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Here is some inspiration for decorating your home for spring, by my lovely sister, Christa Taylor.

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Routine…it is a beautiful word. Children thrive on it. Mommy’s fill satisfied and organized when they have it. And Daddy’s get all the benefits of a peaceful home upon their arrival when it’s in place. At least that’s what we strive for. Perfectionism is not the goal…but rather a good structure through which we can maintain our lives, relationships, and homes for the glory of God. It brings peace into our household when all the little ones are well rested. But it can be the hardest thing to figure out what works for your family. But your efforts are well worth it.

After developing a mission statement in which you map out your main priorities and goals, then building a simple schedule/routine can be more easily accomplished. You have decided what are the priorities, what you can and cannot do, and now we will map it out.

Time Budget

You might choose to use a time budget approach (as described in Tell Your Time) which means you take the 24 hours of your day, subtract your hours of sleep, and divide the remaining hours (usually about 16 hours), into your envelopes of priorities. I want to spend two hours of focused time with my children each day, so I put two hours there. I need to spend about 2 hours on meal preparations and clean up, and so I stash two hours there. And so on. This approach really helps for us to see how much time we truly have at our disposal. If used and divided wisely, we can surely accomplish those dreams on our list. Always add a hour buffer to your time as well, taking note that something will not always come out as planned.

Morning/Evening Routine

Another method is the Morning and Evening Routines. Rather than structuring hour by hour, this provides a bit more simplicity by just making a list of what are your morning tasks to be accomplished sometime between 9-12noon, and what are your evening tasks to be accomplished before bed. This method provides plenty of flexibility and works well for those who do not like too much structure.

We use a mix of both structures in our home. I like to schedule out my mornings more definitively, but I do have a rough morning routine  that may not always fit into the hour structure. Here is what an average day looks like at our home:

Our Daily Schedule

6:00 am – Personal Bible reading time individually, plan for the day (make my to-do list)
7:00 am – Shower (3 times a week), dress, devotions with Aaron
7:20 am – Lindsay prepares breakfast, packs Aaron’s lunch (if I don’t get to it the night before)
7:45 am – Aaron leaves for work
8:00 am – Breakfast with kids, read Jesus Storybook Bible together over breakfast, cleanup, dinner preparations (take anything out of the freezer, etc), quick house pick-up, fill up water bottle
9:00-11:00 am – Learning time with Karis (currently we are using the Sonlight P4/5 curriculum and are loving it, along with Singapore Math KA), reading stories, special activity (tea, baking project, playdough, etc)
11:30-12:00 noon – Lunch, cleanup

Variations from day to day: Monday mornings is my cleaning and laundry day. This is the day I am wearing my comfies and just get the house in order for the week. This helps me get the fun stuff out of the way first , and then I don’t have to worry about it so much throughout the week. I spend two hours vacuuming and mopping all the surfaces in our home and clean the bathrooms, while rotating the laundry through. We do about 5 loads of laundry (this is for the whole week). Thursday mornings we attend story-time at our local library. Saturday morning is my planning time, when I go to a coffee shop for 2 hours while daddy feeds and plays with the kids.

Afternoon Routine: Naps all around. The kids will nap for 1 1/2 – 2 hours. During this period, I usually nap for 30 minutes, followed by my 1 1/2 hour computer/personal time. After naps, we have a snack, and then we might go for a walk, visit the playground, prepare dinner, etc. I keep the afternoons really flexible. I may have to complete something that didn’t get done in the morning. We do our grocery shopping (through our local co-op), and various errands on Tuesday afternoons.

Evening Routine:
Family dinner
Clean up dinner dishes while Daddy plays with kids
Kids bath (3 nights a week)
Prepare Aaron’s lunch
House pick-up (this helps give me a good start the next day if the house is picked up, kids put away their toys before bed)
7:00 pm – Titus’ bedtime, 7:30 pm – Karis’ bedtime
One on one time with Aaron

Variations: Tuesday night is our date night. Thursday night we host community group. Friday night is family night. And we usually have hospitality on Saturday or Sunday evenings.

Q & A From the Readers

How do you entertain my children while you maintain the house?

This is a question we receive frequently. How do we get anything done around the house with little ones? We have always emphasized in our children’s training that mommy is not here to entertain them. Since they were babies we were intentional in giving them time to themselves each day so they learned how to entertain themselves. We would set them up in the pack n play, or on a blanket and allow them to have time to play by themselves for 30 minute periods. I would often leave the room for brief periods as well, so they would learn that they could survive without mommy there at every moment. This practice has surely paid off, because my kiddos entertain themselves so well now.

On Mondays, during housecleaning, I do allow Karis to watch a 30 minute video to break it up a bit. This will be either a learning video or family home videos. She loves family videos and will certainly have our family history memorized! For a portion of our housecleaning, the kids will help out. They may play a game of chase the vacuum, or mop the floor, or help me wash the dishes. I try to include them whenever they want to participate, reinforcing good work ethic and responsibility. Otherwise, they like to play with their tricycles indoors or outdoors (bringing bikes indoors is tons of fun!), listen to music on a portable CD player, play with their kitchen set, dress up with the dress up box, or simply look at books. Since we haven’t exposed them to much technology entertainment devises (we don’t have a TV), they have learned to enjoy themselves in whatever fashion they desire.

How do you do laundry all in one day?

I strive to keep the laundry simple. We only have 8 outfits each for the kids in addition to 3-4 pajamas, so we keep our clothing limited. Aaron and I usually wear our clothes at least two times between washing. I combine loads of laundry to make sure I have full loads for the greatest efficiency. This means instead of doing a separate towel load, I combine the white towels with the white clothing, and the dark towels with the dark clothing. The same is true with our linens – they go in with the other laundry. I wash the sheets and towels once a week and they all get stripped down and replaced on Monday, so I can keep track of their cleanliness. This enables me to keep our laundry to a minimum. So all together we have about 5 loads per week – 1 colored loads, one white, one dark (which may have colored additions), one for kitchen towels/rags (as I wash these separately as I don’t want the smells to affect our clothing), and one for cloth diapers. I also do a second load of cloth diapers later on in the week.

When do you exercise?

Good question. Whenever I can fit it in. Sometimes I will run up and down the steps after the kids go to bed for 15-20 minutes. Sometimes I will take a walk with the kids in the afternoon. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen. If nothing else, I just keep moving around the house quite a bit.

Do you have any girl time?

Yes, I actually get together with my sister once a week (early Wednesday morning before Aaron goes to work) and we have accountability time together. I also participate in a monthly ladies Bible study. We also like to have friends over for lunch at least once a month midweek to have play times and fellowship.

Overall, it is important to remember that what works for me may not work for you. This is also the beauty of routine. Your routine will be adapted to fit your needs and preferences. There is grace to adapt, grace to flex, and grace to simplify. Try a little of this and a little of that to help determine what works for you. And once you figure it out – stick with it! But remember, it will need adapting in future seasons. Our schedule changes a bit every few months, as something is added or another is dropped. There is grace to make changes as you see necessary. Pray and dedicate your time to the Lord and ask Him to guide you in crafting your own routine/schedule.

In addition, there are many days when all I accomplish is getting the kids dressed and fed. I have to let other things slide and just keep food on the table. If everyone is happy (their cups filled with love), even if the house is a mess, than I can feel it has been a productive day. There is always beauty to find in the mundane! You are a virtuous woman when you take delight in worshiping your Creator through your work.

If you have any questions on our schedule, please feel free to ask. I’d also love to hear your scheduling tips!

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Written by monthly contributor, Natalie Didlake.

Oh, how I love to organize! How about you?

Whether you love it or dread it, we all have to do it. Which means we all have to decide what to organize, when to organize it, and what to let go. Which means we all need a grid for thinking about how and why to work towards order in our homes!

The Hyper-Organized Homemaker

Some of us are perpetual organizers. This would be me. These people swoon over label-makers, calendar apps, and laminators…all in hopes that we can pull our lives perfectly together. Then, we promise ourselves, we will begin the real stuff of living.

The Mellow Mommy

Others (not me) squeeze a little organizing and prioritizing in on the back end. A little here, a little there. These people like lots of social time, and they are always having haphazard adventures. These people don’t really have much of a plan, because their plan is to wing it! These people figure “it will get done somehow.” Sometimes.  Sometimes not.

A Grid

Organized or not, how do any of us know when to work hard toward order, and when to let it go or save it for later? When do we push forward on a schedule, and when do we relax, or pause to meet the needs of the moment? What is the proper grid?

Our perfect example is, of course, Jesus. We don’t have a copy of his day planner. But in the gospels, we have sketches of the way he made organizational decisions.

You can read through the gospels to find lots of examples, but I want to share the one that has been most valuable to me, a little nugget of a story, from Luke 4:

Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them, ‘I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.’

Let’s extract some working principles. (This example deals specifically with organizing time, but the underlying principle can apply to all any organizational decision.)

Jesus Flexed

Even though the day was nearly over, Jesus flexed in his time. He gave personal time and attention to all the people who came to him with legitimate needs. He followed through with “every one of them.”

We need to flex. Order is not order for its own sake. Order exists to make life more livable and lovely, for the sake of people. Yes, all you organizational junkies (you know who you are!)…people!

People are precious. They are the only reason we should work toward order. Your laminator and label-maker should never take over your time…they should be used to serve people! Which means on occasion, you won’t have time to make labels! Instead, you will be flexing beyond your schedules and systems, to meet the more important, less schedulable needs of the people in your life.

(If you have an organizational obsession like me, also see Mark 6:30-35, where a tired Jesus cuts off his get-away time, when he sees a crowd chasing him down and feels overwhelming compassion for them!)

Jesus Fixed a Limit

Let’s look quickly at the rest of that passage from Luke 4, for an example of Jesus making order/organization a first priority:

The people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them, but he said to them…

The next day, the people came after him again. They wanted him to stay and keep ministering to them, but he didn’t. He knew he had reached a fixed point where he needed to press on in accordance with his schedule and system, leaving the people behind. Rightly, organization took priority.

We all understand and use this principle in obvious ways. Your husband wouldn’t stay home from work because the kids want him to read stories all day! It wouldn’t be in accordance with his purpose, the purpose of loving the family by working to earning money.

Likewise, a mother who just hangs around, hyper-available to anyone and everyone, will probably not meet the needs of her family. Flexibility doesn’t mean you can’t also maintain an orderly, vision-driven, peaceful, well-kept home! But how do we choose between flexing and fixing a limit?

Jesus Purpose, Our Purpose: Love

The problem is that most of us do not have a good understanding of the root principle at work, so we can’t apply it properly in more complicated situations. We end up making our calls about organization haphazardly, or even worse, according to our feelings. Unfortunately, that’s the grid many of us moms oftentimes use, isn’t it?

We do not have a clearly defined purpose for our organization.

But Jesus’ decision was not haphazard. He didn’t aimlessly allow his time to be taken up for a little while, later being forced by boredom or exhaustion to randomly draw the line. He had a clear explanation for the people:

‘I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.’

Jesus’ grid for organizational decision-making is described last: it was his purpose. And his purpose was love.  He flexed in order to show love through an extended time of healing and teaching, but later fixed some boundaries & moved on with his plan, in order to love those in other towns as well. Love can mean either flexing or fixing limits in our use of organization.

How simple! How easily and beautifully applied! What a resource we have in Jesus we have to draw upon, as we order our homes.

But really, ladies…only if you truly get it in your heart that God, the Great Organizer, in his mysterious way, has both flexed and fixed his standard. For you.

In his love, he planned and organized for you… “[choosing] us in him before the foundation of the world.” (Eph 1:4)

In his love, he flexed for you, left his throne, “made himself nothing…humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:7)

Some Examples of Flexing in Your Organization:

• Training children to love and share, rather than bicker, is more important than a nice sock drawer.

• Dinner is more important than having folders, sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders in your computer files.

• A child who seems to be grumpy or sad may need affection and additional attention. Laundry, however, does not become grumpy or sad when not folded.

Some Examples of Fixing a Limit:

• It is loving for a mother to stop for small things like peeling stickers off a page. It is unloving, however, for a mother to allow children to interrupt anyone, anytime, at will.

• It is great to be a mother who serves. True service to your children, however, may mean that you require your children to pick up after themselves (training them as a service to God, and preparing them for life).

What can you change about your organizational habits to better reflect Jesus, the Lord of Order?

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Genesis chapter 1 begins with a beautiful picture of the creation of the world. We see our God as a God of order. He fashioned this world in six days, with structure, order and purposeful preparation. He did not create the lights for day and night (day 4) without first separating light and darkness (day 1). Fish and birds were carefully put into place (day 5) only after the sea and sky were designed (day 2). And land animals were only created (day 6) after a fertile earth was established (day 3).

There was order with each passing day. And there was no rush either. He could have easily fashioned everything in the blink of an eye. And yet He spread out his plan into tangible, daily steps. He thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Every aspect was good in His eyes. And there was intentional restful intervals. We see evening and morning passing before the next day of work begins. We see a separation of the seventh day of creation as an designated day of rest.

As we are created in His very image, I believe God has designed us to be creatures of order. God worked in an ordered, simple way, and we are commissioned to follow in this example. If we keep this vision in the foremost of our thinking, that God fashioned you to be orderly in your homemaking and lifestyle, than this goal will be a rock to stand upon. If the pursuit of order is based solely because of our own desires or comparing ourselves with others, they will have no lasting foundation and our desires, goals, and aim will quickly flutter away. We need to do it for the Lord and there it will be blessed.

Is clutter and disorder in our lives a good representation of Jesus Christ? Chaos in our lives may just be a sign or clue that our relationship with Christ is probably askew. If there is disorder, stress, and clutter, we may just want to step back and evaluate our hearts. Am I submitting to your design for order, God? Or is ME on the throne in my home and I cannot let go. Make sure Jesus is the Lord of your home, submit to His design, and He will guide you each step of the way.

Order requires planning. Do you have a specific time designated to plan? Meal planning, housecleaning planning, etc. God gave each tree, plant, vegetable, animal, and mankind a specific purpose. In a similar fashion, everything in our home and life should have a specific intentional purpose. If it doesn’t have a fruitful purpose, that it needs to be removed from our lives. Remember planning is a time saver. It prevents chaos. You might consider adopting the idea of taking a weekly planning retreat, which has provided me with this focused time to plan and prepare for the upcoming week.

Dear sisters, as we begin a new year, let us acknowledge our need for the Savior to enable us to be women of order, women whose heart’s desires flow from the beautiful design we have been fashioned to represent to this day and age. Thankfully His grace is amazing and will never fail us. There is no condemnation but grace and mercy to help pick us up every time we stumble and fall.

“Let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith…” (Hebrews 12:1, 2)

Take Action:

1. Evaluate your heart: Is my heart in submission to the Lord Jesus? Is my relationship with the Lord first in my life? Am I cultivating specific times to spend with Him at His feet?
2. Schedule in intentional periods of rest this year. Are there margins in your life? Ideas: schedule in your vacations now, schedule weekly planning retreats, develop specific steps for preserving Sunday as your day of rest.
3. What one thing do I need to let go of this year that is hindering my relationship with the Lord and order in my life? This may be facebook or some other form of technology, a draining relationship, an regular outside event you attend, a specific toy or gadget in your home.

For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. (1 Cor. 14:33)

Do you desire to make your home a sweet and refreshing place for your family? Do you want inspiration for simple home decor ideas that you could do with basic supplies around your house?

I am blessed to welcome my sweet sister, Christa, to our panel of monthly contributing writers. She will be contributing ideas on simple and seasonal home decor for the everyday homemaker that desires to make her home a place of comfort, rest, and refreshment for her family. Christa has been gifted in the area of creativity and has always filled my family’s home with fresh elegance. She has happily agreed to inspire you with some simple home decor tips and ideas. Christa is a photographer, clothing designer, and blogger. Follow her blog at Empowered Traditionalist, where she shares elegant modest fashion tips.