I have confessed before that I really struggle with being a good housekeeper.  I have needed to train myself through the years and constantly backslide in my standards for cleanliness.

There are “seasons” in my life when I have made good progress in this area and have maintained my home in a sufficient manner.  There have even been a couple of “seasons” when I was manager of my home enough that my children were on the ball – doing a lot of the housekeeping along side of me. 

THIS is not one of those “seasons”!

I have really let the ball drop as far as the children’s chores and my own.

            I certainly have many legitimate (in my own eyes!) reasons to have spent my time elsewhere- things that were higher on the priority list, that have taken much time and physical as well as emotional energy. But that is more often the case than not, isn’t it?

 I’ve let my housekeeping lapse.  We’ve been keeping up on the laundry- mostly, and making our meals- though we have made far too many convenience meals, and our academic lessons have continued-until we took a break.  So, even our necessary tasks have been suffering.  This is surely not the way to be faithful in my God-given tasks in life! 

            I have learned over the years that this phenomenon - gradually letting everything slide until it is all screaming for attention has often preceded a change in direction for my housekeeping.  Something that was working before isn’t, anymore.  It is time to change my routines, or methods or look at some training that hasn’t happened (in myself, or my children). 

            So, we are taking a mini vacation from schoolwork so that I can pray and plan and work.  It’s time to overhaul our routines and assess what training is lacking in the kids, or what has lapsed that must be taken up again. 

            We are spending time deep cleaning rooms and getting back to our daily chore charts.  The kids have a little more free time and I’m spending time on paperwork – long range lesson planning, book lists to take to the annual home educator’s convention and slogging through old files, etc.

            There’s so much to do like the above mentioned that there is no way that we are going to get it all done in the planned two weeks I’ve taken off (we are in the second week now!)  So, one of my tasks is to find a way to fit those big maintenance jobs into our regular routine.  This has always been a challenge for me! 

Question: How do you manage to keep all your plates in the air and make sure things like deep cleaning, culling your files, mending, organizing and do ahead type things (i.e. gifts, meals, planning for special occasions) get done?