Overwhelmed with Organization

Have you ever wonder how others are so organized?  I wonder this all the time.  Every time I think that I am organized, I discover that I am not.  So, how do you organize your house?  I have always tried to give everything in my house its own home.  I know that it is a system that has worked really well for my family and in my life.  You see, in my mind everything is so disorganized and sometimes it takes me getting it organized to find the true purpose for everything. 

I have never been a meal planner until the last year or so.  We sometimes would schedule two weeks worth of meals, but never on a consistent basis.  I know that getting my household organized is the key to making everything successful.  I just seem to be having a real issue trying to figure out how to accomplish this task.

I am thinking that I need to make a list of our frequently used meals and place it in the front of our Feingold Style Recipes cookbook that I made.  We are constantly trying new meals, but we have some that we make over and over, because we love them so much.  I really love my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook that I got for Christmas.  We have found so many recipes that we can adjust according to our special diet-Feingold.  I have found some different links for menu planners and I have heard great things about Flylady.  I am really looking forward to exploring these avenues more.  I have also heard others talk of freezing meals for a month.  I think this is great, but I am not sure how or when I would do this.  I think that I would like to try some of these ideas, but getting them started....seems to be the issue.   


I have also been trying to figure out how I will plan out our curriculum in a schedule.  I will admit, schedules scare me to death.  It isn't that I don't like them, because I do need some structure.  The problem is that I feel like I could never stick to a schedule and then I feel like I failed.  So, how do you give your children the structure that they need to make good habits, yet give yourself the freedom to not feel tied to the schedule.  I am just not sure how to complete this.  I have purchased 95% of what we will be using for our curriculum for homeschooling this year.  We are going to be taking a totally different approach this year and going towards the Charlotte Mason methods.  My children love to read and some of the children don't learn well in the traditional ways taught in the school system.  In order to give all of my children an education that fits well with each of them, I have decided that Charlotte Mason seems to fit what we are looking for.  A lot of CM is based on reading.  Reading in my house is not a chore or a task, but a love....for all!  We have begun and will continue reading books that are considered "living books".  We are trying to weed out all of our books which contain "twaddle".  According to Charlotte Mason, books that are living books fill children with the idea of how good writing should be.  I have really enjoyed getting to know what the Charlotte Mason philosophy is.  One resource that greatly helped me was The Charlotte Mason All Day Seminar.  The great books that I read, which also helped to give me a starting view of this approach were A Charlotte Mason Education & A Charlotte Mason Companion.  Both of these books were great resources for someone starting out with this new method.  I know that the Simply Charlotte Mason website has an online planner, but I haven't tried that yet.  I need to figure something out quickly, because time doesn't seem to be on my side lately.  I am good at organizing, but this seems to be getting the best of me.  How do I schedule all of the stuff for 4 kids and make it all work together?  I know that I can do this.....just not quite sure how...right at the moment!       


I have been very fortunate to find many of my books on Ebay at a huge discounted cost.  I am always out for a bargain.  I have also been able to utilize Ebay as a great place to sell many of my old books and homeschooling things.  This is another area that I need to get organized.  I seem to have so many things that I want to list and yet, my time seems so scattered to do this.

What about all the books that I have to read?  I have a ton of books that I have started and that I want to read, but I am just not sure where to fit in the time to get this done.


These are all the things that I can think of right now that need to be organized, but I am just not sure where to start and how to get everything situated.  Have you ever felt this overwhelmed?  Well, I guess the pressure of having a child in High School is enough to make you feel a little panicky!  If anyone has any suggestions of how to get all of these things organized, I would love to hear them! 





                     

Camping Adventure

We went on our first camping trip of the season and we went to Ramsey State Park.  We went with the Highland Hope Christian Campers.  We had an amazing time!  We are hoping to be able to do some more camping before the summer is over. 

The kids had fun fishing and hiking and just being outdoors.  There was a small body of water.  I'm not sure I would consider it a lake, but it was definitely water.  We saw a redheaded woodpecker all over the place in our campground.  

 We did go on a few trails, but it was pretty warm this past weekend.  The highs for the weekend were in the 90s, but with the heat index it was well above 100 and very humid.  We had a great time, even though the camper we rented had a problem with the airconditioner.  We spent most of the weekend without, except Saturday afternoon and evening.  We really enjoyed the time with friends and the time enjoying God's creation.  

We went on a few trails and spent some time down by the water, but the most fun was being with great friends. 

Taking care of the homefront....

Well, normally yard work is something that Dad takes care of.  But with Dad being gone for most of the summer the older two kiddos are learning how to mow and weed eat for Dad.  Mom would love to be out there doing the job, but having an allergy to grass has never allowed me the opportunity.  So, my neighbor so graciously offered to teach my kiddos how to mow and use the weed eater.  I am not sure how enjoyable they both found the job to be.  The rewards to a job well done are amazing!

Taylor gets pretty worn out mowing, but he does a good job!

 Sydney does a good job with the weed eater!  I only wish that we knew how great it would be for her forearms.  It could have really helped her back when she was playing volleyball.

Hey, maybe they could start their very own lawn service!  Not sure how exciting they would find that, but maybe the possibility does exist.  Until the next time......