How I Organise My.......Housework

Welcome to Week 2 of my How I Organise My...... series.

This week I will be focusing on that old bugbear, the housework.

Let me say from the outset here, I am not a woman with a natural disposition to cleaning. The picture above is definately not my idea of a great way to spend an afternoon. LOL. Another admission I need to make is... we employ a cleaner! Shock, Horror, Bad Homemaker!! I know, but its a luxury I need. I have a lovely lady come in for 3 hours twice a month.

So what do I do in between her visits? Well at first I was doing the kitchen essentials (counters and floors etc) daily, the washing weekly and everything else when it got too bad and I couldn't deal with it. Gasp! I know...

However, since we've been homeschooling and I  am in the home more, I have been working towards developing a routine based around the "Do a little every day" premise. I figured that my personality was not bent towards "blitz" cleaning and as the lovely lady does a deep clean when she comes, my job is really  "maintenance" .

So I typed up a quick list divided into days (except Sunday because...purleese!). Then I put a few chores in each day that spread what I need done across the week. My rota looks like this;

OK, its very basic I know, but really that's what I need to do for our little home and our little family. I am sure I could do more and I know I'm spoiled in having a helper, but long may it last! lol.

What I have found so great about this is that along with a little general tidying of toys, loose papers, clothes, etc daily, I am whizzing through my daily chores and the house is soooo much neater/cleaner! I do not have a house hubby (although Superman will lend a hand if asked, I generally choose to just get on with it as I'm the homemaker) and although our daughter has one main job (folding wash cloths), she is only five so I'm not keen on overloading her with chores. So it's down to me (and my lovely cleaning lady of course!! heehee). With this new rota I am finding it pretty stress free.

Perhaps a rota like this might work for you? Perhaps you have a much better, more efficient way of managing your housework? Please share either way.

I'm off to hoover upstairs now. See it works. Smile

Thanks for reading and see you next week for How I Organise My...... Homeschool "Classroom".

This has been linked to HipHomeSchoolHop over at Hip HomeSchool Moms.

How I Organise My..... New Series

The idea for this blog started out as a "How I Organise my Homeschool" kind of thing. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that actually I am a person who thrives on, nay requires, being organised in all aspects of my life. So this little mini-series was born.

                                     HOW I ORGANISE MY...........

Over the next few weeks I will be covering topics such as;

- Planning
- Housework (Cooking /Cleaning, etc)
- Curriculum
- Homeschool Supplies
- Bambinas School/Artwork
- "Classroom" area
- Working from home

To start off with I think a quick disclaimer is in order. I am by no means the most organised, disciplined, SuperMum out there. This series is about what I have found that helps me in my constant desire to become more organised and thus more effective.

My hope is that in sharing my successes and failures, someone out there in blogland might find something that can be of use to them. Or at the very least help them avoid pitfalls!

So, today I will be focusing on my new love (don't tell Superman), and that is...drum roll please.....

My "hats" organiser. No not one of these...

                      One of these...

OK, so not terribly exciting but thanks to bloggers such as Danielle over at Domestic Serenity , who graciously shared the way she organises, I was inspired to invest in a 5-subject notebook. My one has tabs for each section where I can change the labels (this is really useful as the organiser develops and/or needs change). Currently I have divided it into;- Home-Education                - Household
- Blog                                    - Work 
I haven't thought of the fifth one yet. I call it my "hats" organiser because as a wife, mother, homeschooler, blogger, student, business owner, etc, I have many, many hats.

There is also a nifty pocket for loose sheets of paper and a ruler at the front. All for £2 from Asda (UK equivalent of Walmart - in fact owned by them). Result!

I really wanted a month to month calendar in mine so I printed a great one from Donna Young , I printed enough to take me to August 2013, and placed these in a plastic sleeve and stapled the sleeve to the front of my organiser.I like this because at the end of each month I can just change to a fresh sheet and write in what I need to remember for the month to come.

I then went through each section and made lists/notes on important things such as;

Home-Education; Subjects, Extra-curricular activities, Budgeting, Outgoings, Expenses, Field Trip ideas
Household; Monthly Bills, Meal Planning, Cleaning, Medicines, Vitamins & Supplements
Blog: Blog post ideas, Linky Party/Hop dates, Passwords, etc

It is still a work in progress and I'm adding to it as I see the need. I refer to my organiser a lot and everyone in the house knows its a "no-go zone" unless permission has been received.

Although I have only been using this organiser for the last month, I can already see the benefits in my daily life. I know where everything is. There is no more "Where did I put that list?" Superman knows where to put something he needs typed/sent etc. It gives me a place to put all my "hats" until I need one of them. It gives me a focus I didn't feel before. I realise now that I can be semi-organised in lots of different places and still feel generally disorganised. By putting everything in one place I am giving myself a jumping off point and a place to come back to.

I seriously encourage anyone reading this to try developing an organiser that fits your individual needs. There is no format, be creative and make it work for you.

I hope this has been helpful and that you will join me as this series develops.

Happy organising.

This is being linked to The Hip Homeschool Hop over at HipHomeschoolMoms. Hop on over.
 
QM

The Proof is in the......Planning?

I have a secret, do you want to know what it is?.....OK here goes.... I LOVE planning! There, it's out, I said it.
Sorry, are you disappointed? Not what you were expecting?
Well I do it's true. It think it's somethimg about the excitement of seeing something developed from idea to reality. From vision to a tangible outcome. So I guess I'm quite well suited to Home Education because I spend a good deal of my time planning and preparing. If you've found a way not to. Don't tell me. Heehee
Having decided to base our homeschooling around monthly themes, I promptly began planning. I started by deciding which subjects I was going to focus on. For us that meant core subjects of;
                          1) Literacy.      2) Numeracy.     3) Islamic Studies.    
I had originally included History & Geography on this list, but I quickly realised that for us a better fit is something I'm calling "Cultural Studies". More on that later. Alongside the 3 core subjects there's;
                         4) Science.       5) Project Work.    6) Arts & Crafts.
As Bambina is only 5, the content of each subject is a mixture of Reception (K5) and Year 1 (Grade 1). This has suited us due to the fact that in terms of Numeracy we had to back track quite a bit, but in Literacy and most of her other subjects she has been doing Year 1 work for a while. We use a combination of manipulatives, worksheets, the odd workbook and oodles of arts & crafts. We used workbooks more in the first month or so but we have realised that Bambina is a Visual/Kinesthetic learner so we introduce concepts via manipulatives, games, youtube, discussion, books, DVDs, art etc and we concretise learning using worksheets/workbooks. I use the National Curriculum to inform but not dictate what we are learning about.
Finally there are several extra curricula activities including; Arabic & Quran class, Rainbows ( aka GirlGuides) and Gymnastics. She will also be attending a Home Education Supplementary class one morning a week.
I can hear the gasps from here! Yes it seems alot when written down, but trust me in the five months we've been homeschooling there are still times when we have completed everything and have to think of something extra to do. So far this works for us. I try to stay flexible and constantly review/assess as we go along.
One of my greatest tools in terms of planning is an Android App called My Class Schedule by Sebastian Meyer. It's a free app and I use it every day. Although I pay no attention to the times down the side, it gives me a great colour coded visual of what we need to accomplish each day and where we need to go. I've tried to include a screenshot of the app to give an idea of layout. Alongside this I have a planning book which I've divided into themes. In each theme I have divided it further into subjects and that's where I make all my planning notes covering what I want to accomplish each month in each subject.
In my excitement I turned out the planning for four months worth of themed work before she'd even finished at the primary school! Heehee, I am nothing if not eager. So there I was with my daily timetable and colour coded theme folders, did it go exactly as I'd planned? Did it heck as like. First of all we went abroad for 4 weeks and ended up staying 3 months! As I hadn't brought all my carefully planned work with me, those same fantastically planned out, colour coded themed units in their pretty plastic folders are still where I put them in my draw. Aaah well, we will use them at some point.
We are still doing themes each month, we just haven't done the ones I so diligently planned yet! Sometimes we do "mini-units" which last a week, we might do this before starting a monthly topic or during times like Ramadan when our family's schedule is turned upside down. Which is now by the way. See my post on Ramadan.
These are based on the concept of "Delight-led Learning". This is just a cutesy way of saying we do what Bambina wants. How I interpret this for our homeschool may be quite different from others. I laminated a sheet called "Things I Want To Learn About" (sorry I can't remember where I downloaded it from) and stuck in on the fridge. Then I explained to Bambina that when she thought of things she'd like to learn about she could use a whiteboard marker and write them on the list. I made it clear that it wouldn't always be instant as some things take planning and sometimes we'll be in the middle of something else. So far she's asked for; Elephants (done), ice skating, India, China, Brazil, Horses, Cats and Dogs...... Stupid list. Lol
So far we have done one monthly themed unit on The Human Body, not one of the ones I had planned on doing but it was brilliant. I'll do a post showing some of her work soon. As it is Ramadan until mid-August, we will be using her suggestions as mini topics until then.
In conclusion, I have learnt a valuable lesson early on in this homeschooling lark. It is important to make plans and be organised, it really is. As long as you are ready to ditch your plan and follow Gods plan. An important lesson for life too methinks.
QM