You Think I Would Have Learned By Now

We didn't have summer school during all of July.  It started when Brian's grandpa passed away, and I started cleaning my house like a mad woman to be prepared for out of town visitors.  While I cleaned, the kids played and made messes, so I would clean upstairs while they played downstairs, then the next day I would work downstairs while they messed up their rooms, and it went back and forth until I caught up to their madness.  Yes, I did have the kids help me for some of it, and they aren't exactly the tornadoes I make them out to be, but you have to admit that kids are very good at making messes.

Then came packing for the Jacks Family Reunion.  The funeral was on Saturday, and we were leaving for the reunion Tuesday morning.  Then came the reunion itself (a whole week!) then recovering from the reunion while keeping up with the normal housework while the "tornadoes" were still running around.  Yesterday I just barely put away the suitcase we used for Becca .  It had been sitting on the floor of her room, open and halfway full, this whole time.

Throughout the past two weeks, sometimes this little voice in the back of my mind would say, "We should start summer school again," but then I would think, "As soon as I have things under control, we will."  I really felt discouraged this last weekend, because the kids and I made sure that our bedrooms and the family room and kitchen were clean before we went swimming at my parents' house each day, but I still came downstairs on Saturday morning to what I felt was an absolute disaster area.  I said to Brian, "If we cleaned each morning, then spent the entire day away from the house, how on earth did it get so messy?!?  It's so frustrating!"  That's still a mystery I'm trying to figure out.  I know part of it is that even though I was doing a good job of washing the laundry, I wasn't folding and putting clothes away, and that made for baskets of clean laundry in random places around the house.  Then Saturday was pretty jam packed with a long run in the morning, then making a quadruple batch of dirt cake for Alyssa's birthday party and not cleaning up after myself, then heading to run errands and such and have the birthday party, then coming home and collapsing in bed.  So maybe it was a bunch of little messes and then running out the door before cleaning them that made things get out of control.  I really do wish we had a robotic maid or something, because keeping the house clean is such a pain!

So here's the lesson I learned...AGAIN!  I know I keep blogging about this, and everyone's probably tired of hearing it, but I'm hoping that if I keep writing it down, then maybe it will finally stick in my head.  When we have summer school and follow our routine, the house stays clean, I spend quality time with the kids, and we finish with plenty of time left over to just have fun.  Why do I keep having to learn this lesson over and over again?  I think it's something that I just need to drill into my brain before school starts. I also think that if a lot of people knew about this cycle ( I am now going to call it the Cycle of Productivity) that they wouldn't be so intimidated by homeschooling.  I've had a lot of people tell me that they would love to homeschool, but they knew they couldn't because they had such a hard time keeping up with just the housework, let alone throwing teaching their children into the mix.  I think if more people knew that if they followed the routine, not only would their kids get a quality education by someone who loved them, but the household chores, for the most part, would just fall into place.

And it's not like we're skipping school for frivolous things.  It's not like I'm saying, "Oh, let's not have school this morning.  I'd really like to read my book."  Or make crafts.  Or watch t.v.  What I keep telling myself is:  If we just take the morning off from school, then I can get things put away.  Or catch up on the laundry.  Or scrub the kitchen.  In reality, it's when we have school that I seem to have more time to get those things done anyway.  It's like that object lesson we get a million times at church.  You put the rocks in the jar, then the sand, then the water...and it all fits!  It really does!  Maybe that's why we have that lesson so often - it's true!  And I need to stop learning it the hard way.

So here are my goals:

1.  Keep the school room clean, so that even if we get behind on the house, we can just shut the school room door and have a clean place to work.  The sub-goal here is to bring down some crafting supplies for the kids, like glue and paper and such, and having them do their fun projects downstairs, so we don't have paper clippings and broken crayons strewn about their desks.

2. Have school every weekday, no matter what chores need to be done.  Every day!  No talking myself out of it!

3. Make sure things are under control during the weekend.  I have the tendency to not do any cleaning during the weekends.  Sometimes it's because I want to relax, and sometimes it's like this last weekend where we were running around too much to clean up after ourselves.  That should not be happening.  Usually it would just put us behind five minutes or so if we would just stop and clean up our mess before running out the door.

There.  Rant over.  I promise I'll stop talking about this.  And just to let you know, please don't think my house is sparkling clean.  It's not, but it is under control, which is nice.