Making your routines into habits for life

Getting Organized:
In your home and homeschool

Dear Friends,
As we are entering the last weekend of this year, I am excitedly looking forward to 2018. This year has not been an easy year for my family. We have had some trials that tested us. Our faith was strengthened. We have seen healing and growth in our family.

The consistent thing for my family has been our daily routines. On the hardest days, we still accomplished the basics. Some of you have asked me how we continued in the face of trials. We have practiced our routines for many years, and doing them has become a habit.

When I asked you this week about your most difficult routine of the day, I had the most responses for the Before Bed Routine. You have many reasons for your difficulties with your Before Bed Routine. Over the course of the next two weeks, I want you to focus on your Before Bed Routine. Start it right after dinner, and do all of it except for washing your face, brushing your teeth, and going to bed.

If you need a reminder of the six steps, here they are:

1)      Shine your sink.
2)      Check the calendar. (I also check the weather.)
3)      Lay out your clothes.
4)      Put things at the Launch Pad.
5)      Wash your face and brush your teeth.
6)      Go to bed at a decent hour. (You need 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night.)
Many of you have asked me about keeping the sink shiny after dinner when your children like to snack. Teach them to rinse their dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Generally, our dishwasher is run right after dinner, so someone has to empty it before bedtime for this to work. I will say that I can go to bed at 10:00 at night and wake up to dishes in the sink from the midnight snackers. I do not let this bother me. I just rinse them and move on with my morning. It’s usually only a few dishes, and it is not a sink full.

Your Before Bed Routine is important. It helps you get ready for the next day. It will help your family have more peace in the home.

As you get the hang of doing this routine, you can teach your children to do it by example. If you are asking them to lay out their clothes and not laying yours out, it is sending them a mixed message.

If you are staying up late at night and sleeping late in the morning, you are sending a mixed message to your children. To help them establish routines, they need to see you modeling them.

You will find lots of excuses to not do your Before Bed Routine, and I want you to fight those excuses for two weeks. You can do this.

Today’s Zone Mission is to put away anything that is left in your Living Room that does not belong.

Your Home Blessing for today is to empty the trash, sweep, and mop.

My menu plan for Friday is take out.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Please like & share:
This entry was posted in homeschool; organization and tagged , , , , , by Tami. Bookmark the permalink.

About Tami

Tami Fox is a homeschool mom of 6, who in age from 26 to 11. She and her husband have homeschooled for 17 years and have graduated three of their children from their homeschool. They are currently homeschooling 3 boys who are in grades 11, 9, and 6. They use hands-on learning and unit studies to ignite the fire of learning in their children. Tami is a homeschool author and conference speaker. You can contact her by email at Tami@TamiFox.com. Buy her book, Giving Your Children Wings at https://tamifox.net/giving-your-children-wings/.

Comments

Making your routines into habits for life — 2 Comments

  1. Hi Tami,
    Thank you for posting this. You are absolutely right, the bedtime routine is a big part of the problem. I have part of it, but that shiny sink often eludes me. So it’s back to the basics for me. I read this post the day it came out, but I keep coming back to it.

    Thanks for all you do!

    • Great job! Just keeping practicing this routine. One day you will find yourself shining your sink without really thinking about it.

      Have a wonderful day! Tami

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>