Term 3 is about to start where we live, and while I haven’t been sticking to term dates as such, now that we are back I have decided to fall back in line with the school terms… at least loosely. DH will start work on Monday, so it seems sensible that we start a new Term on Monday too

I have been trying to plan the term without going completely overboard like I tend to sometimes. I have made an outline for the first four weeks and then I’ll revisit it and see how it is going. I have looked at our daily schedule and changed it around a bit. This is what I have come up with : Our Daily Schedule

Then I have been playing with my checklists and routines, and the children’s as well. Again, after a few weeks I will reasses and see if they are working. Here are our basic routines:

My Daily Routine

Dan’s Checklist

Beth’s Checklist

Matt’s Checklist

I have to admit I was getting a little stressed while I was planning, because I always want to do it all and have it perfect No one else out there like that, is there?! As I look around the house, it has come a long way, but there are still sooo many things I want to do. I have to discipline myself next week, however, to tackle things bit by bit. I need to put a priority on school and my daily routines, or else we will never get on track! There will always be things I want to sort and deep clean and all of that, but I can do that bit by bit on top of my daily tasks, and eventually it will all be running like a well oiled machine (ever optimistic, I am!).

So, as I was getting stressed, I thought - “Let me write down everything I am getting stressed about still having to do, and divide it up over the next weeks.” So this is exactly what I am going to do. Write the list of things I want to organize better and then take one week for each thing. For example, I still want to go through all of our clothes. I have decided this is fairly important and want to do that this week. But I am only going to work on the clothes once school and daily chores are done. I need to sort through what each of us has, see if there is anything too small that can be given away, see what else might be needed or mended, etc. And if I don’t get it done in a week? Then I will spend another week on it. But I do think that it will be surprising how far I get if I am only concentrating on that one “major task” for the week.

I still want to write out a menu plan for this week and do my grocery shopping tonight, so I’d better go and do that now!

I hope you are all having a great weekend