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Sallie Schaaf Borrink

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In Our Cozy Home This Week – No. 84 – Mending, Pantry, Supply Chains, My Office, and Homeschooling

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentIn Our Cozy Home This Week – No. 84 – Mending, Pantry, Supply Chains, My Office, and Homeschooling

I hope you had a good week. This holiday-shortened week simply flew by. It was Wednesday night before I could even blink! Now it’s Friday already!

I sent out my first (restarted) newsletter yesterday. If you didn’t receive it and you don’t find it in your spam folder, then it means you aren’t subscribed. Use the sign-up in the sidebar or the form on the Subscribe page which you can find in the header menu.

This Week’s Artwork

Today I chose Helping Hands by Charles-Édouard Frère (1837 – 1894). According to Wikipedia:

Frère was born in Paris as the son of Pierre Édouard Frère, whose style of genre works he continued. He is known for interiors and landscapes. The orientalist Théodore Frère was his uncle.

Helping Hands was painted in 1880. According to Artnet, it last sold in 2014.

Office Update

I already shared about the feathering of my office nest so I won’t write about that again. But I’m pleased with the small changes we made. We don’t have the time to paint it and the room is too small to move furniture around. But a few changes made a big difference and were a good pick-me-up. I’m thankful.

Pantry

About a week ago I started watching some of the videos Southern Prepper 1 is doing regarding the actual real-life situations across the country. He has a fairly large YouTube channel and his followers are writing in and telling him what they are seeing in terms of shortages, supply chain issues, worker shortages, etc. Everything from antibiotics to water treatment plant supplies to basic hospital medical supplies. Some of it is truly eye-opening, even for someone like me who keeps up on what is happening.

I’m not going to embed any of his videos here, but I think it is worth your time to be aware of what is going on. There is much more I could say, but I will put those in a Sallie’s Stack of Stuff. If any of you have boots-on-the-ground info, I’d love to hear it in the comments or in an email.

In any case, this is your friendly reminder to know what is going on and how it will impact you. Not could, but will because we are truly at that point.

Mending

I did some mending this week. I’m not sure why I put it off because I always like the feeling of accomplishment when something is fixed and ready to be used again. In any case, I did tackle a few small things and crossed them off my to do list.

Homeschooling

Caroline and I had some good conversations this week about what we want to do (and not do) this summer. She must be going through a growth spurt in some way because she is sleeping (hard) until noon and eating up a storm. I firmly believe one of the greatest gifts homeschoolers give their children is the ability to get enough sleep. (I have many posts about sleep and how it impacts every aspect of our lives.)

I also had a good conversation with another homeschool mom about the choices we make, especially as it pertains to what we choose to study. I made an observation about this and we agreed I need to write a post about it! So I’m hoping to do that soon.

Work

My biggest work accomplishment was breaking the inertia and starting up the newsletter again. I don’t know why it was so difficult for me to just do it and send it out, but it was. In any case, I got it done and that was a huge mental load lifted.

David has been swamped with work so he hasn’t had any time to help me update my editable homeschool planners or with any other printables. I’m thankful – very thankful – he’s swamped with work. But it definitely slows down my ability to meet some of my goals. It will all work out, but they still aren’t updated so that hangs over me a bit.

On the bright side, I wrote a few posts and recorded a Sallie’s Stack of Stuff this week. From that perspective, it was a good week. I especially enjoyed putting together Bible Verses About The Humble and Humility. I benefited from the refocus just as much as anyone else.

So what did you do this week? I hope you’ll leave a comment below and share. ♥

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10 Reasons We Enjoyed the Tween Years

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View Full Post with Embedded Content10 Reasons We Enjoyed the Tween Years

There are so many warnings out there to enjoy your children when they are little because the tween years hit and things are never the same again. It’s strongly implied that the years are difficult and the parent-child relationship becomes a constant struggle.

I’m here to say this was not the case for us.

Our daughter is wrapping up her tween years (9-12) and I can honestly say that we have all thoroughly enjoyed the past few years as a family. I easily identified some choices we made that greatly contributed to this. I asked my husband why he thought these years have been so positive and he also made some excellent observations.

So here are the big things we think we did right with our tween daughter. Each one of these could be a lengthy post in and of itself, but I’m going to keep each point brief in order to keep them in one place.

I’m also smart enough to know that we still have a lot of parenting years ahead of us and no one knows what can happen in the future. But to this point of our parenting journey, the following have worked very well for us.

By way of context if you are new to my site, we are a homeschooling family of homebodies. David and I are self-employed at home. Our daughter is twice-exceptional (2e) and our only child.

We Parented the Child We Had

We parented the child we had, not the child we thought she should be or we wanted her to be. We have worked hard to be in tune with how God created her and parented accordingly. This has involved lots of prayer and lots of research.

For example, when it became clear that she was struggling in certain areas, we had her tested so we could all better understand her strengths and weaknesses. We’ve adjusted our life for her since very early on and we’ve continued to do this. We firmly believe that it doesn’t matter what any other family is doing with their child. We are the parents of this child. It’s our privilege and responsibility to parent her in the ways she needs us.

Parenting the child we have has impacted our homeschooling choices, curriculum choices, church choices, and so many other things I’ve written about at length on my site. It didn’t matter what we thought we would like to do as parents if it didn’t square with the child we had.

We parent her.

Relationship Was the Most Important Thing

Building strong relationships takes time, energy, focus, and listening. We prioritized these above other aspects of parenting because we believed we could better accomplish things as parents with a strong relationship with our child.

This has meant that while we have always expected and required respect, we did not obsess about authority and being in charge. We thought of our family as a group of relationships, not a power structure. We respected that she had her own agenda and priorities because even a tween can have a strong idea of what is important to her.

Because Caroline was a challenging baby/toddler/preschooler, learning to control our anger and exasperation was very important. Early on we had to remind ourselves daily (and sometimes hourly) that we were making choices not just for the moment of frustration but also for two, five, and eight years down the road. That meant learning to deal with our expectations that could provoke our own anger and exasperation that didn’t need to be expressed because it was not beneficial to building the parent-child relationship.

We carried that attitude on into the tween years.

We Modeled How to Be Wrong

There are some things that can be caught even better than being taught. David and I have modeled how to be wrong so Caroline can see it in action. We’ve never told her how to do this. She simply saw us do it and started doing it herself.

When David is right about something, I say, “You are right. I was wrong.” He does the same thing to me.

We don’t say, “Fine” in anger and then stomp off to sulk. That’s not admitting you’re wrong. That’s just being someone with a bad attitude.

If Caroline is right and we are wrong, we acknowledge it the same way. She is due the same level of respect as an adult who is correct. Truth is truth whether it comes from the mouth of an adult or a ten year old.

If someone presents a better argument and shows us that we are wrong, we say, “Good point.” We’re not afraid to acknowledge that someone else in the house is correct and we’re wrong. It’s part of the ebb and flow of our relationships. It’s what healthy families do.

The bottom line is how could we expect our daughter to acknowledge when she is wrong and we are right if she has no idea what it looks like? We all have the opportunity to be right and wrong in this house. And we respect each other in the process.

We Modeled Failure and Success

We made sure she knew that we understand success and failure are a part of life. We expect to fail. We expect to succeed. We expect her to succeed. We expect her to fail. There is no shame in failure in our home.

Because we’re self-employed and have been for a long time, we’re entrepreneurial so we are constantly teaching ourselves new things. We are always showing her something new we’ve learned along the way.

As an example, she’s watched me recently go through the process of launching my podcast. She saw the work that went into it such as researching equipment. She saw what worked and what didn’t. She heard all of the music tracks I sampled and we joked about the different moods they evoked and what kinds of movie scenes they could be used in. She heard all the ones I rejected and when I found the right one, she knew why. She knew I had to record the first few podcasts multiple times to learn how to get them right. She saw David teach himself and experiment with multiple editing techniques to get the right one for my podcast. She literally heard the failures and successes as we worked for weeks to get it right prior to launching. She knew all the work that went into the successes and failures.

We celebrate loudly when one of us has a major success. We help each other try to figure out how to fix a mistake or learn from it.

There is no fear of failure in our home.

We Emphasized Learning to Negotiate

I’ve written an entire post about the fact that we negotiate with our child and why.  I honestly think it’s one of the most important posts on my site even though it has never generated a lot of traffic or comments.

I wrote it when Caroline was nine and a half. I stand by what I wrote and I’m confident this approach was a great help during the tween years.

Caroline has learned how to negotiate a compromise, understands the reasoning behind it, and can approach a situation with a give and take attitude in which both parties think win-win. Can she clearly articulate that? Probably not. But she’s had experience practicing it and has begun to internalize those skills. Our job in the coming years is to help her continue to hone those skills to prepare her for adulthood.

We Let Her Sleep

I cannot emphasize enough how important this was.

Too many parents are worried to almost obsessed with making sure their tween is “responsible” to the point they won’t let their growing child get the sleep she desperately needs.

An observant parent can generally tell the difference between a child who is growing and needs massive amounts of sleep (and food!) and a child who is lazy. If we woke Caroline up at her normal time, gave her another nudge ten minutes later, and she was barely comprehending it, we let her sleep. Sometimes she slept for hours past her normal wake up time. Her body needed rest, especially since most growth happens while children/tweens sleep. (Remember when your toddler would get up and look like a different kid? Yes, children can change that much overnight.)

Allowing her to sleep meant she was rested and could tackle her life without running on fumes just so we could keep up the appearance of being “good parents” who make our child stick to a schedule.

I truly believe she was pretty even keeled emotionally during this season of life in large part because she wasn’t tired all the time.

We Were Strategic With Social Situations

I think this also offered tremendous benefits during the tween years. We were selective about social interactions, including peer activities.

Before someone accuses us of keeping her locked up at home and keeping her from the “real world,” nothing could be farther from the truth. For privacy reasons, I’m not going to list all the things she’s involved with, but she has a number of activities she enjoys and that allow her interaction with people of all ages, including people who would be considered her peers.

However, we controlled peer interaction so it was generally positive. Does that mean we never had any drama or hurt feelings? Of course not. But it does meant that she (and we) wasted almost zero energy on excessive social drama and peer pressure that most kids that age deal with on a daily basis.

We Utilized Humor Frequently

Caroline’s humor developing to more mature levels has been a fantastic part of the tween years.

The truth of the matter is that we laugh as a family if we’re in the room together for sixty seconds. Quips, puns, good-natured teasing, quoting movies or television shows, etc. are all part of our family culture.

We simply have fun and enjoy laughing together. There is plenty of give and take in the humor department in our home. Because we love and trust each other, we can trust each other’s humor as well.

A family that can laugh together at the drop of a hat is a healthy family.

We Adjusted Academic Expectations

I’ve written so much about this part of our journey already on my site that I’m only going to mention it here in brief.

We have emphasized that we are interested in Caroline learning and finding life interesting, not performing. We’ve been low key regarding academics and grades to this point. She has had massive amounts of time to pursue the things that interest her and that she is especially gifted to do as an artistically inclined child.

(For those freaking out about what I just said about academics and grades, here is what happened when we gave her her first standardized test.)

This is one area where my thinking and strategy are very long term. I reviewed a book this week in Homeschooling a Child with Language-Based Learning Disabilities (LBLD) that showed me I’m correct in my approach in this which has thrilled me no end.

We’ve Shown Her She’s Safe With Us

David made this observation and it really is the summary statement of all of the choices we’ve made.

Our daughter knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that we love her and she’s safe with us. She can trust us to do what is best for her because we’ve demonstrated it time and again. We’ve also explained to her why we make the choices we do so we get buy-in from her. When necessary, we back it up from other sources.

This trust was not automatic and it is something we’ve earned and she’s bestowed on us. We might think that children should automatically trust their parents, but I don’t think this is the case. Trust is something that is earned and re-affirmed over time. It’s not something to take for granted. We continue to make trust and safety a priority so this does not erode in our relationships.

We Have Enjoyed the Tween Years

We truly have enjoyed these years which honestly surprised me because I thought there was something to the fear mongering that is so prevalent. It was hard work to get to the tween years and I anticipate parenting will continue to be hard work. But David and I both feel like we’ve already reaped a harvest for all the sowing, weeding, watering, and such that we’ve done over the years.

We’re very grateful.

Begin Understanding Your Child With My Short Ebook – Available in My Shop

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Realistic Expectations for Work-at-Home Homeschooling Moms

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentRealistic Expectations for Work-at-Home Homeschooling Moms

As if homeschooling our children isn’t enough, many of us also decide to add working at home to the mix. I still haven’t decided if we’re blessed to be able to work at home or totally crazy. Probably a bit of both.

I began working at home as a writer when I decided to leave teaching. David began working at home when he was downsized out of his corporate job. He’s an excellent web designer and graphic designer. We often work together on projects and he has his own clients as well. He also does all the design for my products in my learning shop. We worked from home together for five years before Caroline was born and have continued to do so.

After working at home for many years and now with a child I’m homeschooling, I’ve determined that there are definite needs in order to succeed. This is my big picture, all-in-one realistic expectations list for homeschooling moms who are thinking about working from home.

What Do You Need to Work from Home?

Realistic Goals

It all starts here, folks.

I interact with a lot of bloggers online. I regularly see moms who say something like: “I have five children under the age of eight and I’m homeschooling the oldest three. I really want to earn a full-time income off my blog I just started two months ago, but I’m finding it hard to get the time to get much done. How can I get it done?”

You know what the answer is 99% of the time for that situation? You can’t. Unless you have an incredible support network that regularly helps with childcare and/or you have a husband who makes very good money so you can outsource most of your homemaking responsibilities and get lots of babysitter time, you simply aren’t going to be able to be a good mom to five kids, homeschool three of them, and work full-time from home. That’s not a realistic goal.

Another example is people who decide to sell printables online after seeing an article about women who have made huge amounts of money doing so. They expect to earn $5,000 a month after a couple of months. That’s not realistic.

Working from home, especially when it is your own business, is a marathon. It can take a long time to build up a business that pays well. We’re talking YEARS. If you need cash right away, it is better to find someone who will pay you to work from home such as answering phones for a customer service line. If you aren’t careful with your spending, you might be better off finding ways to cut corners and save money instead of trying to generate a way to make more money.

You have to be realistic or you will be constantly frustrated. And one guess who will bear the brunt of your frustration. Your children. Because it will be all too easy to see them as the obstacle to your money making goals instead of delightful little people entrusted to your love and care.

Unless you are truly in a desperate place financially, working from home can wait. Little people can’t.

A Supportive Husband

If you are going to work from home, you need to have a supportive husband. If he’s not on board with your plans, it is going to cause friction in your marriage and it isn’t worth it. He’ll resent the time you spend working instead of taking care of the home and investing in your relationships with him and your children.

If you are barely holding it together in terms of taking care of your home, homeschooling, and mothering, it’s not going to get any easier when you try working as well. Your best approach to change his mind is to demonstrate you can do everything else over an extended period of time and then suggest that you slowly add a few hours of work time each week.

I could not do what I do if I didn’t have David’s support. He supports me emotionally and physically. He does many of the household chores because we agree that my work is just as important as his. Our marriage is truly a partnership in every sense of the word. If your husband isn’t willing to support your need for time to work, then think long and hard before you try to take this on.

Sleep

If your business plan requires that you sleep only four or five hours a night, rip it up and start over. You cannot be a healthy person on four or five hours of sleep. This goes back to the realistic goals I mentioned up above.

If your plan to work requires that you sabotage your body in the process, forget it. It’s not worth the long-term health problems.

Your little people need a mama who is reasonably healthy. You simply cannot be healthy mentally, emotionally, and physically if you are chronically sleep deprived. A lack of sleep messes with your brain in a multitude of ways. You lose your ability to think clearly, be patient, etc.

You need your sleep.

 

A Simplified Life

If you are working from home and homeschooling little people, that is enough. Period. I personally think that you need to consider letting go of any other commitments both for your own sanity as well as your children’s. It is going to be challenging enough for some of your kids to share you with work. If you are also involved in multiple outside activities, you are probably going to be stretched too thin.

We live in a culture that thinks margin is optional. You need margin. Your children need margin. Your family as a whole needs margin. Again, if you are homeschooling and working from home I truly believe that is enough for most women. If you aren’t convinced, read one of my favorite books – Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives. (He also wrote another favorite of mine – The Overload Syndrome: Learning to Live Within Your Limits.)

If you have a hard time saying no, then you need to get a grip on that as well. I wrote a short ebook about that very topic – The Freedom of Learning to Say “No”. It’s a brief book with an action plan in the back. If you have a hard time telling people no when they ask you to do this or that, please read my book and do the exercises that come with it. You are going to need to set boundaries in order to achieve some sense of balance and margin in your life.

Routines

Routines are very beneficial for a work-at-home mom. You don’t want to spend the precious limited energy you have each day herding children who have never been taught routines. Determine the routines that work for your family and then implement them. Try to get as many parts of your family life on autopilot as possible. This includes laundry, cleaning, and meals. Conserve your mental energy for when you sit down to work.

I have put together a collection of printables that will help you do just this. A Quiet Simple Life Planner & Guidebook is full of helpful plans, ideas, and more that will assist you in establishing routines and rhythms in your home.

Flexibility and a Sense of Humor

While I just said you need a routine, you also have to be willing to be flexible. That great workplan you have lined up for this afternoon that you can’t wait to get to? It will get torpedoed when one of your little people ends up breaking an arm, you have an inconsolable teething baby, or the babysitter can’t come. Family life is going to get in the way of your work plans over and over again. You can laugh or cry. Choose to have a sense of humor about it or you’ll end up stressed out and angry.

Confidence that Comes from Prayer

What you are attempting to do is challenging. If you are a Christian, I encourage you to pray about this before you begin. While it may be your desire to work from home, the Lord might have other plans for you. It might be a season of “not yet” at this point. Ask for guidance and then more forward in confidence with whatever answer you receive.

A Work-at-Home Environment

So what about a work-at-home environment? What is important to consider?

Tanks Filled First

One thing we learned as work-at-home parents is that we have to fill our daughter’s tank first. She must have her needs met early in the day or the entire day can quickly go downhill. Doing homeschool with her is not filling her tank. I’m talking play and total focus on her when she was little. Now it is more about conversation and connection.

If we fill that tank before lunch, the rest of the day generally moves along much more smoothly.

A Tidy and Clutter-Free Home

Everyone has the ability to live with different levels of “mess” in the home. For example, some people work fine at a messy desk and other people are paralyzed by it. You need to do what works for you.

The clutter I’m talking about is the mess that constantly sucks your time and detracts from your more important callings. The things you shuffle around because they really don’t have a home. The pile of stuff in the basement that never gets dealt with and continues to grow. The overflow of toys that you constantly have to pick up because your children haven’t been taught any kind of routine or there are so many it’s basically impossible for them to clean up.

This kind of clutter is a drain.

I recently wrote about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. I highly recommend reading it if you have too much stuff. As I’ve gone through my home following these principles, I’ve eliminated probably 30-50% in each room or storage area. This surprised even me as we are not terribly materialistic and live in a relatively smaller home by today’s standards (1550 square feet). I’ve already pitched and decluttered many times in the past. But this book was kind of like the magic key I needed to take it to the next level.

Don’t waste your precious mental and emotional energy on clutter. Tackle it once and for all. Take a few weeks and attack it relentlessly. Free yourself from the bondage of stuff. I have many posts, printables, and podcasts that deal with clutter that can help you with this challenge.

Be brutally honest with yourself.

If you can’t tackle the clutter that regularly impedes your life, how will you manage your own business or work from home?

Work-at-Home Tools

So what are some tools that you need to effectively work from home? I’m not going to give you a long list of expensive bells and whistles. I’m going to give you an overview of the things that truly make the biggest difference in our lives.

If you want to see a more detailed list, please check out my post My Essential Website Tools.

 

Planner

Find a planner that works for you. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I have used a Blue Sky Weekly/Monthly Planner as my overall planner in a variety of different patterns for the past several years. It is not expensive and works fine for my life. I also have a separate three ring binder for planning aspects of my blogging, social media, sponsored posts, reviews, etc. because it was becoming too much to manage in one calendar.

I’ve created beautiful editable homeschool planners. They can be an amazing tool for you. I use the homeschool planner myself.

I know there are many planning and organizational apps out there as well, but I’m a paper and pencil gal. I don’t want my life to all be on an electronic device. If that works for you, great! I’m wired differently and prefer to keep things as simple as possible.

Some people see technology as simplifying. I do to a point, but only to a point. After that point, I think it minimizes margin and boundaries by making us too accessible and making it almost impossible to disconnect from our work. (That’s another discussion!)

A Quality Website

Make the investment in a quality website. If you are serious about your business or blog, make it look professional. Buy your own domain and set up a self-hosted WordPress website. Don’t use a Blogger or WordPress.com website because you don’t own them. Blogger can delete your website at any time and for no reason. You do not own your Blogger website or the content you put on there. WordPress.com does not allow you to engage in commercial activity.

I go into much more detail about choosing hosting and how to set up a website in My Essential Blogging Tools.

If you have a blog or website you aren’t happy with, David would love to help you! Or if you need something completely yours, he is very experienced in creating a site that will be just what you want. He also offers website maintenance and support plans.

A Mailing List

This is one of the biggest mistakes I made the first several years I was blogging. I never developed a mailing list. From the beginning, make it easy to keep in touch with people who visit your website. I have used ConvertKit and was happy with it, but I think it is better for people with more established and complicated online endeavors. When I wanted to simplify, I went back to MadMimi.

Set up an easy way for people to subscribe to your mailing list. Even if you only contact them once a month when you are starting out, you are building up your own list of contacts.

I explain in much more detail why I don’t limit myself to one online location or trust my business solely to other companies in Building A Small Diversified and Profitable Online Business. The principles in that post apply wherever you sell your products other than you own website. I highly recommend reading that post if you are going to develop an online business.

Learn from my mistakes. Seriously.

Amazon Prime

Honestly, Amazon Prime is the best tool for work-at-home and homeschooling moms. I don’t have time to run all over the place shopping. I can get virtually anything shipped to me in two days for free. Caroline can watch tons of videos through Amazon Prime for free. Between the Meijer that is a mile from our home, the local shops we have a half a mile from our home in Cute Little Town, and Amazon, I rarely have to take time to go shopping. Amazon Prime pays for itself over and over and over again every year.

A Babysitter

If you can afford it, hire a babysitter. I honestly think for a homeschooling work-at-home mom a babysitter is a legitimate need, not a luxury. When Caroline was younger, we hired a sitter to come in one afternoon a week (sometimes two) and it made all the difference in the world. The ability to focus for an extended period of time without being distracted or interrupted is gold. It was also fun for our only child daughter who got someone different to play with.

A Drop-Off Homeschool Co-op

We’ve been members of a drop-off homeschool co-op since Caroline was in kindergarten. It’s win-win for everyone. She gets to go to co-op and have fun with other kids while learning. We get a break and can focus on work during that time.

Highly Engaging, Self-Directed Activities for Children

This is critically important. You need to have highly-engaging, self-directed activities for your children. For us, that meant making peace with screens.

I’m not exaggerating when I say getting a Kindle Fire and Kindle Freetime changed our lives. It was something that was highly-engaging, learning oriented, and self-directed for Caroline. Then we added Minecraft – Pocket Edition. Caroline found that she absolutely loved the exploring and learning of Minecraft. (When we discovered that she is gifted/2e, visual-spatial, right brain type learner, it all made sense.) With the different options we had available to us, it freed up a couple of hours a day for David and me to work.

Allowing my daughter to use technology rather freely is not what I would have expected when I became a mother. I decided it was worth the trade-off. She is homeschooled and has both of her parents at home with her. Those are huge advantages in her life. I’m willing to trade-off extra screen time for that.

Meal Plans and Shortcuts

Having a list of quick meals and recipes is important. If you spend all the income you earn on eating out, you might as well not work. A slow cooker is great for having a good meal on the table at the end of the day. An Instant Pot makes it possible to cook a meal in a very short period of time.

Some people do detailed meal planning for every week. I’ve personally never found that to work. I keep a variety of foods available in a well-stocked pantry and we use what works that day and that meal. I’ve found working at home requires flexibility in terms of unexpected phone calls and so on. Whatever method works for you, just make sure you have one!

Online Support System

Find some groups online that make up a support system. There are many groups on Facebook, website forums, etc. where you can connect with other people who do similar work at home to yours. When you work at home, it is easy to feel disconnected professionally. I think seeking out people who do similar work is vitally important both for interaction and also networking, trouble-shooting and so on.

Household Help

I put this one last because this is something I don’t have, but wish I did. The first thing I would hire out is the lawn care, even before a housekeeper. We’re pretty tidy people by nature and I’m very good about keeping things picked up. We don’t mind cleaning and with only three of us it really doesn’t get dirty around here.

But I would love to have someone take care of the lawn (and the snow) since it always seems like a huge inconvenience when David has to do it. So those are on my someday list. If you can afford them, it might be well worth the expense, especially once your business gets going.

Work-at-Home Homeschooling Moms

It is possible to work from home and homeschool your children! For some, it is the perfect answer to both their financial and educational needs. It could be the answer for your family as well.

If your children are very young, think carefully before taking too much on. They truly need you a great deal of the time. Just a few years down the road it will be much easier. In our own home, the difference between what we could accomplish with a five year old and what we could accomplish with a nine year old was HUGE. Truly HUGE.

Now that she’s almost a teen, it’s even easier. It’s so much easier now compared to eight or nine years ago. That isn’t to say we don’t have challenges, but the older your children get the more they can at least understand why you need to work. Lay the groundwork slowly and start with even just cleaning out your home! That will start you on the right track.

If you are thinking through the decision, I also wrote more extensively about this topic in Thoughts on Motherhood, Making a Home, Homeschooling, and Working at Home.

Best wishes in your working endeavors!

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Limits Are God’s Idea

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentLimits Are God’s Idea

Like most book lovers, I’ve read many books that had a positive impact on my life. But if I had to narrow down the list and select the books that profoundly changed my thinking and the way I have lived my life, then the list quickly becomes much shorter.

There are two books by Richard A. Swenson, M.D. that would definitely be on my list – Margin and The Overload Syndrome. I have mentioned both of them before in other posts and they are also in the list I made of My Favorite Simple Living Books.

The subtitle of Margin is Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives. It was followed by The Overload Syndrome which carries the subtitle of Learning to Live Within Your Limits. Both are practical, encouraging books that highlight the reality of who we are and how God created us.

Limits Are God’s Idea

I am not overstating it when I say that The Overload Syndrome changed my thinking about limitations and what it means to do enough. I am so thankful the Lord led me to it. It truly changed my life in a freeing way and I can’t say that about too many books.

The idea of the reality and importance of how we think about limits are shown in a few quotes from The Overload Syndrome.

Limits were God’s intention from the beginning. He decided early on that limits were not only good but necessary. It was His way of preempting any ambiguity about who is God and who is not. He is the Creator – the One without limits. We are the created – the ones with limits.

For some, to say that we have limits seems to limit God. But saying that we have limits in no way suggests that God has limits. And to say that all the spiritual work in the kingdom must be done with human effort misses the point of God’s power altogether. It is very freeing to realize that God has the resources to get the job done, and that rest is still a part of His will for us. Conversely, it is lack of faith – coupled with an inadequate view of God – to think that we have to work twenty-hour days to get everything done. Far from dishonoring God by acknowledging human limits, it dishonors Him to deny limits. It insults His creation wisdom.

God does not have to depend on human exhaustion to get His work done. God is not so desperate for resources to accomplish His purposes that we have to abandon the raising of our children in order to accommodate Him. God is not so despairing of where to turn next that He has to ask us to go without sleep five nights in a row. Chronic overloading is not a spiritual prerequisite for authentic Christianity. Quite the contrary, overloading is often what we do when we forget who God is.

I hope you find these thoughts both encouraging and freeing.

Limits Are God’s Idea

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Hibernation Homeschooling

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentHibernation Homeschooling

Many of you have probably heard the term carschooling which is about homeschooling on the go. But I would guess you’ve never heard of the opposite – Hibernation Homeschooling. That’s because I made it up to describe what Caroline and I have done this winter.

Rather than going through a detailed telling of all the events over the fall that led up to this, I’ll summarize it by saying that we were worn out from running around, sick of being sick, and basically hit the wall. When Caroline got Influenza A in early December, that was the proverbial last straw. She had had something every month since July. In addition, I was worn out from dealing with my health stuff.

When I tallied our medical expenses at the end of the year for our taxes, I counted up that between the three of us we had had 176 medical and health related appointments in 2014.

Yes, 176 appointments.

For 3 people.

I told David that Caroline and I were going into hibernation. I was totally serious. Because we homeschool and work from home, there was nothing to stop us from making this decision.

And so we did.

Hibernation Homeschooling

For the rest of December, all of January and all of February Caroline and I have stayed home. Especially during late December and January when all of the crud was rampant, Caroline and I stayed home. David did the grocery shopping and errands. We live in a small town so almost everything we need (library, post office, banks, Meijer, etc.) is literally a mile from our home. David simply took over the running around. When necessary, we supplemented with ordering from Amazon where we could get anything we needed.

There were weeks when Caroline and I got out on Saturday or Sunday to take a drive and then didn’t leave the house again until the next weekend. Some weeks we left the house to go to a necessary medical appointment. Caroline went to the library a couple of times in February, but that was it. We have a babysitter who comes once or twice a week and we did continue that. Other than that we were pretty much on our own.

Yes, we were that committed to our hibernation.

We haven’t ended our hibernation yet. I imagine we’ll continue it for most of the rest of March since we live in a cold and snowy place. It’s been so cold that we would rather just stay home anyway and avoid stressing our bodies if we don’t have to do so.

I know some of you are thinking that we must be crazy. How could we stay home all the time? What about church? What about activities? What about playdates?

We decided that the most important thing we could do was take care of our health and there was no way we could do it if we were constantly exposing ourselves to everything out there. We basically let everything go.

By the Shores of Silver Lake

It’s funny that people think staying home for weeks on end is radical because it happened often in the past. Laura Ingalls Wilder writes in By the Shores of Silver Lake about the winter the Ingalls family lived in the surveyor’s house and they saw almost no one for months. The girls did all their learning at home.

Snowed In

We have the children’s picture book Snowed In that is about a Wyoming family in 1915 and the preparations they made before they were snowed in for the winter. They purchased pencils and paper at the general store. They stopped at the library and filled up two huge boxes with books to read during the winter. They homeschooled when the children couldn’t get to school. (This book is also part of my series A Month of Cozy Books!)

Staying home and waiting out the winter is not that radical of a concept except in our culture that is obsessed with being on the go all the time.

Hibernation Homeschooling Results

So what are the results of our hibernation so far?

  • We have all been healthy. Caroline and I have not been sick at all this winter. We sincerely thank God for this.
  • We have gotten lots of rest and sleep. Because we have been home, we have been able to keep regular bedtime hours and sleep in to ensure we get a full night’s sleep.
  • We have greatly reduced our stress. By not running around, coming and going all the time, our stress levels have dropped. Transitioning in and out of the home is wearing, especially for introverts and children.
  • We’ve enjoyed lots of fires in the fireplace and family time together. The vast majority of the evenings we’ve had a fire in the fireplace for supper and enjoyed being together in the winter coziness.
  • We’ve accomplished much. Because we weren’t running around, we had much more time to be home and work on the things that interest us. Entire days at home are long days in the best sense of the word.
  • We’ve been learning. We’re relaxed homeschoolers so our learning just continued on. Obviously hibernation homeschooling is much easier today with laptops, Kindle Fires, etc. Even though we were home all the time, we had access to so much online that we never really felt cut off from the outside world the way others might have in the past.

I Wish We Could Do That!

While I’m sure some people reading this still think it sounds crazy, some people love the idea. Probably a few of you wish you could do the same thing.

If hibernation homeschooling interests you, think about it for next winter. If you are worn out from sick children and running around in the cold and snow to the point of exhaustion, it is something to consider. Taking care of your health is important. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself. Many families would probably be much better off and happier if they chose to make a similar decision.

I know I am glad we did.

Our Experience with Hibernation Homeschooling

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Saying “No” To Holiday Pressures

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentSaying “No” To Holiday Pressures

So how were your holidays? Were they enjoyable? Meaningful? Special? Or were they (as Peggy called hers in a comment on another post) a “tightly-choreographed death march”? Did you and your family end up stressed, sick or burned out? Were you so busy doing the things you felt obligated to do that you didn’t do the things that truly mean the most?

Holidays often take on a life of their own. If there is any time of year that ramps up the obligation train, it is Christmas. But it can also be true of other holidays:

  • Easter
  • Halloween
  • Children’s birthdays
  • Valentine’s Day

For the sake of simplicity, let’s focus on Christmas in this post since it tends to be the most challenging one. But much of what we discuss here will carry over to other holidays.

Holiday Expectations and Making Changes

The holidays can bring out all kinds of expectations amongst friends, relatives, school, church and other organizations. If you don’t have a firm grip on it, it can quickly spiral out of control.

The good news is it is definitely possible to make changes.

The bad news is your holidays will probably look a lot like your life the other eleven months of the year. If your life is too full and lacks margin, so will your holidays.

The good news is that you have ten months to start implementing changes.

The bad news is if you wait until Christmas approaches in October or November it will be too late. You’ll risk rebellion and meltdowns from people who don’t want to change.

So let’s consider how to go about changing your holidays starting today so you can say “no” to holiday pressures and “yes” to what would truly mean the most. I realize that some of this is going to sound radical, especially if you live the standard American no-margin life the rest of the year, but it really does take some significant choices to go against the strong tide.

Your First Obligation

Your first obligation is to your own family. It isn’t to your child’s school, the extended family you rarely see, or even your church. Your first obligation is to care for the members of your family.

I remember a co-worker telling me years ago that he and his wife decided that little boys needed to be in their own beds on Christmas Eve. That meant he and his wife were at home away from their own families for Christmas Eve and Christmas. They celebrated with the grandparents and others on different days. Might this be a difficult choice to make? Yes. But they did what they felt was best for their own family.

When making decisions about the holidays, think of what your children truly need. Do they need to attend seven Christmas parties in five days? How can you change things to make this a better situation for your entire family?

Stress and Sickness at Christmas

It is the rare family that avoids stress and its twin sister, sickness, during the holidays. But stress and sickness do not have to be a part of holidays.

There are three factors to consider here.

  • One, how much sleep is your family getting?
  • Two, how much sugar and garbage are they eating that is suppressing their immune system?
  • Third, how much time are you spending around large groups of people where germs abound?

While no one can guarantee escaping all sickness during the holidays, you can greatly reduce the chance of it by making sure you are all getting enough sleep, eating as well as possible, and avoiding groups of people unless absolutely necessary.

Decide What Truly Matters

I wrote about 3 Ways to Keep Christ in Christmas (Without Driving Yourself Crazy) for Bright Ideas Press in which I described some of the ways we keep our Christmas simple and Christ-centered.

Our Christmas is really quiet and simple. It’s an outgrowth of the life we choose to live on a daily basis.

Do I sometimes wish we had more parties to go to, more family to celebrate with and so on? Yes, sometimes. But would I change it? No, I honestly wouldn’t. The things that bring us the most joy during Christmas are the simple, homey activities that cost very little but bring lots of delight. The same things that matter to us every day of the year are the same things that matter at Christmas. Because we’ve spent time making big changes to our lives over the past several years, it is much easier to celebrate a Christmas season that reflects the same values.

Holiday Pressures and Regular Life Pressures

When it comes down to it, holiday pressures are basically regular life pressures dressed up in paper and ribbons.

By that I mean that your holidays will reflect the life you choose to live the rest of the year. If you find yourself increasingly unhappy with the holiday pressures you are succumbing to each year, it will probably be helpful to look at your everyday life first. If you can get a handle on the pressures of regular life, handling holiday pressures will be that much easier.

Starting the Conversation

Now is a great time to start the conversation. Ask your family what they liked about this past Christmas. Ask them what they didn’t enjoy. Ask them what they would change or what they wish would happen. Ask them what they would think if your family decided to (insert some significant change here). You might be surprised by the answers you get.

By starting the conversation now you can draw on the recent events while they are still fairly fresh in everyone’s mind. At the same time, the holidays are just far enough past that the emotional attachment to them isn’t as strong at the moment. Tell your family why you want to talk about these things and what your goals are in making the changes. By starting now, you can bring up the subject every few months and by the summer you can decide as a family what changes you will make. Then you have a few months for everyone to adapt to the idea before the actual holidays arrive.

That also gives you time to break the news to anyone outside your immediate family who is impacted by your decision. This is courteous in that it allows them time to adjust their own expectations and plans for the next holiday season.

The important thing is to start today.

Plan a Memorable Christmas with A Cozy Christmas Planner – Available Right Here in My Shop

This post is part of my 5 Days of Saying “No” series.

Saying No To Holiday Pressures

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Saying “No” To Burnout

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View Full Post with Embedded ContentSaying “No” To Burnout

Have you ever felt completely burned out? I have and I’m sure you have, too. Maybe you are struggling with burnout at this moment. Many of us carry huge loads today. Most of us live with some combination of the following:

  • Working outside the home
  • Working from home
  • Homeschooling
  • Children with learning needs
  • Children with health needs
  • Children with dietary needs
  • Our own health issues
  • Debt or excessive bills
  • Church issues
  • Unhealthy relationships
  • Lack of friendship or support systems

Any combination of these is going to be a drain on even the strongest person. Sustained struggles in multiple areas over time is going to lead to burnout.

Acknowledge Your Limits

One of the greatest mistakes we make is failing to acknowledge our limits. We all have limits and the more we try to ignore them, the worse it will get. We were designed with limits physically and emotionally. Any time we try to push past them for extended periods of time, we are going to end up in trouble. What kind of trouble?

  • Physical illness
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Fear
  • Fatigue
  • Anger
  • Helplessness

We don’t have to live life burned out all the time. I do believe there are a few actions we can take right now that will almost immediately lower our risk for burnout. Let’s start with these three today and the rest of this week we’ll look in more detail at other areas of our lives where we can say “no” and live healthier lives.

Make Sleep a Priority and Get Enough Sleep

Sufficient sleep is not optional. You need to make sleep a priority. (Obviously those with babies are in a tough phase of life and I totally get that. It was the sleep deprivation with an infant that completely changed my views of the necessity of sleep.)

The internet is full of articles about the short-term and long-term health risks associated with insufficient sleep. The difference between trying to get by on five or six hours of sleep versus getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night is HUGE. If you aren’t getting at least seven hours of sleep a night, you need to make some immediate changes because you are sleep-deprived.

Turn off the TV, get off social media, and go to bed. Everything in life is worse when you are chronically sleep-deprived. Lack of sleep leaves you more susceptible to illness and depression. If you are in debt, you can’t afford to be sick. If you have children, you definitely don’t want to be sick. If you work, you don’t have time to get sick. Lack of sleep means you have less patience. If you homeschool or have a child with extra needs, you need all the patience you can muster. Get your sleep.

Any health issue you have is going to be made worse by being sleep deprived. Go to bed and take care of your own health so you can take care of the people in your life.

Let One Thing Go Right Now

Figure out one thing you need to let go right now. Pick one thing that hangs over you and you know you need to get rid of.

It might be a weekly meeting. It might be a time-consuming group. It might be an expectation of yourself that isn’t reasonable at this stage in your life. It might be a bad relationship or friendship. It might be drama on Facebook or other social media.

Find one thing that sucks your energy and get rid of it right now. Make the phone call. Delete the account. Unfriend the drama queen. Whatever it is, do it right now.

Create Some Margin In Your Life

When people struggle financially, the first rule of thumb is to create an emergency fund. This financial cushion keeps you from being in chronic state of financial stress. The same principle holds true for our emotional and physical needs. You need margin.

If we aren’t allowing for margin in our lives, we are going to be under chronic stress. And chronic stress leads to burnout. I confess this is one area I struggled with for some time. I was fine keeping on top of everything as long as nothing unexpected happened. But sickness or some other unexpected complication would completely erase whatever tiny margin I might have had.

Now that I’m also dealing with chronic illness, I am ruthless about keeping margin in my life. I cannot afford physically or emotionally to overwhelm myself. Stress is a horrific trigger of my illness and nothing ups my stress levels like a lack of margin.

How does a lack of margin impact your life? If every minute or even hour of your day is scheduled or spoken for, you don’t have margin. If every evening of your life is filled with obligations, you don’t have margin. Take time to determine how you can add some margin to your life. Where can you let some commitments or expectations go so you will have the necessary margin in your life to avoid burnout?

Burnout Is Not Inevitable

Burnout doesn’t have to be inevitable. While we may never escape it forever this side of heaven, we can drastically reduce its occurrence and intensity in our lives by making some simple changes to our lives.

This post is part of my 5 Days of Saying “No” series.

Saying No To Burnout

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