For starters, I have a whole slug of 3 in. x 5 in. index cards . I started out with bright, colorful cards, but have resorted to a mixture now. My card box is a bright yellow so I can easily locate it if I set it down somewhere. Everything is written in pencil so I can erase as needed. The exception would be for some storage cards, which I will explain later. Tabs could also be in pen, as those don’t change.

Next, I have dividers. They are labeled:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• January
• February
• March
• April
• May
• June
• July
• August
• September
• October
• November
• December
• Storage

Emilie Barnes recommends the following:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Quarterly
• Twice a year
• Annually

I prefer my way, because then I can nail down an exact month in which to assign items. If the items are quarterly, I make 4 cards. If the item is twice a year, I make 2 cards. I hope you are following me now

Now to explain what comes behind those headers on the cards….

Behind my daily tab, I have several cards that need to be done each day. Yours may vary. Mine are as follows:

• Consider dinner preparations: Pull out meat for thawing
• Make Bed, tidy bedroom
• Balance checkbook
• Have quiet time
• Take garbage out of each bathroom and put in new bags
• Wipe down sinks
• Sweep floors
• Laundry: Wash 4 loads, dry, fold, and put away
• Do school
• Dishes: Maintain
• Wipe down front of cupboards and appliances

I do not do all those tasks. Some are shared and some are assigned. They are in no particular order. Each day, I go through my cards and make sure each task has been accomplished. I have been doing it so long, though, that I know them by heart and are routine here. I do revisit the box no and again, though, to see if I should add or remove something.

Behind my weekly tab, I have a card labeled for each day of the week. The days of the week could be in pen since that doesn’t change. Mine are as follows, yous could be different.

• Sunday: Plan for next week, take a break
• Monday: Iron, mend, vacuum, water the live tree in the living room
• Tuesday: Mop floors, do bills
• Wednesday: Vacuum, bathe littles, yard work
• Thursday: Town day, get garbage cans out for garbage service
• Friday: Clean bathrooms, plan menu
• Saturday: Check over undone chores, bathe littles, vacuum

Behind my monthly tab, I have 4 cards, which are labeled

• Week 1
• Week 2
• Week 3
• Week 4

On each of those cards, I have written tasks. Mine are as follows:

• Week 1: Clean all 3 upstairs hall closets (blankets & linens, towels, coats & shoes), yard patrol, clean garage
• Week 2: Clean out van, clean refrigerator
• Week 3: Change linens, clean pantry, watch kitchen walls
• Week 4: Follow up on things to be mailed, sorted, and filed, clean washroom, wash appliances thoroughly.

Here are the things I have behind each of my month tabs. I have a card for each task:

• January

1. Clean under refrigerator and stove

• February

1. Straighten drawers
2. Clear upstairs bookshelves, clean thoroughly and put back together

• March

1. Sort through clothing boxes and rotate clothes.
2. Clean the shed

• April

1. Wash windows, inside and out.
2. Defrost & clean garage refrigerator & freezers
3. Change smoke alarm batteries

• May

1. Put bacteria in toilet/septic

• June

1. Clear downstairs bookshelves, clean thoroughly and put back together. Rotate books.
2. Change furnace filter
3. Clean the shed

• July

1. Clean the dryer vent in back of dryer

• August

1. Rearrange some furniture or consider what might make my home warm and welcoming. Make changes as desired.
2. Clear upstairs bookshelves, clean thoroughly and put back together.

• September

1. Clean screens from windows for storage over winter.
2. Clean the shed

• November

1. Sort through clothing boxes and rotate clothing.
2. Change the smoke alarm batteries
3. Harvest/can/freeze
4. Put bacteria in toilet/septic

• December

1. Clean shed

I know… I have some duplicates often, but the idea is maintenance before it gets bad.

I am going to share about my storage tab another time, because it is a little involved and will probably take another post.

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My File Box

Anyway, here’s this weeks’ menu. Sunday has already come and gone, though.

• Sunday – Ham, scalloped potatoes
• Monday – “Green Soup”. Dennis dislikes split pea, but loves green soup. Think he’ll notice?
• Tuesday – Swiss steak and potatoes (can you tell we gleaned potatoes last week?)
• Wednesday – Enchiladas
• Thursday – Cabbage soup with homemade bread
• Friday – Hamburger pie
• Saturday – Pizza!

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This Week’s Menu

Notes for the week:

Take turkey out of the freezer Sunday
Cook turkey Tuesday
Divide turkey Wednesday into meals.

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This Week’s Dinner Menu

• Coffee
• CTBHH chat
• Watering the yard
• Quiet time
• Wish my twins Happy Birthday!
• Finish getting our network hooked up to use SOS (Switched on Schoolhouse)
• Finish our MOTH schedule before school starts next week
• Attend a maquillage party, hosted by two of my daughters, Bethy and Anne
• Laundry

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On Today’s Agenda

I wanted to share with you about Motivated Moms planners. I have heard of these before, but had not purchased it. I know… I’m cheap. $8 for a planner seemed like a lot. Ha! It really isn’t, though, at least not for this planner.  AND…. it’s half off because the year is half over! So, if you are interested in taking a peek at her other items, this may be the time to give them a spin. Then you’ll know if you want to go back and spend the extra $4 later.

She has check off boxes for daily and weekly tasks. They rotate week to week.  These are a great starter kit for anyone wanting to jump start their daily schedule.

Some items she has are:

• Full Size Planner
• Half Size PlannerFull Size Planner with Bible Reading Schedule (I wish I had tried this one out)
• Half Size Planner
• Half Size Planner with Bible Reading Schedule

Let me know if you end up purchasing one of these that I don’t have. I’d like to know what you think… or if you already have one that I don’t have, would love to hear.

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Motivated Moms Planner

In theory, it’s supposed to streamline and organize your family.

Reality is another thing…or is it?

This year, I sat Anne down with me to help me work out our schedule.  You see, the main reason we’ve been using the MOTH is because we have 3 networked computers and a handful of students and I needed a way to coordinate everyone doing their Switched on Schoolhouse Language Arts and their DIVE math CD in order to do their Saxon, not to mention all the “earned” computer time and educational “stuff.”

We got the schedule down.  It looked like a dandy!  It was beautiful!  I was pleased.

A few things have changed since last year due to Benjamin graduating and working full-time, as well as Anne taking on a new job of sewing hunting decoys for MT Decoy and Cabela’s.  (She does this from home)

The first day of our schedule arrives.  We are poised.  Mom is excited and motivated to take on the days ahead!  The schedule has been gone over, checked and rechecked.  By the end of the first couple of hours, it becomes very apparent something’s amiss!

I knew that something was wrong when Emily came to me and said, “Mom, you forgot my SOS.”  Ok.  I could deal with that minor oversight.  Another child came to me and said I had forgotten to schedule them for a bathing!  Hmmm  Later, Elizabeth came to me and said, “Mom, you forgot my SOS, but put me down for reading three times.” (Poor girl. Imagine that! What a rough schedule when reading is your very favorite thing to do in life!)

Of course, I got the usual complaints, “Mom, can you reschedule us to feed and care for the chickens at, say, 7:00?  6:30 Is too early.  “No, sweetie.  If I did that, then you couldn’t eat breakfast.”  “Mom, I don’t like that my ‘free time’ is scheduled.  It doesn’t feel free if it’s scheduled.”

Back to the drawing board…or in our case, Excel.  I work our MOTH in Excel.  Since there are so many of us, it seems to work well.  Some great ladies at the Titus2 forum, since closed to any ol’ yahoo, helped me out to learn how to monkey with the cells to get them to conform to my likeness. At least that is the hope.  In the past, I color-coded everyone, but this year, I am trying something new by color-coding times in which a person is on a computer in order to keep it all straight! It also helps that each of our computers have names.  My computer is fondly called “Mother” or “Mothership.”  Since the other two computers came from our office, we lovingly named them after the people who used them, “Darren” and “Valarie.”

I finally made the unfortunate decision to delete Abigail (1) and Jayden (2) off the schedule since we were hanging off the edge of the paper and I couldn’t find my tape to print more pages to put together like a puzzle.  I didn’t want to attempt “landscape,” for this old brain of mine just couldn’t handle further confusion.

Well, after a week of stumbling through my first draft of the final schedule, or was that the final draft of the first schedule… I sat down and revamped it once again.

Of course, there is an exception to every perfect schedule and our exceptions are those of Thursdays when one son has guitar lessons, every other Wednesday, two sons work in the morning, they just began a job each afternoon at a neighbors “until the snow starts flying”, Monday’s Daddy’s home, so we have to remember that we may not always follow schedule on Mondays…shall I continue with the “exceptions to the rule?”  Of course there’s sick babies, and sometimes, sick mama’s.

We used to have a “loose” schedule.  Up by 8 o’clock, chores and fed by 10 o’clock then start school until lunch, finishing in the afternoon.  When baby number 9 was on his way, I knew a few things had to change:  One, we needed curriculum that freed me up a bit, and two, we needed more order and discipline in our lives.  However, many other benefits have come from this schedule:  I can make sure we are doing everything Daddy wants us to get done in a day, if laundry is sitting there, I am assured it will be taken care of “in it’s time.”  You know the old saying, “A place for everything and everything in it’s place?”  Well, using this MOTH schedule is like that.  We could say, “A time for everything and everything has a time.”

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MOTH “A time for everything and everything has a time”