And Time Marches On......

I hate that periodically I get distracted by life and don't update here, but what can you do?  I had a very busy summer, a few mini-trips with the family since April. I stayed busy with the yard and gardening and even got some major cleaning and organizing done around the house. Then in August school started back.  My little Tasmanian devil (who BTW, is NOT so little anymore, has grown probably two feet this year) returned to homeschooling on August 13. Angel decided to go back to public high school this year for her senior year. My Issabug continued with public high school in the tenth grade this year as well. Then most recently I began keeping one of my newest nieces during the day while her parents work. Lots of changes since the beginning of the year.

Some things haven't changed. I am still working from home; still sewing, maybe a little more than before. I still sell Visalus shakes and still drink them as well. Homeschooling and keeping house are each full time jobs in themselves but somehow I am making it all work.

 I have resolved to be a little more organized with homeschooling this year so that I don't have so much end of year catch up to do.  So far so good; I've designed a pretty good routine for us and it seems to be working. As with anything, there are good days and there are bad, but I consider the system a success if it works 90% of the time.  I use http://www.homeschoolskedtrack.com/ for my record keeping. This will be the third year that I have used it and each year I get more proficient.  I have created "courses" that are not graded, but that remind my Taz to save his completed work for the day and even have him check off the attendance sheet. We opted to not use the printable schedule from the site, but instead I copy and paste the information onto a daily template that I created. We found that he does better with each task separated by spaces so that the words don't all run together. Unfortunately spacing isn't an option with homeschoolskedtrack but the template only takes me a couple minutes to fill in and print. We have also made it a habit for him to put all papers in his binder and I can grade them from there versus handing them to me. I am finding that while I check the schedule daily and have to work on laying out lesson plans a few times a week, I only get to grading a few times a month. Making him responsible for organization is preparing him for high school and makes it simple to find things when I do get around to the grading. I will elaborate a little more on my routine in later posts.

I have also been focusing on becoming more organized with my household duties. I created a weekly cleaning schedule in July that I just love. I am still tweaking it a bit so that my week flows more smoothly but I am loving how it is working so far. I don't follow the schedule to the letter, but instead treat it as my reminder. Next I plan to create monthly and yearly cleaning lists.

Over the summer I also took on some major cleaning and organizing tasks as well. I cleaned out our attic, our garage, and our storage shed. Each project took me at least one, if not two days to complete with a handful of misc things left to be completed as time or money permitted. For example, in the attic I had to purchase additional containers and go back after the initial cleaning was done to transfer items from boxes and shelves to their new homes. Also, by doing all the storage areas of our house in the same general time period it allowed me to condense and organize our belongings. I was able to remember that I had pool/spa chemicals in both the shed and the garage, so I got them all to one central location. Same thing with the camping equipment. Those three areas were sources of major stress for me, so I am so glad they are finally behind me.

I like the new organized me better and in turn I am not as overwhelmed with  all my responsibilities. I am taking control of the part of my life that I actually can control and letting go of what I can't.