How I keep from losing my job!

Well we all know that a house wife is a full time job and add homeschool to the mix and your just bogged down with stuff to do. I know most 'out of the house' working people probably don't see it that way but we homeschool mom's know we never stop working. Between the chores THAT NEVER END BECAUSE THE KIDS ARE HOME ALL DAY the errands we must run because WE ARE AT HOME ALL DAY SO WE MUST HAVE PLENTY OF TIME the homeschooling we do which I know my list says it takes 4 hours but really...it takes more than that, their is the missing assignment, the baby interrupting, my grading, filing, making the next day’s schedule I bet it's more like 6 hours a day when all is said and done! Then there is also the normal day to day stuff like dinner, laundry, dishes, etc. It's a full time job!

So in this full time job you can get so lost without a schedule right? I have been doing one that I like and I posted it earlier but how do I stay on task, how do I not lose the schedule, etc. I am going to explain what so far has worked for me.

First I think of the schedule as a must. Yet I don't want a minute by minute guide to my day so I can do stuff like this (posting) with my morning instead of working out. I also make my schedule give us plenty-beyond plenty of room. (I scheduled 2 hours for chores when they actually take 1 hour) so we never get off schedule because the boys were playing, they broke something, or because someone called, etc. Most of the school time is actual school time so I have learned that if an interruption happens then we can eat into other time, like the way over scheduled lunch hour or the 2 hours of free time after school. I made sure to cover my ground. I also gave myself time in the morning for errands (8-10) and in the afternoon (3-5) if need be. If I know that I have something to do out of the house, I try to do those chores either really fast, the night before, or skip what I don't have to do.

Also about how I keep the schedule, if you read my old post you know my schedule system. Well I changed it up just a bit. First I no longer keep my white board next to the computer, instead I keep it on the frig. and instead of one big white board I purchased two smaller magnetic ones. One has an erasable calendar which I write all that is going on for the month and each person has their own color on the white board. So if Stuntman has something going on all his projects for the month are written in green, and so on. This is really neat to have. The other white board has my daily list of "to do" for the day. This white board includes all non-scheduled items like errands or extra cleaning that needs to be done. I also have the grocery list and the dinner for that day on there. I just erase the dinner from last night and right the new dinner. This also helps me to not forget to pull something out for dinner because when I grab breakfast out of the frig, the word dinner is staring me in the face. The grocery list on the frig is so cool because the markers are right there and as I run out of something I am not looking for a pen.

Okay now to keep track of my schedule. Well I use to have it taped to the white board but there is no room on my frig for that so I tacked the schedule on the wall next to the frig and pantry. This way I still see if first thing in the morning and throughout the day, it reminds me to stay on task. I think we all had it memorized after day 3 so it's not too hard to do. I like easy stuff!

Well I hope that helps other moms out there. I got my white boards for I think about 5-6 dollars each at Wal-Mart and they came with magnets and 1 black marker. I think I got my colored markers from Wal-Mart with magnets on them and stuck them on the frig as well.

you can see at the bottom of the calendar I do have a small version of our schedule. It does not have the detail list of our chores or school but it has the time of when we are suppose to be doing curtain things.

I pray this helps you as much as it has helped me. Now if someone can tell me how to keep my desk uncluttered that would be great!

Latte