A Schedule That Works? Part 1

I have a schedule, I really do. The point of a schedule, is that it's there to get things moving, keep things on track, and be thrown out the window if something more important comes along! As long as you get back to it later, that is! Unfortunately, I have made schedules (beautiful ones), that were heaved out the window at the least incident that wanted to intervene. Then, I would revise.

I have three areas of major responsibilities: Homeschooling, Doing the paperwork for my husband's business, and Keeping up with the housework. For the last three years, that is. Before that I had a baby/toddler/preschooler instead of the homeschooling. Before THAT I was a SAH wife for two years, volunteering as the secretary at our church two days a week, with only a young dog to raise instead of the baby. The constants were the contracting business paperwork and the housework.

Each change in my circumstances brought new challenges. Except for the baby/toddler years, I've mostly succeeded at "pulling it all together," but it was always only on the surface. The past few months I decided it was time to figure out why things would fall apart so easily if life went a different direction then I planned. I noticed that the common instigator for all those years of planning and struggling, I was trying to do all three major areas of responsibility simultaneously.

It just wasn't working as well as I wanted.

One thing would distract me from another, then my attention would be needed somewhere else. That meant that only the very basic necessities of homeschooling, food, laundry, keeping the house standards at a reasonable health level, and making sure that the proposals and invoices were going out EVER got done. NOTHING BEYOND THOSE THINGS managed to make it to my priority list. Filing the business papers? HA! Science experiments? Only if I HAD to. Mending things? Nope. Those are just the tip of the iceberg of the many things I always wanted to get to, but never did.

Then I came upon an idea that seemed like it just might work for me. My idea would allow time for the three major areas to be accomplished and maintained as completely as they should. It would also allow for those secondary things to finally have some attention.

It wasn't rocket science, but my plan WORKED--for me, anyways!

I'll talk about the details in my next post.