Simplified Organization Audio Blog: quick actions, organized attitudes

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Motivation to Clean You need to know the point of your work. The goal of housekeeping is to be ready for use. The end goal of housekeeping is actually not to have a clean house. The clean house is itself a tool, not an end. A house being used for living, working, loving, serving is fulfilling its end. Keeping up with the maintenance is useful because it helps us live, work, love, and serve more effectively, not because the house’s natural, normal state is supposed to be some sort of static, sterile, pristine clean. When we clean house as though the point is to arrive at an end state of Clean, then we’re bound to be frustrated and discouraged because clean never lasts. Part of that is due to the Fall and the imperfection of the world; however, part of that is due to simple use. Follow the bibliographic trail Read the original post here: Clean House with the End in Mind Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Welcome to The Simply Convivial Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Wednesdays, this podcast brings you short & meaty focus sessions to help you keep your head in the game as a classical homeschool mom. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Seven Laws of Teaching Your Own Law 9: The Law of the Language Gregory speaks in this chapter of language as a vehicle of instruction, an instrument of learning, and a storehouse of knowledge. Briefly, he means that through common language we communicate experience, by speaking we appropriate what we perceive, that without adequate words we cannot think through ideas clearly, and that what we know we will name. Beware, he warns, words with multiple meanings or homophones — children easily pick up confused meanings, unaware that their perception is inaccurate. It is what the student interprets in his mind, not what the teacher intends, that matters: Not what the speaker expresses from his own mind, but what the hearer understands and reproduces in his mind, measures the communicating power of the language used. Read the original post: Seven Laws of Teaching Your Own: Law of the Language Listen: Resources: Simple Sanity Saver: Audit Your Year This is particularly helpful at the end of a school year, but you can also adjust it for the end of each term to evaluate progress and determine the best adjustments to make. Auditing your year or your term is about noticing the progress that has been made. In the midst of the day-to-day, we often don’t see the trends, because they’re small changes that can be almost imperceptible at times. Taking a little time out now and then to assess each child’s progress in the important areas and interests outside of our school plan helps us see the big picture and realize that there is so much learning happening all the time. It’s not limited to progress in the number of math lessons or history chapters. And, if you notice an essential area they’re particularly resistant to, looking at the overall arch of their progress and their interests might give you insight into how to address the resistance for that particular child. Spread the word! Leaving a review on iTunes will help other homeschooling moms discover this podcast!  

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Motivation to Clean How strict should our standards for cleanliness be? Leila then defines “reasonably clean” as “one that has order, but doesn’t take all day to get there, and one we can whip into shape if we need to, as opposed to booming and busting.” So “reasonably clean” is a personal, individual balance between not shirking one’s work, giving a good effort, and not being anxious or spending too much time on it (ha!). In other words, absolutely spotless is not our goal. Our goal is to apply ourselves evenly across our domain, not booming and busting (something I am always doing!) and not being uptight in one area while ignoring something equally important like meals or clean clothes or not-disgusting bathrooms. Leila’s series zeroes in on the basics and gives some great tips for making it happen and — most importantly — keeping it happening. Read the original post here: Securing a Resonably Clean House, an Introduction Download the free time budget template to become master of your time. Follow the bibliographic trail Examine your life and create routines and habits that work. Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Welcome to The Simply Convivial Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Wednesdays, this podcast brings you short & meaty focus sessions to help you keep your head in the game as a classical homeschool mom. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Seven Laws of Teaching Your Own Law 2: The learner must attend with interest to the material to be learned. A learner – which is what our children are supposed to be – cannot be passive. To become a learner, a child must have two things: interest and attention. Unless and until the child becomes invested with interest and attention to the lesson, the teacher teaches but in vain. One may as well talk to the deaf or to the dead as attempt to teach a child who is wholly inattentive. So, what is attention, exactly? Gregory develops three types of attention, one progressing to the other naturally, and it is leading his students through the progression, the development, of attention, that is the teacher’s duty Read the original post: Seven Laws of Teaching Your Own: Law of the Learner Listen: Resources: Simple Sanity Saver: Audit Your Situation To begin your own homeschool audit, look at your situation. You can’t make an ideal homeschool plan in a vacuum, ignoring your own particular needs and circumstances. This section asks you to score your situation to assess the drains on your energy. The scores are totally arbitrary, but give you a grid by which to evaluate why your days might be feeling so hard – maybe they feel so hard because they are so hard! Which sections give you the highest points – is there something you can do there to lower your score? Are there ways you can compensate for a high score in one area by lessening your responsibilities in another? One question in this section asks you to add points if you have no homeschooling friends you talk to weekly. I think we underestimate what a help it is to have friends to chat with, friends with whom to share the load, even if only the mental load and not the daily work of educating our kids. Local friends who know you and your family are best, and it is worth rearranging life to foster those friendships. If that’s not possible, finding likeminded women online is the next best option – but we all need friends to share the journey with and talk shop. Seek out friendships and cut something else out rather than them when time feels tight. Spread the word! Leaving a review on iTunes will help other homeschooling moms discover this podcast!

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Motivation to Clean Housework seemed like a stupid waste of time. And I hated wastes of time and stupidity, so I triply hated housework. I was torn between wanting to be a good, competent homemaker and thinking that the state of my bedroom or the kitchen just wasn’t a big deal. I could get meals on the table, keep things stocked, and complete a project just fine. But the day-in day-out routine tasks were a drag. I’m not going to say that I love those routines now or that I totally rock them, because I don’t. But I am learning to love them. And it all started back then, when my third born was just a baby, and I was reading novels. Read the original post here: What a Novel Taught Me about Housework Download the free time budget template to become master of your time. Follow the bibliographic trail Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Welcome to The Simply Convivial Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Wednesdays, this podcast brings you short & meaty focus sessions to help you keep your head in the game as a classical homeschool mom. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 2: Seven Laws of Teaching Your Own Law 1: The teacher must know that which he would teach. A teacher who knows what he is talking about, who has internalized that which he would communicate, is free; he is not slave to a textbook or curriculum. It is from feeling and living the truth that he knows that enthusiasm spills over to his students. It is the excitement of felt interest that sparks all his powers of communication. This law, stating that teachers must know – really know – what they are teaching, might discourage us and make homeschooling seem foolish and futile. However, it doesn’t have to. You delegate when homeschooling as you would if you sent your child to school. If your child went to school, you would still hold him accountable to completing his work well, right? That is your primary job in homeschooling, as well, not standing in front of the whiteboard as the fount of all knowledge. Indeed, the best application of this law for us is in our choice of books and materials. This law is the reason living books are essential. The authors your child reads are his teachers, so ensuring they are clear, passionate, knowledgable teachers is vital. Read the original post: Seven Laws of Teaching Your Own: The Law of the Teacher Listen: Resources: Simple Sanity Saver: A Homeschool-Specific Brain Dump What is a homeschool audit? In its simplest form, it is a brain dump all about our own particular homeschool. It’s a way to think through all the components – there are probably more than you realize! – and see what might be the triggers tripping us up. It’s a way to evaluate our situations and see our strengths and our progress instead of simply feeling our defeats. It’s a way of looking at any defeats squarely and deciding what to do about them – and the thing to do might simply be to stop expecting ourselves to be perfect and always on top of every detail. A homeschool brain dump – an audit – is a way to work through the mess of our emotional or even hormonal responses and think more straightforwardly and honestly and bravely about what’s actually working and what’s not. Be brave. Do a homeschool audit. You might be surprised at the results. Spread the word! Leaving a review on iTunes will help other homeschooling moms discover this podcast!

We need a reason to clean. I enjoy organizing. I hate cleaning. I dislike laundry. I sigh at dishes to be done. I delegate dishwasher duties to children because I feel such things are beneath me. I feel imposed upon by the housework, but I love the house and the family. However, love of the home and hatred of cleaning the home can’t coexist. The two are inconsistent. I spent a considerable amount of time believing that housekeeping, especially repetitive chores, does not really matter, and had to take a somewhat long and painful route to realize that it does. To make a home, we have to keep a house. Find out more at http://www.simplifiedorganization.com/audio

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 1: Interval Planning Increase your capabilities with interval planning. The problem with much of the productivity and planning advice out there is that it begins with a vision for a 5-year outcome. When we as mothers at home try to do that, we are rather at a loss. We might not even know how many children we’ll have in 5 years. If your oldest is 5, you’re not likely to accurately foresee what it’s like to have a 10 year old – and the same is true if your oldest is 10 and you’re trying to predict 15. We have to put one foot in front of the other where we are, and not get too wrapped up in predictions and visions. We should have a general direction, but we don’t know how that will play out. Rather than try to shoot for some 5-year outcome, we should have a general purpose and direction (this comes by knowing your vocations) and then make a short-term plan. Make a plan that is only 6-12 weeks in breadth. We can work toward ends in a chunk that small. The ends might not be as exciting as a grand 5-year vision, but that’s because it’s actually realistic – looking at that shorter amount of time allows you to make smart and meaningful choices about what’s best to do next. We can grow and develop and mature and become better at fulfilling our duties, but it will take time and effort. Read the original post here: Interval Planning for Growth Download the free interval planning guide. Follow the bibliographic trail These are the books that inspired me to plan in short bursts rather than with long-term goal setting. Do more, while stressing less. Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Welcome to The Simply Convivial Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Wednesdays, this podcast brings you short & meaty focus sessions to help you keep your head in the game as a classical homeschool mom. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! repetitio mater memoriae, or Repetition Season 1: Education is For Life This Latin motto, which apparently is used within the Latin classroom primarily and not embraced as a defining motto like the others so far, means Repetition is the mother of memory. This is supposed to spur you on to chant those declensions, but I think the truth contained therein should spur us on in much more than language acquisition. What adjectives do you associate with repetition? Dullness, boredom, monotony. What about training, practice, discipline, rehearsal. Pianists practice the same scales and pieces over and over daily. Actors rehearse their scenes over and over. Athletes practice the same drills over and over daily. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. In the same way, we must repent, pray, read our Bible, speak kindly, admonish, rejoice, give thanks daily, even multiple times daily. We must do so to become good at them, to become fit and trained in holiness, to imitate and glorify our Father. Read the original post: The Best Teacher, repetitio mater memoriae Listen: Resources: * Dr. Perrin’s lecture “Eight Essential Principles of Classical Education * Rejoicing in Repetition by Mystie Winckler * Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton * Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris Simple Sanity Saver: Brain Dump When does the brilliant idea strike? When do you remember you’re desperately low on milk? It’s rarely when you’re actually sitting down, pen in hand, to make a relevant list. But if you don’t write it down right away, it’s gone. Hence, the need for ubiquitous capture. Ubiquitous capture is a term from David Allen’s Getting Things Done that basically means you should always have a way to write down, right away, any information you need to have rather than assuming you’ll remember it or remember to write it down later. * If an event or plan is mentioned, put it on the calendar right then. * If I pull out the last bag of flour, add it to the grocery list immediately. * If I say I’ll bring something to someplace, make that note. * If I realize I need to do this or that, get it into Remember the Milk right away. My personal ability to keep any information or reminders in my head has been practically nil the last few years, so I’ll be following the advice in Getting Things Done: These collection tools should become part of your lifestyle. Keep them close by so no matter where you are you can collect a potentially valuable thought — think of them as being as indispensable as your toothbrush or your driver’s license or your glasses. Of course, the point isn’t only to write the things down. They have to be processed, also.

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 1: Interval Planning Test out interval planning for Christmas preparations. I’m a proponent of making short-term plans and goals – ones that can be tracked and kept top-of-mind easily. I call it ‘interval planning’ because I think it’s like interval training: Go all out for a short amount of time, then take a rest period, and you’ll progress more than if you just slog through at a consistent but slower rate. The holidays provide a perfect example of and opportunity for an interval plan. Christmas is six weeks out, and then there’s a week afterward that is perfect for taking a break week. Then, if you find intervals work for you, you can move into the new year with a new strategy. Read the original post here: An Interval Plan for the Holidays I received this email from a Simplified Organization member last week: Between your class and Pam’s Plan Your Year, I have really been able to change myself and my thinking! I’m MUCH more productive. I love interval planning. I love knowing what my focus is for that interval. It truly does free up my brain!! Try it out for yourself! Download the free interval planning guide. Follow the bibliographic trail These are the books that inspired me to plan in short bursts rather than with long-term goal setting. Move forward with confidence. Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Welcome to The Simply Convivial Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Wednesdays, this podcast brings you short & meaty focus sessions to help you keep your head in the game as a classical homeschool mom. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! cum dignitate otium, or Sabbath Season 1: Education is For Life So, I discovered that otium was the Latin word for leisure, and although I have not encountered it in education talks, it seems to have been the word used by philosophers to mean precisely what Pieper in Leisure, the Basis of Culture was trying to convey: that to truly cultivate arts – including those of reading, thinking, and discussing – we must have a space apart from the cares of marketing, buying, and selling. Otium – leisure – can mean idle amusement. Just as our word leisure can be used to talk about watching tv at night, so otium could carry similar connotations of mere unproductiveness. The phrase otium cum dignitas was a phrase used to distinguish the kind of leisure being discussed. It is a leisure that is with dignity, not a leisure of sloth or indolence. That is, it is a leisure characterized by worthiness, appropriateness, propriety, nobility, dignity, and self-respect. In the classical world, otium cum dignities meant one had time apart from an income-earning job to read, think, discuss, and participate in politics. Such a state was either a retirement earned after a lifetime of occupation or came as a result of inheritance. Cicero defines otium as a state of security and peace, of tranquility of mind, which is cultivated when one is not seeking profit and personal gain, but rather contemplating and having a mind at ease. In the medieval period, this word otium came to be used primarily to indicate peace of mind – a leisure that is internal more than an external circumstance. Petrarch, writing in the 13th century, says that otium is ideally spent on nature appreciation, serious research, meditation, contemplation, writing, and friendship. So in this phrase we have wrapped up both the concept of a space set apart from economic considerations or “getting ahead” and also the concept that leisure is internal, a way of being. I think we need both meanings in our lives. Read the original post: Living from Rest – cum dignitate otium Listen: Resources: * Dr. Perrin’s lecture “Eight Essential Principles of Classical Education * Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Joseph Pieper * Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman * Crazy Busy by Kevin DeYoung * Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie Simple Sanity Saver: Brain Dump So, after you’ve completed your first, thorough brain dump and started processing it, what’s next? Are you done? Nope. Though you’re done with a thorough brain dump, at least until life throws you into the deep end again, you’re not done writing things down. Once everything is out of your head and on paper, the trick is to just write things down, right away so they never accumulate and clutter up your head again. I call it Ubiquitous Capture. It’s a habit that pays dividends the more you practice it. Ubiquitous means something that is everywhere – you’re never without it. Capture refers to jotting down your thoughts before they’ve escaped you. So, to practice ubiquitous capture is to write it all down,

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 1: Interval Planning Stay focused on what matters. Leverage the interval training technique in your personal life by setting up your calendar in intervals and planning goals accordingly. Planning and executing in short-term bursts is a great way to keep laser focus and high energy. By always keeping short deadlines and tackling manageable chunks, you can avoid overwhelm and procrastination. As you make your plan, look at your calendar and the season and be realistic. It’s really easy to leave out projects you’re committed to because you aren’t counting them as projects. Don’t “assume” projects – they all have to be on the plan. Even kids’ birthdays have to be accounted for (or anything that requires gift buying), at least on the tasks list if not the project list. If it must happen this interval, then it must be on your list. Read the original post here: Interval Planning: Keeping Laser Focus Download the free interval planning guide. Follow the bibliographic trail These are the books that inspired me to plan in short bursts rather than with long-term goal setting. Build the habits of productivity needed to stay focused at home. Have questions about topic? Let’s talk in the comments!

Welcome to The Simply Convivial Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Wednesdays, this podcast brings you short & meaty focus sessions to help you keep your head in the game as a classical homeschool mom. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! esse quam videri, or Virtue Season 1: Education is For Life Would we rather look good than be good, than do what is right? What if we prioritized being and doing good over looking good? And I’m not talking about makeup. It is simpler and more immediately rewarding to have people think we are good than to expend the effort and rise to the challenge of really pursuing virtue, regardless of people’s opinion of us. At the park with our children, is it more important to us that we appear like good moms or that we actually do what our children need us to do, regardless of what the other park moms think? When having people over, do we care more about making it seem like we have our act together or actually have our act together enough to prioritize keeping in fellowship with our children over conquering the dust, fingerprints, and crumbs, if we have to choose. Being and doing good does not always give us the payoff of looking good, actually. If we must choose, which will we choose? Being or seeming? Yet, actually having these virtues is hard work. Seeming to have them is easier than actually having them. Seeming to have them will make us more popular than actually having them, than actually obeying God’s commands. To be virtuous, rather than simply seem so, will require diligence and perseverance in the midst of adversity. Virtue isn’t a magic trait that smooths paths and makes life soft and easy. Rather, the opposite is more true. Virtue is forged in the furnace of trial and temptation. You can’t have courage without fear. You can’t have patience without trial. You can’t have self-control without warring desires. Virtue is a fruit God grows in us through adversity. Read the original post: Seeking or Seeming – Virtue Listen: Resources: * Dr. Perrin’s lecture “Eight Essential Principles of Classical Education * Virtue is the Goal of Education * Wisdom leading to virtue is the only liberal art Simple Sanity Saver: Brain Dump So you have a thorough brain dump. You have deleted what you can. Now you have a collection of things that you think maybe you should trash and maybe you should save. How do you make that call? Start a fresh list. Make two columns. One column is Discuss and the other is SomedayMaybe. As you flip through your brain spillage, move onto the clean list in the SomedayMaybe column projects, goals, hopes, etc that you can’t do now, but you’d like to do in the future. Once they’re on the new list, cross them out of your brain dump notebook so you don’t need to filter them visually again when you go through for the important things. If you have items in your brain dump that you can’t decide about, if you aren’t sure if it’s an unrealistic expectation or just a hard truth. If you aren’t sure sure if you should be doing this or concerned about that, add it to the Discuss column and cross it off the brain dump. Those issues that make it to the discuss column are now your agenda items. One by one over time or in a big heart-to-heart session,

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 1: Interval Planning You need a break. Breaking up your year into intervals is a simple way to sharpen your focus and stay engaged with projects and the things that need to be done to keep life at home rolling along. Instead of looking ahead over an entire year and making goals, try looking only at the next six weeks. What has to happen in the next six weeks? That’s a lot more clear usually. The truth is, you don’t know what your life will be like in another 12 months, or even 6. Especially if you are still in the phase where your family is young and growing, you might not know if you’ll be pregnant, what the toddler’s nap routine will be like, and a million other variables. Instead of trying to control the details and plan out your life for an entire year (or more!), look at the next 6 weeks and determine what is most important in the phase that you are actually in right now rather than where you hope to be in the future. Faithfulness happens in the now, not the future, and God works with us where we are, not where we should be or want to be. So embrace the now and work with it. Live it. And know that you’ll be able to handle the unpredictability of life by applying faithfulness and obedience as you go along. Read the original post here: Interval Planning: Don’t Skip the Rest Period Download the free interval planning guide Follow the bibliographic trail These are the books that inspired me to plan in short bursts rather than with long-term goal setting. Learn a complete system for keeping your plates spinning. Have questions about interval planning? Let’s talk in the comments!

Welcome to The Simplified Organization Audio Blog! Releasing weekly on Mondays, this podcast gives you short and punchy action items and mindset resets. Check out the podcast page here and please leave a review. Thanks! Season 1: Interval Planning Make interval plans work for you. Use the theory behind interval training to maximize your planning effectiveness. Just as runners train and gain strength and endurance by running in short, intense bursts and then going at a slower pace for awhile, so we can follow the same pattern in our day-to-day lives. Breaking up your year into intervals, with rest periods in between, is a great way to keep your head wrapped around what you have to do and also keep up your energy as you do them. Planning for a space of time that is long enough to complete a small project or at least accomplish milestones in a large project helps you retain focus and the benefits of deadlines and end-of-season pushes that usually only happen at the end of school years, fiscal years, or calendar years. You never get to slump into the “I have plenty of time” mentality as is so easy come February for those annual goals. Deadlines motivate, and intervals are a way to consistently bring deadlines to bear, increasing our self-discipline and effectiveness in the things that matter to us. Read the original post here: Making an interval plan work for you Download the free interval planning guide Follow the bibliographic trail These are the books that inspired me to plan in short bursts rather than with long-term goal setting. Find clear, step-by-step help for creating goals, plans, and routines. Have questions about interval planning? Let’s talk in the comments!