Summer Schedule 2023

It seems like I find new ways to schedule myself each summer.

This is the first summer in a long time when I don't have to work.

There are a few things that have consistently worked for me.

Like having a theme each day to work with.

Here's this summer's:

Monday - Laundry Day/Food Prep Day

I used to try and do a load each day but then it seemed like it never ended. I like getting it all done in one day.

Also, as long as I'm going to be home doing laundry, I figured I'd spend some time in the kitchen prepping some food. 

Today, I'm planning on hard-boiling some eggs and maybe making some spanish rice.

Tuesday - Deep Cleaning Day/Library Day

Everyone at home has an "area" that they are supposed to keep clean as well as their bedrooms.

We rotate through those areas weekly right now, though in the past we've kept the same area for a month so the kids could become experts.

Then, once a week, we do the deeper cleaning like dusting, vacuuming and mopping.

I like to pair this with something the kids want to do as an encouragement, thus going to the library when we're done.

Wednesday - Temple Day/Computer Work

The plan is to go at least weekly during this summer and hopefully keep the momentum for the rest of the year.

We are so blessed to have a temple that is only 10 minutes away.

I'm also planning on using this day to work on my budget and menu planning.

Thursday - Errands/Shopping Day

I hope that I can schedule appointments and have all my lists ready for this day.

Also, having a day like this makes it easier when my kids are asking to go shopping to get stuff.

Friday - Fun Day/Hiking Day

Every other week I am doing a beginning hike with whatever women want to join me.

On the days when I'm not hiking with them, we will try and figure out something fun to do.

My kids are all older now and not as excited to hang out with me.

Saturday - Outdoor Work/Project Day

I am easily overwhelmed with all the projects that I see need to be done.

So, I'm working really hard on breaking those projects down into manageable chunks and projects that I can feel successful in completing in just a few hours.

The new type of schedule I'm working on is time block scheduling.

5:30am - wake up

6:00-7:00am - walk with friends

7:00-7:30am - family scripture study

7:45am - breakfast

8:00-9:00am - strength training on MWF; yard work on TTh

10:00-12:00pm - this is my block of time to get ready and do my personal scripture study. And I'm doing everything I can to protect this time for me - it's my "mom needs to stay sane" time.

12:30-3:30pm - this block of time is for the theme of the day, i.e. cleaning, temple, errands, etc.

4:00-7:30pm - this is for dinner time and regular chaos

9:30pm - my goal is to be in bed every night by this time.

I don't feel like I'm overscheduling myself when I do it this way.

There are lots of break times and overlaps and I feel flexible if things need to be switched around.

I love summer mostly for this reason - to be scheduled in a new way.

Be Myself

More than a decade ago, our family spent the summer being "homeless".

(that's a post for a different time)

During that time, I wrote a post about my drug of choice.

Being organized and structured was how I stayed sane.

At the time I had 7 kids all at home and it was chaotic.

Now that most of my kids are adults, the chaos is different.

And I recently spent a few years trying to get away from my "structured" personality.

For some reason, I felt that I needed to be a more "go with the flow" type of person.

I didn't like my black and white thinking.

Was there really a need to have all of that structure?

This quote from Sis. Patricia Holland really resonated with me.

"For many years I tried to measure the ofttimes quiet, reflective, thoughtful Pat Holland against the robust, bubbly, talkative, and energetic Jeff Holland and others with like qualities. I have learned through several fatiguing failures that you can’t have joy in being bubbly if you are not a bubbly person. It is a contradiction in terms. I have given up seeing myself as a flawed person because my energy level is lower than Jeff’s, and I don’t talk as much as he does, nor as fast. Giving this up has freed me to embrace and rejoice in my own manner and personality in the measure of my creation. Ironically, that has allowed me to admire and enjoy Jeff’s ebullience even more. 

Somewhere, somehow the Lord “blipped the message onto my screen” that my personality was created to fit precisely the mission and talents he gave me. For example, the quieter, calmer talent of playing the piano reveals much about the real Pat Holland. I would never have learned to play the piano if I hadn’t enjoyed the long hours of solitude required for its development. This same principle applies to my love of writing, reading, meditation, and especially teaching and talking with my children. Miraculously, I have found that I have untold abundant sources of energy to be myself. But the moment I indulge in imitation of my neighbor, I feel fractured and fatigued and find myself forever swimming upstream. When we frustrate God’s plan for us, we deprive this world and God’s kingdom of our unique contributions, and a serious schism settles in our soul. God never gave us any task beyond our ability to accomplish it. We just have to be willing to do it our own way. We will always have enough resources for being who we are and what we can become." (LDS Women’s Treasury: Insights and Inspiration for Today’s Woman, p.98)

I do believe it was good for me to step back and figure out why I do things the way I do.

And to make sure that my way wasn't getting in the way of the Lord's way.

But, I also realized that I don't have to be like anyone else.

God will use my strengths to accomplish His work and glory.

Zone Cleaning

I'm pretty sure I've talked about zone cleaning before, but here what is working for us now.

Since I have four kids at home, I have divided the cleaning areas into 4 zones.

Right now the zones are: Kitchen, Dining Room, Front Room, Cats/Sweep

Each area has at least one daily job and then there is also an extra job every day.

We rotate weekly through the zones.

Kitchen zone requires putting away dishes every day and clearing/wiping the counter.
The extra jobs are: wipe appliances, clean out microwave, wipe down garbage can, empty garbages throughout the entire house.

Dining Room has to clear the table each day and then they also clear off the information center, organize the coloring shelf, clean off the bench seat, dust and wipe down chairs.

Front Room is in charge of vacuuming every day. They also straighten the bookshelves, the front closet, the top of piano, dust and clean under couches.

Cats/Sweep are in charge of feeding and watering the cats daily as well as sweeping (we have wood laminate all upstairs). Then they need to clean the cat's water bowl once a week, empty the litter box, and vacuum the outdoor/indoor rug by the back door.

After quiet time, the kids work on their zones so they can have a snack.

My kids are motivated by food and we've been doing this long enough, that they know the routine.

Any jobs that didn't get full attention during the week are taken care of (or done again) during our regular cleaning day on Saturday.

Saturday is also the day we vacuum bedrooms and clean bathrooms.

Fortunately, our kitchen has been staying pretty clean even though everyone is home.

That's because the kids are in charge of getting the whole kitchen cleaned every night (dishes, table, food, counter) before they can watch a show or movie.

Sometimes I worry that maybe there is too much screen time going on, but a clean kitchen at this time is worth it!

Family Scripture Study

Oops, looks like I skipped over our family scripture study.

The thing is, I am definitely not an expert in this.

We have tried LOTS of different ways to do this.

For sure, morning time works best for us.

By night time, my mom hat/patience is almost gone.

I just want everyone to go to bed.

And I am a believer in letting kids sleep as long as possible.

So, I put off doing early morning scriptures for a long time.

Notice I said "kids" in the previous sentence.

Teenagers are not kids!

When I had kids start high school, we started doing scripture study at 6:30am.

We do that all during the school year.

And then I've always struggled where to fit scripture study in during the summer.

I usually get up and exercise and go to work for a short time and the kids sleep until I get home around 8:30.

Though there have been some summers when I still woke the kids up at 6:30 so my husband could join us.

Ha! There was some rebellion.

Now, that there is not a school schedule to adjust to, I decided to do the 8:30 time.

But, I wake the kids up 30 minutes before for breakfast and getting ready.

Our scripture study goes much better when they are awake.

That being said, what does it really mean that scripture study goes better?

We go back and forth between taking turns reading out loud in chronological order and trying to have kids read before and then having a discussion.

Having the Come Follow Me program has helped us a lot.

I'd love to say that every scripture study is spiritually fulfilling.

But the truth is, I probably only feel the spirit during scripture study hopefully once a week; maybe less.

To me, the important part of scripture study is developing the habit.

I want my kids to know its important to me to make it a priority.

And maybe when they are older, they will remember the importance and make it a habit in their own families.

Exercise

Exercise.

It's important.

The end.



Ok, I'll say a little bit more about this.

(I mean, I did get a college degree in this subject.)


I am a true believer in exercising.

You know how most mom's have that one solution for any problem?

My solution for almost any problem is, "maybe you need to exercise?"

That, and "how much water have you had today?"

This COVID-19 came at a pretty tough time.

Our little town was just barely coming out of the long sleep of winter.

We've been stuck inside because of the cold for at least 4 months already.

And now that the snow is starting to melt and the temperatures are getting above freezing we can't go outside?!

I started a couch to 5k program about 2 weeks before quarantine.

Most of my runs were on an indoor track.

Luckily, there's been some nice enough weather (above 20 degrees) where I have been able to transition outside.

And more importantly, my kids need to get outside.

They're not toddlers anymore, but they still have energy that needs to come out other ways than yelling at each other.

Here's a list of some of the exercise activities they've been doing every day:

Biking (just up and down our street and maybe around the church parking lot)
Walking (up and down the neighborhood not getting close to anyone)
Exercise bike (inside)
Fitbit App workouts
Just Dance (wii)
Sword fighting (you know, the usual)

I have been doing Yoga on the days I don't run.

Yoga used to make me dizzy, but I've learned to only focus on myself and not doing it exactly right and that seems to be helping my head.

I love it!!

Anyway, exercise is important.

Just do it.

Quiet Time

I want to talk about Quiet Time.

This is not to be confused with my Mom Time.

(and it is so important to me, that I'm skipping over exercise time to talk about it!)

When I was just starting out on this parenting journey, I was lucky enough to have an older sister with kids older than mine.

She was a gold mine of information.

But, the number one nugget she gave me was the idea of "Quiet Time".

Every day, there is a time set apart for it.

The rule is, it must be spent in your room and you can't come out until the time is over.

When I first started this, we did only a 15 minute quiet time.

And there was some crying and door holding to get it to happen.

They could do what they wanted in quiet time as long as they cleaned up afterwards.

At the beginning, it would usually turn in to nap time.

As they got used to the idea, we gradually increased the time.

And as more kids came along, there was less quiet and more messy  creative play.

It became 30-60 minutes of my day that I looked forward to having some down time.

Life saver!!


We'd gone away from quiet times in our home.

My kids are older and not around that much anyway.

That is until now.

We are home together all the time.

And Quiet Time is back!


My kids complained a lot at first.

"We have to do an hour and a half of quiet time every day!!??!!"

"What are we supposed to do for that long??!!!"

Guess what?

It's saving our lives again!!

This time, everyone has to spend that time alone.

There's not many naps (though there have been some).

There's a lot of reading.

And a lot of creativity happening. (though no music is allowed - because quiet, right?)

I believe my kids are getting along a lot better with each other, because they have some alone time every day.

They play better together when they are together because they are not together all the time. Ha!

I usually end up working during that time.

Or just enjoying the peace.

If you are just starting out, don't expect perfect results at first.

We did the work to get to this.

But, it is worth the effort to get something like this in place.

Life saving, I tell you!

Thanks Pam.

School Work

I want to write about COVID-19 school.

I have two in high school (10th,12th) and two in middle school (5th, 6th).

Our schools/teachers moved everything on-line rather quickly when they shut school down.

The middle school had packets to pick up for 2 weeks worth of work.

The high school teachers emailed students and sent links to work.

They offer ZOOM meetings for kids to join if they want to; but it's not required.

We had a scheduled spring break during this closure time and the teacher's aren't giving homework during that time.

It was very stressful at first.

I did not want my kids to fall behind.

But, even more stressful, was trying to keep up on everyone's work and making sure that it was getting done.


Sidenote:
I have homeschooled almost all of my kids at different points in their school life.

And it took a while to get the right mindset.

In regular school, there are grades and tests to show where kids are in the learning process.

With homeschooling, there is no one to compare my kids learning with except their own.

I had to figure out that my job was not to "keep up" where they should be, but rather help them develop the learning and skills necessary to succeed in life.

(By the way, COVID-19 school is nothing like homeschool!  No field trips!)


Anyway, it was stressful.

I was starting to feel like the cranky taskmaster that I try really hard not to be.

Thankfully, I remembered my homeschool mindset and it helped me not stress about school work anymore.

We did a family council and talked about all the classes and assignments that each child needed to focus on.

I put the control in their hands, not mine.

I asked them to be diligent and that  I was there to help them not push or pull them.

I asked them to think about what classes they would feel stressed about not being caught up when/if school started again.

And that they should make a schedule and do a little bit of their work every day; especially in Math, English, and Science.

Our schedule has school work between 9-11, with extra time built in after lunch and quiet time, as needed.

And it's working.

My older kids know what needs to be done and they are mostly getting stuff done on their own.

Having a week of no school assignments coming in has been helpful to realize that there's no rush to get things done.

Learning is happening.

I have kids being able to focus more time on things that they really enjoy and want to learn.

And most importantly, I'm not constantly nagging at kids to get their stuff done.

I don't know how long we will be doing school at home.

I'm not sure what it will look like when they go back to school.

Grades don't matter to me as much as learning does.

(Although, grades matter to getting scholarships to college and that is important!)

I want my kids to remember this time at home as different and challenging.

But not as suffocating.

For our family, that means Mom backing off and loving more than nagging.

I promise that some days are better than others.

I truly believe, as Gordon B. Hinckley used to say:

 "It will all work out."

Cluffs Like Food

We really like food in our family.

It's a bit of a running joke in our family to say, "Cluffs like food."

My husband has a family history book of the Cluff family from late 1800s and early 1900s.

Our family got a kick out of reading the descriptions of the different family reunions.

A lot of the descriptions were about the food served.

That's why all the food times on my schedule are marked in bold.

Eating is important to us.

It's in our blood.

Also, if I didn't put regular eating times into the schedule, I'm pretty sure that my kids would be grazing all day long!

There are not a lot of chances to feel in control of life right now.

Making a schedule of food gives me at least a sense of control in that area.

I even scheduled out each day's snacks and lunches for 2 weeks.

And, like all hard schedules that I write out, they end up being "guidelines".

My kids know what food is in the house and they get one type of snack per day at the appropriate time.

It makes my life easy.

And my kids get fed. 

And in case anyone is interested, here's our list of snacks and lunches:

Pretzels*
Granola bar
Fruit
Crackers*
Gogurt
Goldfish*
Nuts
Popcorn
Veggies/Hummus
Treat
Nachos
Sandwich
Pasta
Ramen
Pizza Quesadillas
Mini Pizzas
Mini Sandwiches
Leftovers

* they read the serving size on the labels to know how much they get.

The thing is, my kids are always hungry.

So, my favorite line to use is, "It takes 30 days to starve. Come talk to me after not eating for 29 days."

I guess it sounds kind of harsh.

I really love my kids.

And I love my sanity.

And, we really like food.

Mom Time/Hear Him

So, I want to talk about the very first thing in my COVID-19 schedule.

When school was in, I had kids that needed to be at school by 7am.

That meant we had to have scriptures no later than 6:30 every morning.

I always set my alarm for 5:20am with the idea that I could read news and scriptures before getting everyone else up and ready.

It worked ok.


A couple of months ago, I decided to read and write down all of President Nelson's  invitations.

The idea was to pick one and work on it for a few months.

After re-reading all of his talks, I realized that more than anything I wanted to work harder on receiving personal revelation - really hearing God speak to me.

So, after getting kids off to school and exercising with friends, I made a stronger effort to take time to pray and listen to God.

I would get completely ready to go to work and then I would stop.

I'd shut my door and just pray.

I decided to carve out 30 min of my morning doing this.

Even though I didn't think I could really pray for that long, I did not want to feel rushed.


It became my most treasured time each day.

A time to slow down and express all of my feelings to my Father in Heaven.

And a time to feel His love for me and any direction I needed.


Fast forward now to kids being home ALL the time.

They don't need to be out the door early.

But, I've kept the habit of getting up early in the morning.

I still do my scripture reading and exercising and getting ready.

The kids know that we start doing breakfast at 8:00.

But, until then, I will be in my room for my alone time.

So, don't knock on my door!


It is still the best part of my day.

That time is exactly what I need to be able to face each day.

My patience has increased.

As well as my gratitude.

And when I follow any promptings that I receive, my day goes great.


When my kids were really little, and getting ready for church was a monumental effort, I learned that if I didn't get myself ready first, then it might not happen in time.

I still have that testimony.

If I don't take the time for the "needful" things as my very first priority, it's less likely to happen.


I know God wants to speak to me.

He loves me.

And I know He loves you.

Make time to Hear Him!

COVID-19 Schedule

I thought that I would post the schedule that is currently working for my family.

The ages of my kids are 18, 16, 12, 10.

I have always been a schedule person (see here).

5:30am-8:00am - Mom time (this is when I exercise, read scriptures, pray, get ready, etc)
8:00am - Breakfast
8:30am - Family scriptures
9:00am-11:00am - School work
          -Snack break-
More school
12:00pm - Exercise time
12:30pm - Lunch
1:00pm-2:30pm - Quiet Time
2:30pm - Zone cleaning
          -Snack break-
3:00pm-6:00pm - Project time/other school/free time
6:00pm - Dinner
They take turns picking a movie or show to watch every night after the kitchen/dinner is all cleaned up. As long as they got all of the necessary school work done.
9:00pm - Bedtime

It's working pretty good for us so far.

I'll post more about each block another time.

I'm trying to post a little bit more to record memories of this time.