Organising your life: chores

Welcome to this five day series organised by Caroline at the Joyful Keeper. This is all about organising life. I'm a learner at this and am looking forward to learning from the other ladies who are posting. Some of these posts will be ideas that have worked well for me and others are more about where I would like to be! I will try to be clear about what has definitely worked and what is just aspirational.

The topics are

• spiritual life
• laundry
• chores
• meals
• home-schooling

Today, I'm talking about chores.

Let me start by saying that this isn't something that I'm proud about! 

I've never been a great cleaner. For many years, whilst I was working outside the home, I employed cleaners. Some were great, some were less than great and a few were scary! It isn't the best of ideas to vacuum a wet floor. Whilst I am delighted to be at home, in many ways, lack of a professional cleaner isn't something that makes me glad. 

The other result of having a cleaner was that training my children to do chores wasn't high on the agenda. 

When I reduced my hours dramatically, after Youngest Son was born, the cleaner went and of course, now I do no work outside the home, I'm the cleaner. Let's be honest, cleaning doesn't come high on the "want to list". It ranks below

• talking to my husband
• talking to the children
• reading to the children
• home education
• cooking
• laundry
• writing, of course.

The next difficulty, is that we have a reasonable size house to accommodate eight people and a husband who works from home so to clean the house properly would take probably about eight uninterrupted hours each week. 

Of course, the answer is to give the children chores, lots of, but in reality this would just be provoking them. They weren't used to chores, would have to do a serious number and some have concerns about the drop in income with me at home so adding extra tasks is adding insult to injury.

So what do we do? Well, the house isn't as clean as it might be. However, there are certain priorities: the kitchen and bathrooms and obscurely, the stair carpet. Actually, the children do help. Middle Son cleans his room, Youngest Son loves to vacuum although at this season he needs loads of supervision and all the children muck in and help when visitors are due to arrive.

If you are, like me, a poor housewife, I would commend regular visitors-they focus the mind and quicken the pace. 

If you have any helpful tips for a dreadful cleaner and housewife, I shall be grateful!!

This blog hop has been arranged by Caroline of the Joyful Keeper.


The others taking part can be found by clicking on the blog buttons below.

Please join us. There will be opportunities to comment and Caroline has a linky for your posts on organising your chores.

Organising your life:laundry

Welcome  back to this five day series arranged by Caroline at the Joyful Keeper. This is all about organising life. I'm a learner at this and am looking forward to learning from the other ladies who are posting. Some of these posts will be ideas that have worked well for me and others are more about where I would like to be! I will try to be clear about what has definitely worked and what is just aspirational.

The topics are

• spiritual life
• laundry
• chores
• meals
• home-schooling

Today the theme is organising the laundry. 

For a largish family, the laundry never seems to end! In this household, we frequently wash six days a week.

How do I organise the washing? This is around my laundry maids. I have two: one washes and one dries but I try not to use the second laundry maid as she is expensive to pay. Instead, I use the laundry slave. This is a picture of the laundry slave.

 The laundry slave has to start work early or she won't finish the work for the day. In order for this to happen, the first laundry maid does one load of washing overnight and then usually, one or more loads in the early morning.

The biggest problem with the laundry slave is that she doesn't work when it rains. As we use the washing machine maid most days, it is sometimes possible to skip a rainy day and do extra on the following day. We live in England and sometimes it rains and rains. When this happens, we have a second laundry slave: the inside airer but she takes ages to do her work so sometimes re have to resort to the rather expensive drier maid.

The other way that we have found to avoid getting too behind with the washing, is to avoid having too many clothes. The more clothes there are, the more likely they are to be sitting in a heap of waiting to be washed, waiting to be folded and put away or worse still, waiting to be ironed clothes.

I can't think that there is too much more to be said about our laundry system. However, some other bloggers are also sharing about how their laundry works.

Lisa at the newly relaunched Tales of a Homeschool Family.

Please join us. Caroline, at the Joyful Keeper, has a linky for you to add your own posts on organising your laundry.

Organising your life: spiritual life

Welcome to this five day series arranged by Caroline at the Joyful Keeper around organising life. I'm a learner at this and am looking forward to learning from the other ladies who are posting. Some of these posts will be ideas that have worked well for me and others are more about where I would like to be! I will try to be clear about what has definitely worked and what is just aspirational.

The topics are

• spiritual life
• laundry
• chores
• meals
• home-schooling

Today's theme is organising your spiritual life.

The most important thing to say about this is that the spiritual life is a relationship with a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. If we don't know and love Him, then all the organising in the world is useless. How do we know and love Him? His Word, the Bible tells us about Him and if we have trusted in Him, to forgive our wrong doings/thoughts and words then we will love Him.  The services marked "Evening evangelistic" on this site, explain this in much more depth and clarity.

For those who do know and love the Lord Jesus, that spiritual life can take some organisation. Without taking time and care, we will find that we have no time to talk to Him in prayer or read the Bible. This isn't a made up idea. The Bible tells us that God is a God of order and the Psalms talk about praying at set times of day.

Our best attempts at organising can be especially thrown by babies and young children so these thoughts are particularly around this time of life.

Time
I have found it really useful to have a couple of set times, at the beginning and end of the day for time with the Lord.
Yes, children do interrupt but they can learn, from an early age, that this is time when Mum needs some quiet. They can have quiet books to look at during this time. When all else has failed, I have occasionally changed my Bible reading to a portion of one of the Gospels about a miracle and read that aloud to the child and myself.
Yes, rarely a child can be ill,at this time, and need sorting out. Yes, this can and does happen but realistically, over almost 20 years of motherhood, this is the exception.
Yes, I can be tired and find concentration difficult. This has been, for me, a more major factor particularly, when the children have been little and I have had to get up to them in the night. This is difficult. Things that have helped me are

• a regular Bible reading scheme. I use the version of Robert Murray M'Cheyne's Bible reading scheme. This is available on line or as an app. This has two chapters a day for personal reading and two for family reading. Reading two whole chapters a day at family worship with toddlers may be difficult-M'Cheyne was unmarried when he died aged 27. Other than this, the scheme is excellent.

• writing things down. I found Journibles after the time when my children were babies but they are helpful.
• a short exposition to go with the Bible reading. Ryle's Expositions of the Gospels are especially useful. Do try to buy the older hardback versions rather than the paperbacks as they last so much longer although they are now available free on line either as a print download or as an audiobook. I haven't listened to the audiobook so can't vouch for the quality of the reading.
• learning some Scripture to meditate on. More on this later.
• reading aloud. My husband usually works very late which means that we generally read the Bible and pray together at around 1am. I am not good at this time of day and frequently/usually fell asleep until we realised that it might be better if I read the reading rather than listened. 

Through the day

Life can be challenging for us all! We need the Lord's help through the day but it is so easy to forget to ask or to rely on our own strength. 

I'm not as good at this as I ought to be but things that have helped me are

• learning Scripture.
• putting up cards with Scripture in the house.
• having a set Bible time with the children. This isn't just for the children but is a time when we can talk to the Lord and His Word can speak to us. Often a children's devotional book can speak to the parent too. I've found Leading Little Ones to God useful in this respect.

Memorising Scripture

I am profoundly grateful that my parents taught us portions of Scripture. This is something that I think is useful for my children too but there can be benefit for mothers. I try to learn alongside my children. Often, I may know the first part of the portion that we are learning but try to learn the next part. My children love to test me!

Having a verse memorised is particularly helpful during childbirth and afterwards. I struggle emotionally for the year after my children are born. One thing that has really been a comfort has been having Scripture to think about and chew on rather than depressed and anxious thoughts. After my youngest,  1 Peter 2 verse 7 was something that was a real comfort:

Unto you therefore which believe He is precious

and after one of the older children 

Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help. 

Psalm 146v5

I've found that I find it easier to remember and think about something short at these times.

Do pop over to the other ladies who are writing on this theme. Click on the blog buttons to go to the sites.

This blog hop has been arranged by Caroline of the Joyful Keeper.


The other people taking part areHeidi St John of the Busy Mom.

Lisa at the newly relaunched Tales of a Homeschool Family.

Amy of Raising Arrows

Please join us. There is a linky at Caroline's site, if you want to add your own posts on Organising your Spiritual Life.

Organising your life!-blog hop

Next week, I'm hoping to take part in a five day blog hop about organising life.

Now to be honest, I need plenty of advice in this area so I'm looking forward to the other posts as well as planning to share a few things that have helped me. 

The topics that we are planning to cover are 

Organising spiritual life. This comes first as it is the most important topic of all. 

Organising laundry is, of course, a far lesser topic but when this isn't organised chaos ensues! 

On Wednesday the subject is about chores. I just need to learn in this area but will be sharing some of my struggles in this area.

Meals are obviously important so there is a day devoted to this. We've changed our diet recently which has been a challenge.

Finally, we look at organisation applied to home education-a large subject on its own.

This blog hop has been arranged by Caroline of the Joyful Keeper. Caroline has worked on all the behind the scenes administration, the banner and much else and of course, will be posting each day.
The other people taking part are

Heidi St John of the Busy Mom.

Lisa at the newly relaunched Tales of a Homeschool Family.

These ladies plan to blog for the whole week.

On Monday, Thursday and Friday, Amy of Raising Arrows will be joining the hop.


Heather, of Raising Mighty Arrows, hopes to join us on Wednesday and Friday.

I'm hoping to blog for the whole week.

Please join us. There will be opportunities to comment and to link up your blog posts around organising life.

Homeschool Spanish Academy

Modern languages are an area where I need help, with teaching so I was pleased when we had an opportunity to review Homeschool Spanish Academy.

Homeschool Spanish Academy provides lessons via the internet from native Spanish speakers in Central America. It is based in Guatemala. The Academy teaches children from five as well as adults, using four different options:

• Early Language Program
• Middle School Program
• High School Program
• Adult Program

Younger Daughter, aged six, had Spanish lessons from a lovely teacher called Elsa. Younger Daughter had had no previous Spanish lessons and her only Spanish word prior to the classes was "Hola". Not surprisingly, we chose to use the Early Language option.



The Academy provides a planner where it is possible to select a teacher and time. The teacher profiles give a picture and information about them including the number of years that they have been teaching. The process of booking a slot is quite simple but YouTube videos are provided to guide through this.

The lessons are via Skype and of course, it is necessary to have a Skype account, the internet, a microphone and ideally, a webcam. Just before the first lesson, a Homeschool Spanish Academy technician called us to check our internet speed and that we could see and hear her.

Elsa called us promptly at the time of the class. She started the first lesson talking to my daughter in English but quickly started to use Spanish expressions. During the first lesson, she went over the Spanish vowels and a few nouns. After the lessons, home work is sent via a private part of the Academy website. This has, so far, been learning vocabulary from colourful sheets.

This is an example of  part of a vocabulary sheet.

Subsequent lessons, covered the alphabet, more nouns, a few verbs and some common expressions.

The Early Language Program lessons last 25 minutes whereas those in the other stages are 50 minutes.

What we liked about the programme

• This is a great way to learn Spanish with a native speaker with none of the inconvenience and loss of time travelling to classes.
• In addition, classes are generally one to one although it is possible to have paired classes if the students are not more than three grades (years) apart.
• Elsa was friendly and encouraging, asking about the weather and our cats, in order to put Younger Daughter at ease.
• The programme is good value for money. It would be unusual to find classes for this price.

What could be improved?

Very little.  

One suggestion for improvement would be to have audio files with the homework. I found it quite challenging to remember how to pronounce the alphabet.

Overall, this is a programme that I would recommend as an efficient and cost effective of learning a language with a first language speaker.

The cost varies with stage, whether a semester (15 weeks) or half-semester (7 weeks) is booked and number of lessons per week. A semester of the Early Language Program with one lesson per weeks costs $99.99 (about £64.17 which is £4.28 a lesson).  A semester of the Early Language Program with two lessons per week costs $174.99 (about £112.30).

Summer reading

This has been a summer of reading aloud. My younger two children love to have books read to them but the Wisdom House reading scheme really seemed to galvanise Younger Daughter to try to beat her brother's list of books. So Youngest Son had his usual large dose of picture books, over 140 so far, this summer not including repeats and longer, partially read books.

Younger Daughter decided that the best way to achieve a high number was to go for mainly picture books, with a few longer books for variety and a few that she read aloud. She hasn't quite managed her brother's score but is over 100.

It sounds impressive but I'm sure that books and the park have been a lazy mother's way of keeping them happy!

In between, I've managed a bit of reading; not as much as I would like but some. A couple of books to see whether they were suitable to read aloud to the children:

Pat's new life by Dorothy Marsh is a book about a young girl in her new job and the challenges she faces. This will be fine to read to the children but is probably slightly over the head of a six year old.

Homecoming by Michael Morpurgo passes the read aloud test. Younger Daughter enjoys Michael Morpurgo's books but some are, in my opinion, too dark for a six year old. Homecoming is about an unsuccessful battle against a power station. It is sad but would be fine. I'm less sure about the book that I've glanced over recently, again by Michael Morpurgo, Running Wild , in which the hero's father dies in Iraq and he and his mother get caught up in a tsunami which claims his mother's life. Younger Daughter will probably enjoy this in a year or so.

There have been a couple of review books:

Compassionate Jesus

Homegrown preschooler: teaching your kids in the places where they live

A home education book: The well trained mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise.
This was long, over 600 pages but definitely worth reading for a rigorous treatment of a classical approach to education with curriculum suggestions.

The Irish Puritans: James Ussher and the reformation of the church by Crawford Gribben was a gift from some friends. This book is a fascinating history of the Reformation in Ireland and beyond. It filled in so many gaps in my knowledge about the religious, and secular history of Ireland. Definitely recommended!

I'm currently reading another book about Ireland, from the same friends: The Ulster Awakening: an account of the  1859 revival in Ireland by John Weir and a book that I have had on the go for ages, The Pilgrim Church by E.H. Broadbent.

Not much, I would have liked to have read more but struggle to find time to read. Still, I'm open to suggestions for more books to read and very tempted to go for a quick dose of Miss Read or O Douglas before term starts!

Bank holiday harvest

We've been blackberrying. This year's harvest is rich-lovely, big, juicy blackberries.

My freezer now has several pots of blackberries. We use them on porridge and with apple. 

This year, we seem to have a reasonable apple harvest. Something for which we are thankful after last year's poor harvest but, perhaps, not quite as big as the bumper harvest of a few years ago.

In case, anyone else has a fair few apples, here are the links to my compendium of apple recipes:

Breakfasts, soups, main courses and vegetables

Desserts

Apple turnover

Blackberry jelly

While the earth remaineth  seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. 

Genesis 8 v22