A Season to Plan

Spring, for homeschooling moms, is Planning Time! Here are a few things that I've learned through the years from trial and error.

1. Planning season should be fun. It's a magical time of year -- new thoughts, new ideas, a bright and unclouded horizon of the future. Relish it and save some of the magic for the inevitable cloudy day.
   
2. If some curriculum doesn't work for you (the mom) and it isn't the sort of thing your kids will do unsupervised or by choice, you might want to pass said curriculum on to someone who WILL use it. Maybe you can plant some seeds in their planning fields while plowing and renewing your own.
   
3. Don't feel obligated to buy something or research something just because other people are excited about it. Do what's right for your situation and your kids.
   
4. You don't need to spend a whole lot of $$$ to give your kids a good education. My standard -- is this curriculum more worth the money than chocolate? or a great book?
   
5. If you are getting discouraged and overwhelmed, try simplifying. I always remind myself of the nuns who gave classrooms of 40 plus kids a thorough education using wornout spellers and readers. Sometimes cash spent almost seems to have an inverse relationship to quality of education. Marva Collins wrote "Anything works if the teacher does." See #2.
   
6. In my experience, teaching myself has paid off more largely in educating my kids than buying something that will teach them. Sure, sometimes a simple educational resource is wonderful as a stopgap. Sometimes, a few usable quality resources are almost indispensable in extending your mother's reach if you have several children to teach and have some gaps in your own education, as who doesn't? But reading, studying and learning new things is generally a more rewarding strategy for my homeschool than buying some curricular Cadillac that requires disempowered reverence from me.
   

My recent foray, going through piles of books and weeding drastically, has reminded me of something I learned first when Aidan was in the hospital at San Francisco and our family had moved there to be close to him. Reading Little House in the Big Woods to Paddy recently reinforced it. There is a positive beauty in sparseness. I think it relates to what Jesus said about the camel and the needle. ... usually His spiritual wisdom has a natural corollary, as well it should, since He made the world.

What do I do when I have 10 choices in everything? Well, I hesitate between them and often can't ever pick on one. Sometimes I even go and acquire #11 so I can have even MORE choices.

On the other hand, what do I do when I need something and don't have it? Well, I figure out a way to improvise. Sometimes an equivalent falls into my lap fortuituously. Sometimes I devise something. Instead of the restless feeling of having 10 choices and wanting 11 or 12, I feel grateful or creatively energized. These are abundances, whereas plenty with that restless feeling is a deprivation.

I think we can take things of the spirit, like gratitude and creative energy, through the eye of the needle with us. But we can't take this or that huge whopping resource. Instead, we have to carry those on our back, and go the long way.

Pruning a rose bush seems contrary to fruitfulness, yet it is necessary in order to have flourishing blooms.

These are some things I've been reminding myself recently, so I'm putting them down to remember them.

Dealing with Dragon Skin

I have been keeping up with my Clearing Spaces. But you might not know it to look at my house right now. It is covered with piles as I transition things to where they really ought to be instead of where they just happened to be parked.

And there are, let's see, six boxes of books and 1 trash bag full of things to unload at the thrift store. Last week I got rid of 2 trash bags of give-aways and 2 boxes of books. Plus, I've filled a couple of trash bags with real trash. So I have been making progress.

I have been making a very sloowww circuit around the house because I want to be thorough. So it's gone like this:

• Mud Room
• Entry Hall
• Kitchen -- north side
• Kitchen -- east side
• Game closet -- started (still have more to do)
• Kitchen -- south side
• Kitchen -- west side (that was for today but I am going to skip it during this rotation and instead move on to the dining room)

This will go on past Lent. This time I am going through decluttering ruthlessly, putting things in order, and cleaning. The next rotation I plan to deal with intractable stains and things that need to be repaired or patched up. Also, there's a likelihood I will be decluttering EVEN MORE and packing up the things that still remain. Because.... we... may... just ... be... moving. Maybe. I think Kevin said, "We're thinking seriously about maybe moving." (Sean thought that was funny). No certainty yet, but I know that ruthlessly cutting into one's stuff doesn't ever hurt, even if we stay here.

I keep thinking about Eustace in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when he was shedding his dragon's skin. Remember that? First he sloughed off a few scales. But that didn't do much good. Then he really dug in (or maybe Aslan did the clawing, it's been years since I reread the book last) and it hurt like heck while he was doing it, but he stepped out of that dragon his real self again, not a dragon hoarding its treasure in its greedy claws anymore. I always thought that was a good metaphor. Yikes!

common routines of ordinary life

Clearing Spaces, (inspired by Sarah at Plainsong) and Spring Cleaning.

Here are the checklists I made last time through the house, which was apparently in the fall. Yep, time for another run through.

On the right is the list I made last time through. I love my blog! So easy to retrieve things. You can click the image to make it larger if you want to, or take a look at the doc form.

I started with week 5 this time, since that's the entry way and I wanted to start as if I was walking into the house and go from there.

Splendor in the Ordinary: Your Home as a Holy Place arrived yesterday in the mail and I thought that would be nice to read through and meditate upon as I progress through the house.

I must say -- how can you go wrong with a book that says within the first 10 pages:

For these common routines of ordinary life are not only necessities and functions: they are also messengers to us from the hallows. Nay, more than messengers, they are those hallows, set hourly before us in visible, touchable, light-of-day forms.

Thursday Thinking

I was thinking about my weekly review for this week, some ideas on housecleaning and its role in a homeschooling life, about habits, and a few other things, but I can't get the thoughts to come out in order. So in the meantime I decided to simply do a photo-journal which sort of combines the three..... a housecleaning journal, or else an archaeological foray into what has happened here during the week, however you want to think about it.

First of all, yesterday was an errand day in town. We had to take Clare to the oral surgeon, get Aidan's anti-rejection medicine, and shop, so we were gone most of the day. Things don't usually get QUITE this bad when I'm maintaining, but driving in the car up our winding mountain road usually makes me feel strange and disoriented for the rest of the day. I was actually looking forward to attacking the house today, but I am not done yet, even though it took most of the morning. The younger folk were helping, so when I say I did it I don't mean every bit of it was the work of my hands!

I was trying to take before and after pictures as I went, but didn't altogether succeed.. You'll have to fill in the gaps.

SO -- this is LIFE around here.

First, the kitchen counter -- a BEFORE picture -- it got worse before it got better, because I was making breakfast as I cleaned.



Here's an AFTER picture, but of a different counter -- but the main one is pretty clean now too.


For a direct compare and contrast, here is a BEFORE

And here is the same AFTER:




Here's a BEFORE of the foyer (sorry, very blurry)



Here's an AFTER:

Meanwhile, we caught Squirrel #7:


And I made whole wheat waffles and made sure everyone got some:


Fireplace -- BEFORE

And AFTER:


Moving upstairs, an AFTER of my computer area (no BEFORE, but there were paper scraps and little cards everywhere since Aidan has set up a work station next to mine -- you can still see some bits and pieces on the floor):


I packed up all the floor puzzle pieces Aidan has done all week -- US, Fire Engine, Alphabet, Dinosaurs -- and put them away (here's the completed US map from earlier in the week)


Here's a couple of MIDDLES:

The bookshelves -- we gathered books from all over the house and brought them to the shelf but we still have to shelf them.


Ditto with the toys: we brought them all over to one place and dumped them and still have to restore them to order.


Now take a look at it the other way around for a moment. All the books, toys, puzzles and cards everywhere..... are the archaeological evidence of the LEARNING around here, the play, the fun, the material of memories. This is what I was thinking while I was cleaning it up, and part of the reason I took all the pictures. Sure, I love a nice clean house (and I noticed that once I dug in and started rearranging and sorting, the house took on a new energy and the kids are all now playing more creatively than they were before). But I can't regret too much the habit my house has of becoming messy, because it's the way the outdoors has of becoming messy because life is going on there in abundance .... which has to do with the part of it I'm still thinking through....

Peanut Butter Muffins

Here's a family adaptation of the peanut butter muffin recipe in Rachel Paxton's Muffin Recipes booklet (PDF) -- it's a free download. We changed the topping to icing rather than cinnamon sugar, and usually add chocolate chips.. sorry, more decadence. But these do have a fair amount of protein so when the kids have them for breakfast they usually can last a while before lunch.

Peanut Butter Muffins

• 4 c. flour
• 1 c. sugar
• 3 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 c. peanut butter
• 4 tbsp. butter
• 2 c. milk
• 4 eggs, beaten
• about 3/4 cup chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, or a mixture

Stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in peanut butter and butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add milk and eggs all at once, stirring until just moistened. Add chocolate chips and stir in. Fill greased muffin pans close to full. Bake at 375 degrees for about 15 to 18 minutes, until tops are firm. Makes about 2 dozen.

Icing (optional):

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup peanut butter
• about 1/2 cup milk or half and half -- add slowly until consistency is creamy.

Put a spoonful on top of each muffin while still warm and let it melt.

Lemon Bread

Lemon Bread

2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter (1 1/2 sticks)
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 eggs
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cream together sugar and shortening. Beat in eggs. Stir dry ingredients together and add to egg mixture alternately with milk. Stir in nuts. Pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Sprinkle white sugar on top, and bake for 45 minutes.

This is a variation on a recipe I found in a Quick Breads e-book (PDF) from the Creative Homemaking download site. Most of the quick breads I've made from this book have been popular with my family.

(While I was revising this I suddenly realized I put in twice as much liquid as I should have -- no wonder the batter turned out so runny. However, it baked pretty nicely -- I don't know what it tastes like yet, but Liam tried some and is still walking around : ) Oh, and Kieron just came and said he had some and it was OK, so if you want to experiment....).

Peanut Butter Snowballs

These are good.... I made some yesterday and today. It's pretty much a New Year's tradition. Here's the recipe:

RICE KRISPIES PEANUT BUTTER BALLS

2 c. peanut butter
1 stick butter, melted
1 (1 lb.) powdered sugar
3 c. Rice Krispies
1 lb. chocolate, melted (suggested Nestle's semi-sweet chocolate bits)

Mix first 4 ingredients; roll into balls; dip into chocolate.

You can use white chocolate chips or peanut butter chips for the dip, too; that is what we did this time. The kids like those better than the semi-sweet chocolate dipped ones. They call them snowballs and mudballs, respectively. The snowball ones are a bit like those white Reese's peanut butter cups you can get.

Yesterday for New Year's Eve dinner we had Costco lasagna, Costco garlic bread, and for sides, stoneground multigrain crackers with Costco artichoke/jalapeno dip, and champagne. The champagne we opened yesterday was a little bit vinegary, but the one we had today was pretty good!

Baking Brownies

This is the brownie recipe I found that didn't require baking chocolate or complicated melting or mixing procedures, and turned out nice and chewy, not cake-like. So I'm putting it on here so I won't lose the recipe : ).

Brownies:

• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 2/3 cup butter, melted and divided
• 1/2 cup boiling water

• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup macadamia nuts coarsely chopped (so it says but who has the $$$ for macadamias -- we just skip them)
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.
• 1/2 tsp shortening (I guess this is to grease the pan but I just used a bit of butter since we don't keep shortening around)

Preheat oven to 350". Grease 13x9 baking pan or two 8-inch square baking pans. In medium bowl, stir together cocoa and baking soda, blend in 1/3 cup melted butter. Add boiling water; stir until mixture thickens. Stir in sugar, eggs and remaining 1/3 melted butter; stir until smooth.

Add flour, vanilla and salt; blend well. stir in nuts and chocolate chips. Pour into prepared pan(s). Bake 35 to 40 minutes for 13x9 pan or 30 to 35 minutes for square pans, or until brownies begin to pull away from sides of pan. Cool completely in pan on wire rack.

You can sprinkle with powdered sugar, or make a white frosting with a bit of peppermint flavoring and sprinkle crushed candy canes on top.

White Frosting

• 1/2 tsp Vanilla
• 2 tbsp Milk
• 2 Cups powdered sugar
• 2 tbsp Butter

Happy to be Home, with Chocolate

Cool and gray November days here still, we don't have anywhere to go till tomorrow, and Sean is home from school for the day -- a good occasion to make chocolate zucchini bread. I've found that if you don't have zucchini, applesauce works quite well as a substitute. You may just want to add a bit less sugar and oil, since the applesauce is sweeter and more runny than the shredded zucchini.


Chocolate Zucchini Bread

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour milk or buttermilk
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups flour, all-purpose
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 cups zucchini shredded
1/4 cup chocolate chips (we used carob chips instead)


Directions

• Cream together butter, oil, sugar, vanilla, sour milk, and eggs.
• Add flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and cocoa; mix well.
• Fold in zucchini.
• Put batter into 2 greased and floured loaf pans.
• Sprinkle chocolate chips on top of each loaf before baking.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour.

Here's a version that you can print out.
Here's a slightly different version using slightly healthier ingredients.
For decadence, if you lived in Eugene, Oregon, you could make it the way my dear friend did who gave me the recipe... and sprinkle some Euphoria chocolate buttons on top. Oh, sometimes I am homesick for Oregon!

Tastes great with Chocolate Caramel Enchantment Chai Tea, given to me by a friend.

Aidan likes to help bake things, and get into pictures, too. : ).




















This is a neat idea. I could go on forever once I started but a few that come to mind right away are: fires in the hearth, the smells of cinnamon and coffee, giant conifers, cloudy skies, high school boys home from school for the day, ruby red laptops, cameras, early dusks, football, and voices of a range of kids involved happily in various activities. And chocolate caramel enchantment tea, and friends, even if they are far away.

Autumn is a Mosaic

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.

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Oatmeal Muffins (based on these Scotch Oatmeal Muffins):

2 cups old-fashioned oats (or you can use quick oats, too)
2 cups whole milk (you can add a tbsp of lemon juice 20 minutes ahead of time to make it curdle a bit since the original recipe calls for buttermilk)
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup carob chips
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Stir together oatmeal and milk and leave for a few minutes (optional; helps the oats soften). Stir in sugar, oil, flour and other ingredients. Mix in carob chips (the original recipe calls for dates, nuts, or raisins so you could use those instead).
Optional: Sprinkle top of muffins with white sugar or cinnamon sugar.
Fill greased muffin pans 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes.
-----------------


These muffins don't have any Scotch in them. My mother is pure-blooded Scottish (my grandparents were Scottish immigrants to Canada where she was born and raised) and she always said that Scotch is to drink; Scottish or Scots is the name for the people. You can see that here.

They are very good on a cool fall morning like today up in the Sierra mountains. The wood stove that you can see in the background has been getting plenty of use these days. Autumn is my favorite season, and I think it's partly because everything seems to gather itself inward and settle down to stillness and preserving of warmth.

care and caritas and quotidian moments

We will be busy this weekend. This afternoon is our homeschool group meeting, and tomorrow one son has football camp, my daughter has tests, and various other things are going on. In general I won't have much time for blogging. So here's a bit of an odds and ends post.

Over here at Schola et Studium I have been putting up bits and pieces of planning for my 7th grader next year. When I have that in hand, I'm going to start pondering my plans for my two first graders. That will be going on for the next month or so, unless life intervenes. So if you're interested in the homeschool nuts and bolts of a classical/CM-y/unschooly synthesis, that is where they generally are.

They look much more classical than anything else, right now. When I'm planning, I usually start with the "tool" subjects -- math, Latin, grammar --and move out towards the more CMy things. But the underpinnings remain unschooly. You will have to take my word for that. I wrote a bit more about that here in Time to Breathe. Maybe sometime I will blog more about it.
Over here at House and Hold, I finished my household journey. I said that I would reflect on it, and Susan L of High Desert Home paid me the compliment of following up on that, asking:

I would *love* to read what you've learned from this. I've actually gotten little thoughts and insights out of your whole process already. More pointed commentary on what you've learned would be welcome!

I have been thinking about this! One thing I realized last night, but I don't know if this is something peculiar to me alone, so I am curious if anyone else has experienced it:

My hands do not seem to be connected to my brain.

What's with that? To be more specific, when I am working with my hands -- cleaning, cooking, playing the guitar, even playing with a child -- my verbal-linguistic system doesn't seem to engage at all with my "hands-on" brain. My hands are learning, but my head can't wrap itself around the knowledge.

I learned a lot from my household journey, but when I tried to put it into words, I felt like someone with a processing disorder. There were no words that came to mind -- what came to mind were memories of soft light shining off a polished tile counter, of golden wood, of my interaction with disorder and clutter to bring it to order and clarity, even of the comradeship of the cyber-friends who made encouraging comments about my progress. These memories are faint and intuitively linked rather than verbally processed, like the way you remember things from when you were a very small child.

I guess the overall intuition was that of care, etymology as follows:

O.E. caru, cearu "sorrow, anxiety, grief," also "serious mental attention," from P.Gmc. *karo, from PIE base *gar- "cry out, scream." Sense of "charge, oversight, protection" is c.1400. The verb is O.E. carian, cearian "to feel concern or interest," from P.Gmc. *karojanan.

In addition to this the root would be from Latin "caritas" -- love -- I imagine. I am remembering that Kathleen Norris said something about "acedia" -- indifference -- being opposed to "care".... that there is an element in "caritas" of "serious mental attention" and also of concern, interest. The mingling is so subtle that I can't really say it any better than that right now, but perhaps you can read between the lines.

"Care" is something that happens with what you do, not just what you are thinking. Probably obvious to everyone, and obvious to me intellectually, but I brought something into my heart and hands with my household journey that helped me to understand it in a different way. I'm having trouble helping my hands and head share their understanding though, so that's where I am now.

I have to say that is one reason I liked Kathleen Norris's "Quotidian Mysteries" so much, and also enjoy Susan's blog and some others like Regina's and Kim's and Anna's and Elizabeth's -- because they can show and tell about things that I basically have no mental linguistic framework for.

I wonder if this is temperament, or environmental influence. I spent many years in school and they were extremely stressful. I actually am physiologically quite aware -- almost hyper-aware -- but spend a huge amount of energy simply filtering. Whenever I try to be more "mindful" I find it exhausting. That doesn't mean I'm giving up, but it is something that I am trying to figure out how to mediate so I can live a more integrated life.

When I'm reading a book, or writing, or thinking something through, I'm in control of the input. I think my verbal-linguistic brain likes to be in charge of things and let me process internally - -- here is my personality profile in case you are wondering WHAT I am talking about.

But those intuitional things that come from the hands and heart -- they are difficult for me to bring up to my conscious awareness-level. Anyone else have the least idea what I'm trying to say?

Pantry Psalmody

I did not know that Gerald Manley Hopkins, poet and Jesuit priest, had written part of a commentary on St Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises. A bit of it is quoted in Kathleen Norris's The Quotidian Mysteries (which Susan recommended)

It is not only prayer that gives God glory, but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, white-washing a wall, driving horses, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in His grace you do it as your duty. To go to a communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives Him glory too. To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory, too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean that they should.

So -- I've been trying to do household tasks in this spirit.

Kathleen Norris wrote about the quotidian duties that sometimes overwhelm and discourage us by their very daily-ness, but that imply commitment and trust:

...It might help to regard the gifts of our hearts as being like the manna God sent each day to the Israelites in their journey through a forbidding wilderness. God has made us so that abundant grace can flow from us in response to great need, but in order to fulfill its God-given purpose, such grace must be received and used up, as it is of the present moment and will not keep even overnight. But acedia seeks to hoard against the time when God is no longer present.... It rejects the present moment..

Also:

Our culture's ideal self, especially the accomplished, professional self, rises above necessity, the humble, everyday, ordinary tasks that are best lefft to unskilled labor. The comfortable lies we tell ourselves regarding these "little things" -- that they don't matter, and that daily personal and houseehold chores are of no significance to us spiritually -- are exposed as falsehoods when we consider that reluctance to care for the body is one of the first symptoms of extreme melancholia. ...

At its Greek root the word acedia means "lack of care".... care is not passive -- the word derives from an Indo-European word meaning "to cry out," as in a lament. Care asserrts that as difficult and painful as life can be, it is worth something to be in the present, alive, doing one's daily bit. It addresses and acts on the daily needs that acedia would have us suppress and deny.

Something that I have been pondering recently as I scrub the grout in the pantry floor and sort through dusty piles of books and papers! It does not come easily to me.

Simplifying

I am trying to make some real progress in simplifying in our house. For several reasons -- but mainly, because as we wind down the school year I ALWAYS look around and wonder how we lived so long in such clutter.

So I've decided to break the house down into sectors -- a bit like Flylady's zones, but smaller, and attack one area at a time.

Downstairs:

• Laundry Room
• Bathroom
• Hall Closet 1
• Hall Closet 2
• Bookshelves in Hall
• Coat Closet
• Entryway
• Bookshelves in great room
• Kitchen entryway
• Kitchen
• Pantry

Outside

• Porch
• Deck
• Garage
• Perimeter
• Car

Upstairs

• Master Bedroom
• Bathroom
• Closet
• Middle area of loft
• Back of loft
• Center of Loft

My plan is to cycle through once a month (the outdoors areas are separate from this -- I'm just putting them in for the sake of completeness, but the whole family will probably get more involved in those areas). There are 18 interior areas (not counting my kids' rooms and my husband's office, which I won't deal with right now).

The Plan of Action :

1. Weed out 10-20% of things (throw away or give away)
2. Tidy and organize what's left
3. Inventory
4. Plan (list improvements, repairs, remainder list for next time around)
5. Wipe and clean

So there it is, for now -- putting it on the blog so I will be somewhat accountable (also, so I will know where to find the list again when I need it!)

mystery in the mundane

I already linked to Elizabeth's posts on intentionality in housekeeping.

Here are some more that are in the same train of thought for me.

• A Noble Chore from High Desert Home
• Eating Mindfully from Rachel at Lean but Not Mean.

The first is about laundry among other things, and the second is about healthy living, but they overlap to me in thought process (admittedly, my thought processes can be rather free-associative at times).


Susan at High Desert Home mentioned Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and 'Woman's Work' by Kathleen Norris. The link is to a review which says:

Here, she takes a much more specific topic: how are the menial tasks of life —the tasks we don’t educate our children to do, those little jobs that we think of as work for other, less fortunate people’s children, the daily chores often considered “women’s work— islands of holiness, just like the Daily Office might be.

......

Norris makes clear that she doesn’t think that these tasks should define or confine us, but that they should not simply be disregarded as “menial” but looked at as a small but no less important part of our stewardship of the world, our recognition of God and the holy residing in almost every thing, our participation in what Jews call the tikkun olam, the fixing of the world.

Yes, I know the photo does not show the "mundane" -- but I thought it was lovely (daughter gets the credit) and shows how different things look in a different perspective -- a thought I want to remember in connection with these "islands of holiness!" Chari, do you recognize the scene?

Keeping Intentionality

These are beautiful posts by Elizabeth at In the Heart of my Home:

• Why Bother?
• On Being Intentional

I always like the way she gets to the heart of the issue. The issue, what's important, isn't a sterilely immaculate house but rather a radiant home. It isn't something that would wow the people at House Beautiful but rather, a haven and shelter for the husband and family.

What are our true priorities? What is keeping us from them? What can we do to restore balance and intentionality? I think these questions apply to all areas of life.

I have been thinking along these lines recently. I am one who can get trapped in organizational systems very easily. I often end up finding them a distraction in themselves.

What I've been doing recently to help in this area -- actually, two things, and they are both simple though not always easy:

• One, an examen in the evening. What slipped through the gaps today? Where did I fall short of what I ought to have or done? If there is a whole crowd of them, I just pick the top three or five. Then, crucially, rather than beating myself up for it -- What can I do to prevent this next time? Francis de Sales says that vehement self-reproach is a trap.
  
• Then, when I wake up or when I have a moment of free time -- a simple list. What are the top five or ten things to focus on or do today? Not the ordinary things -- most of those are already set in the course of the day -- but the things that I have been putting off, things that aren't urgent but that would enrich our lives, things that keep slipping off the end of my normal lists, things that get done haphazardly.

I have all kinds of systems but these have been the most flexible and the most direct. They get me past the "logistic" level (which is important but only in a mediate-level way) to the real things that are emerging day by day, things that have not yet been codified because our family has not arrived at this particular stage of life till now.

• Twenty-three years ago I was graduating from college and planning a wedding.
• Twenty-two years ago we were preparing a welcoming nest for our first son.
• Eighteen years ago I was learning to be a mom of three under four, and taking my first steps as a Catholic confirmand.

And so on. Every year, different responsibilities, different themes -- integrated and continuous in many ways, to be sure, but also distinct from each other.

I've always longed for one simple solution that will fit all those, but the truth is, it seems that the most enduring rhythm is the one that preserves what's essential about the old ways and also embraces and builds on what is new.

Book Order

Matilda asked:

I would love to hear you thoughts on organizing books. Do you arrange them on the shelf by size, subject, author, etc?

Thank you for asking!

I arrange them by subject. .... mostly. I do take size into consideration and I try to keep them grouped by author or sometimes publisher within the subject category. Does that make sense? For example, I keep my Narnia books together except when my kids are reading them, which is most of the time, but I have CS Lewis' non-fiction in a different section.

Let's see, I really ought to take pictures because it would make it so much clearer, but this is the wrong time of year. This summer I had them all organized, but because we bought three new shelves and took one down, some things don't fit the way they did and well, you get the picture, or lack of it. Maybe I will try to tackle them soon so I can post some photos to go along with this. Not that I have the best system in the world, but just because it's easier to picture something when there are visuals to help.

We have 16 bookshelves of varying sizes and this does not count my curriculum closet or my husband's bookshelves in his office, or the bookshelves in my teenagers' rooms.
Downstairs I have 6 bookshelves:

Two smallish ones are for the schoolbooks we are using this year, and my teacher's manuals and other resources.

Two with glass doors are for the good books -- a complete set of Dickens, a similar set of Shakespeare, one of Jane Austen, some collectibles and old family books, that kind of thing.

Two big ones in the hall are basically for miscellaneous books. This is where you find most of the general-interest coffee-table books, and books my husband or I acquired during the years that reflect our past interests or something we would like to get to. For example, a book about Canada that my Canadian cousins sent us as a wedding present; some old diaries and journals and geneologies from both sides of the family; some of my college textbooks.

My daughter also has the books she wants to read for school this year on these shelves. Some of the books here are in double rows.
Upstairs are the bulk of the homeschooling and childrens' books in ten bookshelves:


Four bookcases hold most of the fictional books.

I have them loosely arranged --

1. series books -- Hardy Boys, Narnia, some Christian fantasy and science fiction
2. "living history" books -- Bethlehem books and so on
3. general fiction-
4. and books suitable for teenagers ... like our Heinleins, and Sir Walter Scotts, and CS Lewis "Space Trilogy".

There are further sub-divisions like short chapter books for younger readers on one shelf (Thornton Burgess, Magic Treehouse series, that kind of thing), American historical fiction on another, and so on.

One glass-door bookcase holds old classic fiction in hardcovers that are a bit fragile -- some old Henty books, some LM Montgomery books I had as a child, etc.

Three more bookcases are devoted respectively to:

• Our Catholic Faith (saints' bios, Catholic Mosaic picture books, devotionals, etc)
• History and Art
• Science, Nature Study and Geography.

There is one more glass-door bookshelf opposite my husband's office where I keep old anthology sets (like My Book Shelf and Book of Knowledge, the nice old Catholic readers, the Norton anthologies), and also our small collection of ancient history and literature primary resources.... like Sophocles, Aeschylus, Socrates and Aristotle.

Finally,there is a bookshelf with picture books by my bedside. I have several boxes of picture books in addition to the ones on the shelves, and I rotate them occasionally. Otherwise it is too difficult for the little ones to weed through them all and find the ones they want to read.

I also keep Christmas and Advent books put away in a box, and another box holds books I bought at the library sale but haven't gotten around to previewing yet. I don't put the books on the regular shelves until I know they are OK for the age levels they are recommended for.

My curriculum closet holds the book boxes and also some shelves for curriculum not currently in use. There are three bookshelves in there. I also keep my parenting and homeschooling-how-to type books in there, and some spiritual books that are more targeted for me than for the kids (though the teenagers browse in there occasionally).

The overall goal of this system is to make it easy to replace things on the shelves, keep the sizes of the books on one shelf fairly uniform, and of course, so that I can find things when I need to.

It took quite a lot of time to organize it last summer since I hadn't done anything with my system for several years before that, but this year it probably won't take so long.

If I had to start from scratch again I think I would do it the way I did it this time:

• Children's fiction
• Teen fiction
• Picture books

Non-fiction books divided into categories (I used religion/art/music/history/geography/science)

(By the way, I forgot to mention that I put the little thin non-fiction books into boxes and strew them or bring them out when we cover that topic -- I used to keep them on bookshelves but it is hard to keep them nice when they are shelved together like that).

Good editions and anthologies separate from the trade paperbacks in cabinets that the children know to approach more respectfully.

Books that don't fit into the "suitable for and of interest to children" category are separate from the books that are intended for the childrens' enjoyment. Though of course, the teenagers generally cross categories -- I don't think we have ANY books around that I would be horrified at seeing my older teenagers read.

Changing the Chore Routine

Here is the chore list I made for this week. You can click on the gif image to make it bigger.

I'm doing it a new way. I took all the index cards I made last year when I was reading Side Tracked Home Executives. (I thought I had a photo of the index cards somewhere but I can't seem to find it). I have added other chores besides the SHE ones over time, some of them from Flylady and some from things that are particularly directed towards my house.

I took out the ones that were more or less on a fixed schedule and put those by day on the left side. Then I shuffled all the other cards and then typed out about 20 of them on the right side. I can go through them during the course of the week. The way my week goes, realistically I get a lot more house stuff done on Monday and Tuesday than I do the rest of the week, when I'm struggling a bit more just to keep going. So I am hoping to do over half of the twenty on those days but we will see.

If this works I will keep doing it this way. The index cards are colored -- yellow is daily, blue is weekly, green is monthly and pink is seasonal. Purple is for things I do that aren't house things -- I put things like calling friends, knitting, that kind of thing on those ones. So it is easy to figure out when I need to do the job again.

The ones in bold are things I really SHOULD be doing daily but I thought if I put just a couple of them down per week that would remind me to stay on track, or get back on track if I've gotten off.

This kind of thing DOES help, but I am also trying to figure out some habits that will make things in general more streamlined. I read a website where someone said that their mom kept a chest in the attic with all her kids' toys in it and rotated them out so the kids had to pick up the last toy before getting out a new one. This is actually something like what I am doing with the little ones' Christmas toys. It is certainly better than having to sort out a million little Melissa and Doug beads and letters and pattern blocks every day. We still seem to have lots of little pieces of things everywhere though. That is something I really want to get under control before too much longer.

Organizing Magic

I am reading a book called Organizing Magic: 40 Days to a Well Ordered House and Life. The author's site is Messies Anonymous and it looks nice and, well, organized. The title of the book attracted me because I really LIKE 40 Day plans. Forty days is a nice time period, and of course I am already geared to it because of Jesus in the desert, and Lent, and because so many retreats are planned to last for 30 or 40 days.

The author suggests not gulping down the book in one draught, which is what I usually do (how did she know?). She divides it into days hoping that the reader will go a step at a time and actually get something out of the material. So I'm going to try it that way.....except that I might do two days at a time, since it's a library book and I only get to keep it for 3 weeks.

In the first days she suggests taking what works for you at the time, not getting overwhelmed by all the possibilities. She also mentions a ladder idea of improving by increments. The example she gives is what you do with the toilet paper after you buy it -- whether you leave it in the car, leave it right inside the front door, bring it to the bathroom but leave it in the package, take it out of the package in one bathroom, or distribute it to all the bathrooms, or, the highest level, put it where's it needed in pretty little containers (this is my mother in law's level). She says that you can find what level you're at presently and move up one level from there, which is somewhat less overwhelming than trying to shoot for perfection in everything right away.

In Which I Rely on My Daughter

I haven't been around much recently on this blog and this explains why.

So for this entry I'm relying my daughter's artistry and hard work.

Here are some pictures my daughter took of our temporary isolation up in the mountains.(that's one of them, of Aidan, there on the side)


Also, if you check out my daughter's recent blog entries, there are some more pictures of our trip to Ireland:

Return from Ireland
More sights of Dublin
Our Cottage in Killarney
The Cottage Again

and a post about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

She also kept the kitchen running and Paddy happy while I was up at the cabin with Aidan over the weekend. She even made muffins. And we got to have some nice mother and daughter time on the last day, when she was up there with me and Aidan.

Having a bit of time to spend almost-alone with Liam, and then Clare, was a silver lining to this unexpected medical storm. We are in the eye of the storm right now -- the calm in the middle -- while waiting to see if and when Aidan and his other two siblings come down with the virus.

I don't know if you have ever heard Love is a Voyage by John McDermott, sung by Christy Moore and also the Irish Tenors. It is a sweet Irish song comparing married life to a voyage. Part of it goes:

Life is an ocean and love is a boat
In troubled water that keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage, there was just me and you
Now gathered round us, we have our own crew

We have thought of that song more than once during some of the crises of the past few years, and this time, once again, I was proud of our crew as we sailed through some slightly rough waters.

A Summer Morning Routine

	Get up
	Start Coffee
	Walk
	Email/Blogging
	Get dressed
	Bring Laundry downstairs
	Work on Hot Spots
	Start Laundry
	Make Breakfast
	Sweep/damp mop around kitchen
	Eat
	Talk to guys about day
	Go upstairs:
	Swish Toilet
	Make bed
	Aidan's meds
	Fold yesterday's laundry
	Supervise/Help guys do schoolwork/jobs
	Work with Aidan on Therapy
	Go for walk/or rake or sit outside
	Make Phone Calls if necessary
	Do any quick emails necessary
	Lunch