Steady Mom

if your routine doesn't bring you joy, toss it

I wrote about the importance of routine in my first book, Steady Days. These days I prefer the word rhythm to routine, but at the time I'd never heard of it. I believed, and still do, that well-chosen routines bring a significent measure of peace to home life.

But only if the routine has life behind it. If you create your schedule from a place of trying to "do it all" or from fear of not "doing it all," that same schedule will bring you nothing but misery.

At the time I wrote Steady Days, I desperately needed routines to manage life well with a 4, 3, and 2-year-old. Otherwise chaos would rule the day, and extra mama tears would flow. These days, when my youngest child is almost 7 (HOW did that happen?!), I rely much more on rhythm instead.

Routines are great, but only if they bring joy to your home. Without life behind them, they might lead you to an incredible level of productivity, but who cares?

So make your plans, but leave plenty of room for flexibility. Follow the life, not the laws you've made for yourself.

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for when you face setbacks (or the REAL reason I didn't blog last week)

Living a life of purpose is not without effort and challenges. Steve and I call this process "going to the next level."

It goes like this: You have a dream for yourself and/or your family--to move to the country, to homeschool, to change jobs, to write books, whatever--and you take a step toward it.

Then resistance slams you in the face.

I've faced a few challenges of my own since Mindset for Moms launched:

- Steve has traveled out of the country twice in this one month for his work
- the Mindset website crashed and was down on important traffic days; getting it back up required a lot of extra work and stress, too
- I hurt my wrist (ironically, I hurt it through sending too many emails in one day to those of you who spread the word about the book, ha. So I couldn't write any blog posts last week!)
- I had a few sleepless nights due to all of the above

When some people face setbacks, they take that as a sign that they aren't meant to do or have the things they hoped for. They stop moving forward.

But that's simply not true.

It's comforting to realize that setbacks are actually part of the process of living your life's purpose. When they show up, we can get excited and press on, knowing that we're that much closer to breaking through to the life of our dreams.

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flexibility is the key

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Flexibility is the key to enjoying life with young children.

A recent excursion on Sunday reminded me of this fact. I told the kids we were headed to a special location for a hike. Six acres of trails and bird habitats, the website said.

I had my mental expectations and they involved this:

But there was also this:

Yes, that's right. Golden arches and the interstate, too. And that's not all:

Random skeleton of a white-tailed deer in the middle of the path! Which pretty much cemented my growing feeling that it was time to head home.

Not sure if they included the highway as part of the six acres--because in 20 minutes we had walked every trail possible.

Not what I was expecting--a good chance to remind the kids about the importance of flexibility. Deal with what comes, enjoy what you can, then find a way to regroup and recharge.

Which, in my experience, is pretty good advice for mamas every day of the week.

My definition of recharging on Sunday:

making creamy asparagus soup--recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks

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teaching your kids to clean

Today I'm sharing over on Simple Homeschool about how to get your young kids involved in cleaning tasks at home.

From my post:

"A few weeks ago I confessed that the once-a-month cleaning system I had used for a while was no longer working for me. I mentioned that I wanted to find and implement a method that would allow my children (ages six, seven, & eight) to help with more in-depth chores.

Before I share the exact how-to's of our new system, let's discuss some good criteria for developing a plan to get your young kids involved in home care.

I wanted the cleaning strategy I came up with to adhere to the following four ideas."

Head here to read the rest!