Peaceful Perspective Planner (For the non-planning type)

I start to feel panic rising when considering the idea of planners.  I don't like reading blog posts about them either!  However, I know that having a calendar of some sort (even if I'm mostly writing what we DID rather than what is coming next) it does help me feel calm about what we are doing being enough.  I have tried so many planners though and none have been the right fit for my personality.

This is the front of the planner after I added some color!  You could color or doodle in this planner or just use it as it is.  Or you can get ideas from this and make your own pages!  I love visual journals and the idea of bullet journals and I've looked into the "happy planner" and other things, but I wanted something that was a bit more manageable and not expensive and something that would SAVE me time rather than give me more to do.

These pages are the "weekly" pages and I went ahead and printed out 5 of them even though I will probably only keep one at a time in my planner.  Too many pages can be stressful to me so having just a few pages to look at is much better.

For more pictures and a video about how to put it all together (and the link to the free printable of course!) click the "read more" below.

A Look Inside and a Life of Learning

I shared briefly in the previous post about this pocket journal, but it was brand new and I hadn't gotten a chance to use it yet! It has a different feel than some of the others so is worth some extra attention.

My 8 year old thought it looked amazing and she wanted to use it right away, but I personally think it would work best for possibly 6th grade and higher or for a child who loves to read a lot and isn't as into the coloring and drawing and much.  The small size makes it feel more doable and less intimidating for children who don't enjoy writing as much, or for adults who want a book to guide their own studies but don't have a ton of time to put towards them.

This post will give you a peek inside this journal and how it can look to use it, but since I was the one using it, I will also share how it can be used for a mom book.  Or some people say "awesome adulting" or other people call it being an example, or modeling how to learn for our kids.  Whatever you want to call enjoying being an adult and learning what YOU want to learn is what I am going to talk about.

Thinking Tree books in Categories! (& Ideas for using them!)

 We have loved using the Thinking Tree books for over a year now (and longer if you include the Dyslexia Games books that we have used on and off for about 3 years too!  Which started back when I was learning about Right Brain dominant learners.)

There are SO many books by them and they are a different style than we are used to seeing (great for the right brain dominant learners!) But that can make it confusing to know which to pick.  I thought it would be helpful to share some ideas about the types of books (in categories) and a few ideas on how someone could plan to use them.

Many people have wondered how these books work and how they can use them.  I've broken the books down into a rough 8 categories to make it easier for people to see what types of books are available.

Choosing Joy - and not planning too much

 I started our new school year a few weeks ago, feathering in the subjects and routines slowly so we could get back into the swing of learning in a more regular way.

Before starting up though, I was feeling overwhelmed and a bit worried that if I was tired BEFORE starting, how would this year of continual planning, spontaneous learning, daily questions, messes, crying, laughing, following rabbit trails, goofing off, loving, being "bored" and all the other things that make up this 24/7 job of mothering and educating look like by the new year?

Enter the gathering of encouraging words from other homeschoolers! Blogs, podcasts, periscopes, Facebook lives... The online community of homeschoolers like me who are less concerned with looking perfect and more concerned with just doing our best for our kids.  If I read something that makes me feel more stressed, then I throw it out.  If I read or hear something that gives me courage and strength, I hold onto it.
And this blogpost is going to be all about the parts that have brought me encouragement for the start of this year.

Perfection or Nothing

As I said in the last post-- it's about the process. It's about getting into a habit of DOING rather than having the goal to be "done"... so, I thought I'd share another struggle that I've had and finally am starting to "get"...

You see, when you read a lot of organizing books and scheduling books, they usually tell you how important a "personal planner" is, right? They always have their own little systems that you can use and you can buy these day planners in many different colors and styles and become actually MORE bogged down by the sheer "order" of it all. At least, that's how I always felt.

If I didn't have kids at home and if they were a little older I might be able to utilize a schedule more (as I said in the previous post), but as it is, most personal planners are just way too complicated.

Last year when I went through the seven week course on "Simplify Your Life" (which was really helpful btw! And very grace-filled even while talking about organizing) in her book she talks about days that you can plan well and days that are unpredictable. She used the analogy of someone who gets migraines and on those days (when they just come upon her) she can't do that much and the plans go out the window for the day. She also talked about how a mom with her kids at home as apposed to in school has a more unpredictable day. Like, we can plan 30% of our day but 70% of the day is going to be unpredictable. And guess what? That's okay. It's also really important to recognize this. How many of us mom's can feel pretty terrible some days when we'd planned to get a lot done and for whatever reason things came up and the house is a worse disaster than when our husbands left for work? He comes home and wonders what we did that day... fortunately, my husband is very understanding and does the dishes for me or plays with the kids to help out and never begrudges my doing one of my own art projects or anything, but LOVES to see them! Still though, I can feel bad about everything "falling apart" on those days unless I recognize the percentage of unpredictability and accept it and work with it.

Okay, so one of the things that she talked about (of course) was a "personal planner"... but her whole goal was to simplify, not to give us more work to do! I looked at my old planner that I got several years ago when I was trying to get better at this (this has been a long process of learning!) And rather than making more categories I started pulling things out of it!

You should probably know though that it's taken a year and a half AFTER doing that organizing course, for me to finally figure out how to get a planner to work for me. Honestly, I'd tried so often in the past that I was afraid to start it up again. If you are like me, new books and journals and planners make you excited on the one hand and then make you feel completely lost or despairing on the other.
(My old planner with all the pages used up in it and scribbles from little ones on the cover.) When I was young I remember my Mom getting me an NIV Bible and I remember thinking how I'd like to highlight things in it like she did and underline stuff. I was only about 7 though and I'm sure she thought I'd scribble on it and told me I couldn't write in it. Seems like a silly story, but it made me feel like I couldn't write in something unless I did it perfectly or the "right way"... Journals couldn't be nice books with my true thoughts in them because that seemed too permanent and what I put in them would for sure be imperfect. Full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. I fell into the nothing side and not using or reading things because it couldn't be perfect. I didn't read my Bible till I was a teenager (and by then I highlighted and underlined!) Journals or planners can feel the same way. If they have dates or times on them don't you feel like you need to do it "right"? Well, for me that brought despair. Journals don't need to be written in every day on schedule and Planners need to work for the individual. Here's how I've finally gotten mine to work for me.
First page I just taped my little meal guide (yep.. I can't even schedule a meal totally.. I just put the general idea like what kind of meat that I'll have.) It's helped a LOT at the grocery store! Why? Because I can remember "fish on Wednesday" a lot easier than something more detailed and I can go with sales and what I feel like making too! It's enough order without being too much. (Much better than having virtually the same thing every day like I used to have to do.) Oh, and just a quick thing on budgeting. When you budget for the month, like, for instance say you want to spend no more than $500 a month on groceries and household stuff (I include art supplies and some clothes in that as well.) How much is that a week? You can't just go with $125 a week because there aren't exactly four weeks in a month.. plus the month starts on different days. It's really hard to go by the date for me. Right, so I realized that if I were planning $125 a week then I'd be spending $500 extra a year that I didn't intend to! Here's the formula for those of you that would like to know. Take the amount you'd like to spend each month and multiply it by 12. So in this case 500 x 12 = 6000. Then divide by 52 = 115 (and a bunch of decimal numbers that we'll ignore) SO my weekly budget is actually 115. Actually, it's less than that because I started ordering some bulk items and had to take that number too and figure out how much to take out of the weekly allotment. It might seem nitpicky, but it's really nice to have a handle on it! I always felt like it was a bit illusive and I wasn't being a good steward of the grocery money because I couldn't keep track of it well. Anyway, between the super basic meal plan and actually getting the math right on the food/house money I feel a LOT better.
Okay! So, back to the planner-- At the beginning I started a list of habits that I want to start folding into my life. I don't have a time schedule on any of them and I've put a check by the ones that I've been able to blend into my days long enough so that they feel comfortable. The dishes are one habit that I was able to check! I have a lot more that I'd like to work in, but I no longer feel guilty about it. I can look forward to it and be grateful for the little successes.
This planners original calender has been long used up and I went to an office supply store to find new calender pages. Well, besides being more than I wanted to spend or just too many lines and times to fill, I couldn't find a calender that had any of 2011 in it since it's the middle of the year. BUT just at walmart I found this little two year calender book for $2.50 or so that starts in July of 2011 and goes till June of 2013! I took out one of the other pages to be the guide for my little hole punch and vwala! A calender that I don't mind marking up! It's nice to see at a glance the plans that are set for the week. When story time at the library is and what time our community group is meeting or any other "set" plans with times. I don't put any of my "to dos" on the calender just scheduled appointments and so forth.
My "To do" has too pages. The right side is sort of the bucket list of just projects or things I need or want to do in the near future. On the left side I decided to put things that I wanted to do in a certain day. So, this morning as I thought of what I'd like to do or need to do I can jot it down there to help me remember when I have to deal with continual interruptions and often forget what I was going to do. If I don't have time to cross it off today it will be there tomorrow and I can easily do it tomorrow and cross it off. Thinking of the right page as "within the next few weeks or so" and the left page as "withing today or the next few days" is so much more freeing than thinking I HAVE to get it done today! Because, I don't and my days are unpredictable. My planner is just a guide to help me order my thoughts. The "mommy brain" that new mothers complain about is improved immensely by knowing how to order the unpredictable.

You can see in the picture my "goals" tab that I made too of longer term goals and thoughts. This includes debt pay off plan or other longer term thoughts for years down the road.

Someone could put in a section of gift ideas or something if they wanted. I needed mine to be as simple as possible for right now (sort of like how I'm doing the new habits! I can add something later if I want.) But for some reason the blank pages.. just lined plain paper is more comfortable for me than anything with times or dates or too much strictness about it. I need to feel like I can rip out the pages or scribble on it and it won't matter.
This also has an address book. Again, another manifestation of my silly quirk I guess was that when I had an address book I'd never use it because addresses change right? They don't stay the same, they aren't perfect.. I'd have to cross out some and that would mess it up right? Sounds so silly when I actually explain my thoughts underneath why I didn't use something. Well, rather than using the address book, I'd often just have scraps of paper tacked to a cork board. Silly right? Yeah. I'd like to say though that there are many addresses in this book that are probably unusable now and that's okay! The scraps of paper have been taped inside of this or written in here. It's not totally ordered... but it's not totally in disarray (like the cork board was) either! It's sort of an ordered mess.. and that's all right because that's who I am and what I need.
The last thing is this little notebook that I'm not quite sure what to do with. I've kicked around the idea of using it either as a grocery list or as a place to write things that I'm thankful for (all numbered) I'm leaning towards the later and will have another one for the grocery list. These little spiral notebooks were four for 98 cents at walmart. I offered one to Youssef and he said, "I LOVE these!" Yes, they are such handy little things. :}

My last word of advice is to use what you have! Would it really help to go out and buy a spanking new planner? It might for some of you, but for others of us we already have a pretty journal book that hasn't been used. How easy would it be to just write and tape little "tabs" onto the edge of some of the pages in it for sections. It doesn't have to be perfect.. in fact it's better if it's not! Why? Because our goal isn't to have the perfect plan, but to simply have some sort of plan that we can use even through the imperfections of daily life.

The Failure's and Success of Maintenance

Let me just start by admitting something (if I haven't before) I'm a pretty terrible housekeeper. I often laugh when people think that I'm a great example of a homemaker. Well, sure.. I'm home.. and I'm creative and I can sew and all that, but I'm NOT good at keeping up with things. My natural bent is to do things all in one go. I won't really clean the house for several months, but I'd do a giant "Spring Cleaning" and re-organizing thing in the space of a few days. Totally wear myself out in the process of course so that I would be too tired to keep it looking good and the viscous cycle would continue.

So, more specifically... a year ago (and before then) the dishes would generally stay in the sink and counter and table for more than a day or two. Making meals was always frustrating because dishes were in the way or I'd have to wash something by hand because I needed it.

Laundry was always a giant mountain to climb as well. I'd wait till the laundry basket was overflowing beyond measure and then dump it all on the floor to put into the piles and proceed to try and get all those piles washed and dried in one day. When each load was dry I'd dump them on the couch to be folded while I watched a show or something. If I ever got around to actually folding the clothes (which could take one day or much longer) I'd often just leave the folded stacks in the basket and they'd all get unfolded when people would look for their clothes or when one of the girls would dump them all out so they could play in the basket.

Those were probably the two most majorly constant things that I was always dealing with. I got a DVD course in organizing last year that really helped me view all of this differently.

You see, I'd read many other books over the years about organizing and schedules and so forth, but I always got the feeling from them that the goal was to be organized. To be organized is not the goal. The reason it's important to organize our homes and schedules is to Simplify our lives! That's what I needed. I didn't need more ways to learn how to make my house "guest ready" I needed techniques to make my home run smoothly so that my life would be simple. I also needed to be taught these things in a grace filled way so that I wouldn't be operating out of guilt. I want to spend time with my kids and do my own projects and homeschool... I do NOT want to spend all of my day picking up after everyone in the family and doing dishes and essentially doing the same thing over and over again. Like walking up a slippery slope where it's impossible to get to the top or move forward.

My natural bent is to try to take on everything all at once. Which, of course, is gearing up for more failure city! I've been struggling with consistency and feel like I will always struggle with this for the rest of my life... but.. I'm hoping it will get easier at least. Starting the dishwasher at night with a cleaned up kitchen and emptying it in the morning has been my goal (little harder with a new baby and two older kids of course, but the goal is still there.. just not always met at the same time of the day.)

Getting rid of things is really important. Giving everything a place is vital (forcing myself to DECIDE where their place is!) Learning to see "clutter areas" and clean up to the point where 2/3s of the counters at least are cleared of stuff is super helpful too.

Right, but that is just mainly the kitchen (the first stage of this process) .. there's still the other big one (for me) the laundry *DUnt dunt DUUUNNNN!* I now do a load or so a day rather than doing it all in one go. It is amazingly easier to get that much washed and dried in one day (yeah, it usually takes me the whole day pretty much to get it through the cycles) and I no longer fold on the couch. I take it to my bedroom so I can put my folded clothes away as I fold them. I then only have the stacks of the girls clothes or towels or something and EVERY TIME I have to bite the bullet (it feels like) to do that final step of putting away stuff. If you think about it though it really doesn't take that long! It always took a long time before, but that was because I was trying to wash everything from about a week and a half and fold and put away it all in one day. Doing the smaller steps really does make my life more simple

And simple is the key, remember?

I'm still not actually "cleaning" though if you've noticed. Dishes and laundry and picking up isn't actually vacuuming or cleaning the toilets or washing mirrors. I have some ideas for a weekly schedule of cleaning up.

I haven't been able to implement it really since I'm focusing on working into the girls school times, but I'll post my idea here in case someone in blogdum is helped by it.

Schedules give me hives. Well, no.. not hives.. but perhaps pretty close to a panic attack. If I start reading about someone talking about their daily or weekly "schedule" I often stop reading. It's just SO overwhelming to read each cleaning task. -- clean the toilet, clean the bathtub, clean the mirrors, dust the furniture, vacuum the furniture, vacuum the stairs, sweep the floor, mop the floor.. etc ect. -- Um. No.

I started to do a schedule like that and all it did was stress me out to think or look at it and then I did LESS cleaning as a result.. which brought on some feelings of guilt or failure or at the very least annoyance at my dirty house, and often more times of eating chocolate or escaping onto facebook so I didn't have to see or think about the fail.

When I was watching some webinars on a homeschool site last week I got some good advice about meal planning (another thing that I've tried to do and struggle with.) She said that she had a schedule that went like this --
a chicken dish on Monday,
a pasta dish on Tuesday,
a soup or casserole on Wednesday,
a beef dish on Thursday,
and homemade pizza on Friday.

This felt revolutionary to me! It's scheduled, but NOT as detailed! I could choose at the time what sort of chicken dish to make on Monday, but it took a lot of the planning out of choosing from "anything"... I mean, there are only so many chicken dishes, right? Plus, I'm then free on Monday to pick something easy (with chicken) or something more time consuming and gourmet (with chicken) depending on how much time I have or how I feel.

Right, so what does this have to do with real cleaning? I'm going to do a "room each day" during the week. THAT way, I'll feel free to do as little or as much cleaning as I want to do on that day! There really are days when I get going cleaning up or doing something and see more to do and it's then easy do it. Other days I might be more tired or the kids might be more needy and just picking up the clutter and wiping down one counter will be all I can take.

So, that's the plan. I'm still struggling a LOT with all of this, but if there's as much improvement from now till next year as there was this past year we'll be doing well, and our lives will continue to become more simple.

Some final thoughts on what I've learned -

-You might get ideas from books and other people, and it's good to study and work to learn more and grow, but be prepared to keep changing stuff till you find what really does work for you.

-Keep the goal of SIMPLE in your head when you organize your house and schedule.

-Look at problem areas like a detective and find where the problem is and what you can do to correct it. The laundry basket sorter that I bought, for example, has put the success in the laundry situation.. other things to consider might be if you need to buy a bookshelf or if you need to move the table from one place to another to help things move more efficiently and simply. Baskets or other ways to organize are also really helpful.

-Organization is a lifestyle. You will never be "done organizing" BUT remember that it is EASIER to live in organization than disorder. If it feels harder, then you need to back up a bit to develop the most important (to you) habits and/or look for that thing to make it easier (like my laundry sorter example) to make that difficult thing simple.


My next post will be about managing toys and the kids room! *Dunt dunt DUDUUUUN!!!*

That is another HUGE issue in our house. And.. Lily thinks we need more toys. Um.. no.. please please PLEASE if you (or anyone you know) are planning or thinking or even have an inkling of giving my kids more toys, just.. don't. Project things are good.. art stuff.. books. NOT more TOYS!

Well,after MUCH trial and error in regards to managing the toys.. I think I've actually come up with something that will work. Stay tuned. ;]

Now.. if I could manage to be asleep no later than 10:30 I think I might actually be able to make these plans work.


In closing, I'd like to mention something that I alluded to earlier.
The point of organizing and maintaining is to simplify so we can focus on WHO is most important in our lives. I just read this article and it ended with this--

Duties are pressing upon me,
And the time for work is brief,
What if with purblind vision,
I neglect the very chief?

What if I do with ardor
What a thousand could maybe,
And leave undone forever
What was meant for only me?

No one else named “Mom” lives in our homes and holds our children’s hearts and lives like we do. Let’s not miss our greatest ministry!