Generation NeXt Parenting

Balancing Life and Cleaning!

I work from home, which means I SEE what needs to be done all hours of day and night. When I clean I see the writing stuff I need to do. When I write I see the house stuff. Yet when it comes to writing, life, kids I have to make priorities:

1. Food. I shop big at Costco and have enough extra stuff around to throw together a nice meal at 5:45 p.m.

2. Order. My kids have had chores since they were preschoolers. At 19, 16, and 14 they still have daily chores AND know how to sprint through the house in a cleaning frenzy when I call home in desperation. "Company's coming!"

3. Peace. In my heart, not always in my schedule. When I have peace and go with the flow the family follows. They'd rather have a happy mom than a perfect house.

4. Understanding. For myself mostly. If God has called me to write books and articles and be an attentive mom and wife then I CAN'T keep a perfect house too. It's impossible.

5. Help. I do have a housecleaner once a week for three hours who does the deep cleaning. Huge help!

Tips:
I do something called "The 27." I'll time myself and spend 27 minutes answering email, cleaning my desk, cleaning the house, putting away laundry, packaging books to send out ... you name it. 30 minutes sounds like it's a big chunk of time but for some reason 27 minutes seems doable! And I'm always amazed how much I can get done in that time.

Also, I only have one small corner in my kitchen where stuff accumulates, and I clean that off every other day. And I don't let kids drop stuff as they go. They must put it away. So if you show up at my house it looks (mostly) uncluttered ... just don't look at the dog hair on the floors or the dust on ... everything!

posted by Tricia Goyer @ 10:45 AM