Today we’re a stop on the blog tour for Sheila Wray Gregoire’s book To Love, Honor and Vacuum: when you feel more like a maid than a wife and a mother. Sheila’s book discusses ways to help women find peace in the midst of their hectic lives, even if their circumstances never change. By prioritizing relationships and fostering responsibility and respect in all family members, she’ll feel more appreciated, less harried, and more fulfilled.
Sheila joins us today to answer some questions I recently had the opportunity to ask her about organization:
Many women, including myself, get so overwhelmed thinking about all that we need to do that we just don’t even know where to start…suggestions?
Other than hibernate and eat chocolate, you mean? Yes, I think I can help.
Don’t think about all you need to do. Get it out of you head. Right now.
Okay, is it gone? Good. Now, I’m going to make two suggestions: one long-term and one short-term.
Here’s the short-term one: think of the one area of your house that drives you the most crazy. The front entrance hall closet? The kids’ drawers? Your kitchen drawers? Put on some really peppy music and clean out just that area for twenty minutes. That’s all. Just twenty minutes. Take stuff that you don’t love (even if it’s your husband’s baseball trophies from when he was 8) and put them in a box to get rid of. If you don’t love it, chuck it, because if you have a lot of old stuff, you won’t have room for your new stuff. After twenty minutes, you should feel a lot better, because you have accomplished something. Savor that feeling, because it’s going to help you for the next task.
My second task is a little more difficult. I suggest that you write down every area of your house that needs to be cleaned, and then write down how often it needs to be cleaned. Once a day? (Like sweeping the kitchen floor). Once a week? (Like cleaning the bathrooms). Once a month? (Like dusting all the fans on your ceilings). Organize it either by task, like dusting, or by room, whichever works best for you. Now you have a master list. (I provide this chart in my book, but you can make your own)
In To Love, Honor and Vacuum, I show how the great thing about this list is that it relieves guilt. You clean what you’re supposed to clean that day, and then you can relax. You know everything else will get cleaned in its time. You don’t feel like you have to do the whole house at once! And if you do have a master list, it’s a whole lot easier to assign tasks to the kids. And that’s vitally important!
How do I get my kids to pick up after themselves and put things back where they belong?
It looks like we’re on the same wave-length here! For this one you have to flick a switch in your brain so that you start thinking of your kids differently. A lot of us believe that we are here to serve our children. We’re to care for them, make a nice house for them, and raise them. But here’s the problem. The way that we serve them may actually be harming our ability to raise independent, responsible adults.
Let me give you an example. If your nine-year-old son walks in the house, drops his coat on the floor and his backpack on the chair, and you pick them up, you’ve taught him to treat you with disrespect. You’ve taught him to act in an unChristlike manner. And that’s not good!
Instead, we need to teach kids to clean up after themselves. But you don’t want to nag, so here’s what I suggest in the book:
Create a penalty box. Everyday after they leave for school, or before lunch, or whenever works for you, walk around the house with a laundry basket and pick up all the stuff they’ve left lying around. Their iPod? Gone. Their favorite sweater? Gone.
If they want it back they have two options: They can redeem it for a certain amount of money, like a quarter, or a dollar, or whatever works based on your children’s ages, or they can wait until “Jubilee day”, similar to what the Israelites had in the Old Testament when all loans were forgiven. Jubilee Day can be every Sunday, or the first Sunday of every month if you think once a week is too often.
The kids will hate this. But don’t worry, because you’re teaching important lessons! You may want to have “free zones”, like the floors of their rooms, but if they leave it in common areas where it is a problem for you, then you have to make it a problem for them.
The beauty of this approach is that it does not require any nagging or yelling on your part. You warn them, tell them what the consequences will be, and then you follow through. Believe me, they’ll learn soon enough! And you can use the money you make to buy chocolate truffles to eat in the bubble bath! Your life will be ever so much more relaxing.
One other thing I want to add here, though, is this: we often focus on “getting kids to pick up after themselves”. But I think that’s a really low goal for kids. Picking up after yourself is learning how to worry about yourself. What we want our kids to start thinking about is the whole family. So make sure you have your kids do chores that benefit everybody, like dusting a coffee table (even a 3-year-old can do that), cleaning a bathroom, or setting the table. Help them to start thinking outside themselves, and you raise much less self-centered creatures. And isn’t that what God wants?
I think it is so important for woman to recognize their limitations and accept them rather than consider themselves a failure because of them…what are your feelings on this?
One of the problems we women have is that we expect ourselves to live up to unrealistic standards! I actually have this as the second chapter in my book—how to recognize when we’re being ridiculously hard on ourselves, and calm down our expectations.
Often we try to recreate our mom’s house, or our grandma’s house, without realizing that our mothers and our grandmothers lived in a totally different world, without computers and fifteen different extra-curricular activities and lots of part-time jobs! Or we try to be Martha Stewart, and then think there’s something the matter with us when we don’t feel like collecting pinecones before Christmas to spray paint and make into unique table settings.
Let it go! God gave you your home for only one purpose: to be a place of ministry where people will grow to be more like Him. That means your home is a training ground for your kids for your kids to learn how to clean, even if it’s not as clean as you would like! It’s more important for them to be trying than for everything to be perfect! That means you have to feel at ease if the kids have friends over, without worrying about all the crumbs. That means you have to be able to relax with your husband at night, without glancing at your bedroom walls and wondering when the last time you wiped them down was. It is more important to have a comfortable home where people can talk, bond, and pray than to have a house that is a showpiece where people are scared of incurring your wrath by messing something up. And you will never feel comfortable at home if you’re aiming for perfect, either! You’ll always feel like a failure, and I really don’t think God meant for us to torture ourselves like that. It wastes an awful lot of energy.
If we can organize our cleaning schedules and work on how to get it done more quickly, then we have more time for the truly important things. Just make your home comfortable, not perfect, and try to relax! Everybody will be happier around you.
Does your book include ways to save time during our day…can you give us an example?
I have lots of tips on how to clean faster! I’ll give you my favorite one: set the timer for twenty minutes, put on some really fast music and some workout clothes, and move as fast as you can while you dust and vacuum and mop. That way it counts as exercise for the day, too! You really can work up a sweat when you do that. Think of all the squats you can do while loading the washer or unloading the dryer! It’s great.
But more than individual things like that, I try to help women think differently about their time so that it’s used better. For instance, put first things first. Everyday, you need to make sure you’re spending some time on relationship care, spiritual care, and personal care for yourself. These things are the most important, and they should come before all the others. So figure out, even if you have to use a planner, what you’re going to do today to have fun with your kids. Will you read to them for ten minutes? Bake cookies? What will you do with your husband? Will you take some time alone to pray, or read your Bible, or listen to some praise CD’s? Will you get some exercise, or go for a walk, or take a bubble bath to get some personal time? Figure this out before you plan all your housework, because that’s what we really need. And often, when we know that the important things are taken care of, we find it much easier to do the others. Our life is more settled.
I’m not saying housework and organization don’t matter. There is no worse place to be that in the line at the grocery store at 5:30 p.m. with three little ones in tow because you forgot spaghetti sauce yesterday! When we organize, it frees up our time so that our lives are much more relaxing. But don’t aim for perfect, and don’t get carried away. Get organized, have a plan, and relax! Make sure most of your day is spent loving those God has put in your circle. That’s what ultimately matters in this life, and when we get organized, it’s so much easier to do.
WIN A BUNDLE OF SHEILA’S BOOKS! Sign up for Sheila’s free weekly parenting and family ezine, and you’ll be entered in a draw to win a bunch of Sheila’s books and audio recordings! Sheila’s Reality Check covers everything from flatulence at the dinner table to same sex marriage and the effects of divorce. Sign up here. She’ll make the draw April 30.
Sheila has also donated a copy of her book to the 30 Day Organizational Challenge which will be given away to the 2nd place winner in the second category.
Thanks Sheila for stopping by, you have given us some fantastic suggestions!
Dayna says
Excellent post! Her suggestions are already making me feel more relaxed about the state of my house.
meg says
Laura, on a totally unrelated note, I checked out your hair products collection and between your hair stuff and my body wash and lotion collection…..we could start our own beauty supply store!!
ChupieandJ'smama says
Excellent interview!! I think I need this book. I think I’m also going right now and creating that penalty box idea. What a great concept!
Thea says
I love the idea of a penalty box. Does it work on husbands, too??
Stephanie says
I like the idea of teaching the kids to consider the whole family. I am always telling mine “You are not the only person in this house!”
Coach J says
Loved the interview! I had heard of getting your kids to pay you money for their stuff, but I loved the Jubilee idea, too!
Thanks for posting this!
Kimberly says
Wow. I am so going to go buy that book.
Annie says
Good job…you know me I love anything about cleaning.
Anonymous says
Hi Laura,
Just read part of your blog for today and I have to say I stopped reding after her nonsence about the children I realize it is her opinion but I don’t agree with it. My 9 year old often leaves her things lying around and needs to be asked to pick them up and more often than that I pick them up for her and she is one of the most well behaved respectful and responsible kids I know. I don’t think that taking her things away would benefit her at all so what if she’s a little scatter brained at times that does NOT make her “unchristlike” and it does NOT make her a bad person. Anyways just thought I would let you know how I felt about this I will not be reading this book.
Talk to you soon
Tasha
Quietromance says
Laura,
This was a really great article! I enjoyed reading it and may just pick up a copy of it myself! BTW I wantes to let you know that it most certainly did help me to empty the entire closet before I cleaned it. I think that, had I been using this rule all along, many of my organizing tasks would have been far more successful! Thanks so much for all the wonderful tips! You are an organizing queen!!! 🙂
~Haley
org junkie says
Hey Tasha, I totally see where you are coming from and I know from experience that your daughter is well behaved and responsible (one of my favorites) but I do have to agree with Sheila that kids not picking up after themselves is disrespectful behaviour. Yes kids can be forgetful but our jobs as parents is to teach them that there are consequences to their actions. I never pick up after my kids ever and not because they always remember on their own (I wish!) but because I will call them on it and either remind them to do it themselves or confiscate the item….our house rule is if it’s left in my space (the living room) it’s mine. This system of putting something away that gets left lying around has worked amazingly well with both my big kids in the past. Some kids just need a little more training and discipline than others is all and for these kids this system might be just the answer. Anyway just my 2 cents. Thanks for your comment…I really do appreciate it.
Laura
Anonymous says
Excellent Post!
Debi says
What a wonderful interview! I love, love, love that idea of a master list! Definitely going to put that one into practice!
We’ve used a penalty box for years now. And in general it’s pretty useful.
I do actually help my kids clean up their messes from time to time when they ask though. I figure that’s okay, because they’re willing to help me clean up my messes when I ask for help, too.
Patty says
Hi Laura
Another great post! I have just started coming here every day and it has already inspired me to get my house organized. Last night I dragged Brian through Canadian Tire to look at baskets and containers!
I really like the master list idea, that way I won’t feel as though I’m not doing anything in my house.
Thanks for sharing.
Patty
org junkie says
Debi, don’t get me wrong, I help out my kids all the time and that is definitely okay. Together we will organize their rooms but I like them to be there for the process in order to teach them how the process works and the steps to follow. It’s never too early to teach them the remove, sort and purge steps…lol.
Laura
GiBee says
Ummmmm — people actually wipe down their bedroom walls??? Oh dear.
On another note … I had a few free minutes the other night when we were waiting for my inlaws to drop my son off … and … are you sitting down for this? I actually organized one shelf in my pantry that was driving me insane.
It looks beautiful!
Now … the rest of the pantry is a different story!
Stacy says
Hi Laura. I have been visiting lately and love the inspiration I have been getting. Thank you. I linked to this post. Let me know if that is not okay.
Thanks for being so organized!!!!
Anonymous says
Hi Laura,
Gosh I sure wish I had taken before pics of my craft room it became a catch all of christmas and was a total disaster you could hardly even walk in there it was so bad and I had such guilt after you helped me organize it so nicely. So th other day I took everything out and boy you would have been proud I through out 3 orange garbage bags of crap and went through my spinning and weaving stuff and took it to a meeting so the other girls could have a go at it. It looks so good in there now. Anyways my fault for not keeping up with blog land.
Talk to ya soon
Tasha