
Sunday:
Breakfast – Overnight Blueberry French Toast Bake
Lunch – 17 Bean & Barley Soup
Dinner – Herb Roasted Chicken with Vegetables
Monday:
Breakfast – Blueberry Yogurt Pancakes
Lunch – Summer Salad {Just change the fruits to be seasonal} or Easy Chicken Salad from Leftovers
Dinner – Marinara Cod
Tuesday:
Breakfast – “Soaked” Granola
Lunch – Einkorn with Strawberries & Goat Cheese and/or Turkey Sandwiches
Dinner – Burgundy-Pepper Lamb Kabobs or Stuffed Acorn Squash
Wednesday:
Breakfast – Banana Fritters
Lunch – Easy Greens with Feta
Dinner – Pesto Chicken & Summer Veggie Penne
Thursday:
Breakfast – Perfect Coconut Flour Pancakes
Lunch – Mediterranean Couscous Salad
Dinner – Easy Creamy Spinach Salmon or Yucatan Marinade on Chicken
Friday:
Breakfast – Organic Chocolate Chip Banana Bread
Lunch – Tomato, Zucchini, and Onion Egg Bake
Dinner – Deconstructed Hamburgers or Chicken Pot Pie
Saturday:
Breakfast – Sourdough Pancakes or Almond Butter Banana Bread with Cocoa “Nibs”
Lunch – Ratatouille
Dinner – Real Food Nachos
What are your favorite tips for staying organized? Now, I’m headed off to take my own advice!
Latest posts by Sarah Outlaw (see all)
- Three Weeks to Better Kids {A recipe for a great summer} - May 23, 2018
- A Thankful Heart is a Happy Heart - November 27, 2013
- Hope for the Disorganized Homeschool Mom {and a Menu Plan} - October 4, 2013
- Contentment In Every Season - September 10, 2013
I would like to cry, okay I am crying. I feel as if I’ve been praying, breathing, making lists and all forever and I am still disorganized and chaotic. Will organization and structure ever become habit?
Angie!! I am the most unorganized person like, ever!!! I wrote this article to myself as much as to everyone out there. I can never seem to get it together but lately I have really been trying to take it one step at a time, one room at a time. See the picture? That’s my son’s actual room right now! We are painting his sisters’ room so everything is piled up in his. My kids haven’t been able to sleep in their rooms for 3 months because the project of stripping the walls down through layers of paint and paper has taken so long!! I should add a step! Give yourself some grace! It’s tough!!! Some people are more inclined towards organization than others! My sister and I shared a room as kids and she was the neat one so she put duct tape down the middle of the room to keep my mess away from her! I honestly don’t think I will ever be an “organized” person the way some see organization but I think I can make a little progress if I make it a priority. It’s so hard when you have littles!! My littlest guy is like the tasmanian devil running around making messes. It’s just the way things are right now. What’s organized to you might not be to me. Hang in there! We are all in this thing called motherhood together…messiness and all! Hugs!!!
I feel your pain in fact I was looking around my house today and thinking okay first off I need to get rid of some stuff so that I won’t have so much to organize but where to start? Oh man, I have done lists and breathed and prayed and sometimes I feel like God just shakes his head at me like really..but I am determined to get organized so if we can share ideas as we start our journey that would be great..Blessings,
Thank you for writing this! It’s simple and uses common sense…both of which I do not utilize often enough! 😉
This is coming from a very, very disorganized person. My sister is amazing at this stuff so she really helped me. She said to pick one room to work on. Empty out entire room except heavy furniture. Put back only what you want. Donate the rest. It worked! It’s much harder to leave everything in the room and just try to find things to donate. Hope this helps. 😉 I deal with this frustration so I understand. It’s so hard.
Need to add, it’s a constant battle for people like us that others sometimes just can’t understand. So whenever I find people like me, I try to get to know them. Gotta encourage each other. 🙂 http://amazingsix.blogspot.com
Thanks so much for the honesty. Sometimes it’s so encouraging to know we overwhelmed, unorganized, and ashamed homeschooling moms are NOT alone! And thanks also for the Paleo-friendly meal plan! I’m trying to build up the amount of healthy, unprocessed and “practically paleo” that my family eats, and that is a real help!
How dare they write this piece about me…lol, wow thank you soooooo much! I needed this!
As a mother of 9 children, who are all adults now, I have a house full of memories, and I need to organize the “left-over” school stuff which I stashed the past 25 years while homeschooling! While I don’t regret saving their school work and art, I need to make room for grandchildren to have a more pleasant time visiting me! So I will be working as steadily as possible to make the rooms less stacked up with stuff.
Prayer is my main source for strength and ideas, so I will keep plodding along while asking the Lord for wisdom for the next day’s work.
Meanwhile, my husband and I have been foster provider to an adult special needs individual the past 23 years also. And now both our mothers are elderly and need our attention. No matter what phase of life, there are always challenges!!
Getting enough sleep, exercise, and keeping my relationship with the Lord renewed daily will always be first priority to me. So I will be giving my “to do list” to the Lord in prayer, asking for some more miracles as only He can provide.
However, it does help to enlist prayers and encouragement from other moms too! Social networking is a great source of encouragement these days! My prayers go with all of you in the same boat! Our needs are similar, yet different. By some standards I am a “pack-rat”, like Ruth Graham, wife of Billy Graham, as both my husband and I rarely threw out a book we have used. So now we have to find new homes for these books if we ever downsize! At least we are in this together, and going thru things brings back sweet memories.