Getting Organized and Energized!!

Create Office Space in a Closet
Better Homes and Gardens

Weekly Contributor, Kim Brenneman

Clutter and disarray suck the energy out us. We can’t see the forest for the trees. Emotionally attached to our stuff and our homes and our families and their stuff we can’t see where to start. Looking at our messy homes can be mentally exhausting.

When we live in a state of order and have the discipline to keep things in their proper place then we are free for other pursuits. We can spend a couple of hours whipping up some deliciously fancy cupcakes in the kitchen, start a home business, make lawn furniture with old pallets, learn photography, and a hundred other things. Looking at a cluttered mess though, we spin around not knowing where to start and escape it in some manner. It’s easier, in that moment, to look on Pintrest at great ideas than it is to put the house in order so that we can do the great ideas.

Let’s get started on clearing the way so that we can have some fun doing, not just looking and thinking about it!

Get a piece of paper and a pen.

• Goals are always a great motivator so first get an idea about what it is that you want to do when you have the time to do it. Write your goal in big letters across the top of the page.
• Identify the rooms or areas of your home and what happens in each area. Write it down on the paper.
• Go around your house with a basket or box and take the appropriate things to the appropriate place, i.e. staplers, scissors, and pens in the office area, books to the bookshelves, current magazines in a basket by the spot where they are read, trash in the trashcan, and unused and unnecessary stuff goes to the thrift shop.
• Look at each area of your home with your paper and pen in hand. What needs to happen for each area to be more orderly and organized? If you have trouble with this then take a look at an organizing web store such as www.containerstore.com, check out this post, "9 Organizing Ideas" or do a search on Pinterest and you will find multiple pictures that will inspire you with a plethora of ideas. Write down on your paper what will work for similar rooms of your house. Do not be overwhelmed but click through to the original site and learn how the person did it. Often it is with “found” materials and paint.
• Not only does your home need to be organized but it needs to stay that way. This boils down to the discipline of keeping things where they belong. Give yourself and your family a couple of mottos to live by: “Don’t lay it down, put it away,” and “Everything has a place, when everything is in its place.”
• Keep your home clean with a daily clean up time. At our house we have a list of daily chores and every day at the same time everyone does their cleaning chores. “Many hands make light work.” On your paper, make a list of the daily cleaning chores for each room and assign it to a person. This isn’t hard labor, it’s fast, and it’s simple: Straighten, Dust, Sweep.
• Every week, or month, take an hour to make a menu plan and a grocery list. Now you know what you are going to eat and you don’t need to think about it. Don’t throw out your menu plan but use it again another week or month!
• Every morning do a load of laundry and if you have a bunch of kids, like I do, then switch loads every time you change activities during the day. That way, you keep up.

Now that things are in order and you keep them in order with some new family mottos, organization and a daily cleaning time you have more time.


Blessings,


Kim Brenneman

Kim is the joyful wife of Matt and the blessed mother of nine children.

When not busy homeschooling and farmschooling, she enjoys writing, gardening, cooking, reading, sewing, and crafting.

Kim lives on a farm in Iowa where her family grows beef cattle, corn and beans, and operates a micro-dairy selling cheese at farmer’s markets. She loves to write and speak about her passion for home and family. She is the author of Large Family Logistics: The Art and Science of Managing the Large Family. She blogs about the same subject at:
http://largefamilylogistics.blogspot.com.

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Your Master Bedroom - The Heartbeat of the Castle

Weekly Contributor, Kim Brenneman of Large Family Logistics

The work that a home creates can become mundane and exhausting if our attitudes are not in tune with what the Lord has called us to do. We need to remember to not only care for our family and their dwelling place but we must also take care of ourselves. A physically rundown wife and mother does not have the energy to care for her home and family. Her home is one of disorder and dirt. It may not be that she is truly lazy but that she is simply worn out and does not possess the energy to move forward and do the next thing. She needs care.


At these times it would be nice to have a wife or mother for ourselves wouldn’t it? We as women must remember to take care of ourselves in order to do the work the Lord has called us to do. Along with good food and exercise, part of taking care of ourselves is creating a peaceful retreat within the home for us. We need rest, not necessarily sleep but a little bit of rest and relaxation.

The home is a retreat from the world for our families. Our role as nurturer of the family places our primary work in the home. We care for our husband and children in one way or another 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our homes are where our hearts are. Caring for children, cooking meals, cleaning rooms, and the never-ending pile of laundry keep us in constant motion.

We also spend energy taking care of the emotional and educational needs of our family. We as women need a retreat within the retreat.

We take a God-given delight in feathering our nests with color, art, handiwork, and furnishings that express our Christian values of home and family. Come along with me and add some extra soft touches to the nest. We’re going to work on the Master Bedroom and make it your special place! We’ll make it a place in the hills where you can be alone to pray. We’ll create a retreat from the world where you will want to spend time with your best friend--your husband.

"We’ll make it a place in the hills where you can be alone to pray."

Close your eyes and think about what it looks like right now. Is it cluttered? Has it become a catch-all place? You need to find a different spot for all of the unnecessary and unsightly things. This is now the room where you get re-energized. It is the last place you see when you go to sleep at night and the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning. Let it be a place of rest and peace that will give you motivation for the coming day. Get your Goodwill box and a trash bag and do the de-cluttering.

Now, give it all a good cleaning. Take down the window coverings for cleaning. Then wash your windows and blinds. This will let in the light and show you where the dirt is hiding. It also changes the perspective of the room and will help you get some new ideas on what you want your retreat to look like. Finish doing the cleaning (cobwebs, dusting, and vacuuming) all the while thinking about what you need in a retreat.

When you’re done cleaning, make a list of all the cleaning chores and divide it into daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. Slide this paper into a sheet protector and post it on your door to remind you until you have it memorized and can do it without thinking. Make yourself some rules, i.e. only ten things allowed on your bedside table, including reading glasses, drink, book, Bible, etc. Maintain this one place in the house to be pretty and peaceful and it will be a bright spot in your home and life. This refuge will keep your being more healthy and energized for the rest of the work.

Give thought to these words while you seek out ideas to implement:

• reserved
• rest
• retreat
• recluse
• relax
• refuge

Think about the purposes of the master bedroom and write down decorating ideas. Ask yourself how to create privacy, ease, convenience, and beauty in your master bedroom. This has to suit you and your husband so think about your favorite things, what favorite objects do you want to surround yourself with?

Make a list of things that define you and your husband. For example, I love quilts. I love the connection they have with the past. I love the art and handiwork of them. I also love flowers, the color pink (I use it as an accent), writing paper-journals, the sun, lace, dark chocolate, books, and the list goes on. Think about what defines you and use those things to surround yourself with in your retreat. These things are part of your God-given personality, and they typically are things that God has blessed us with at some point in life that taught us to appreciate some wonder of his creation. Express yourself and your marriage, with these definitions, in your retreat.

What about your bedroom do you dislike? Fix it ASAP. Anything that grates on you will be the antithesis of retreat. Maybe it’s an eyesore that simply needs to be hidden. If it can’t be hidden, then put it behind you by moving the bed or your reading chair. Move things so that the eyesore will be out your line of sight.

Create ease in your room by moving the furniture to create flow. You do not want to bang your shin on the same thing every night when you get up to feed the baby. Create ease by adding cushioned seating, pillows, or a soft rug by the bed.

Move the chair that you use as a clothes rack to force a new habit of putting clothes away. Write down on your list of daily bedroom chores to put clothes where they belong.

Create ease for eyes and mood by painting the walls blue or green. Both are colors that have been shown to promote relaxation. Think of all the blues of the sky and the sea. Nearly all the plants of the field are some variant of green, and you'll see that God used them predominately when he created the earth. When we stand still and behold the beautiful outdoors we are overcome with the splendor of it. We find rest in our souls when we rest our eyes on God’s artwork. Bring some of that inside by choosing colors that bring on a peaceful mood. You can find myriad of blues and greens at the paint store. From dark to light, warm and cool, there will be a blue or green that expresses you and your idea of tranquility. When you bring ease to your retreat, as soon as you walk in the door your body will say, “Ahhhh” and you will relax.

Make your room convenient by having bedside tables with reading lights, paper, pen, and the Bible. Keep tissue and a waste basket handy if you’re allergy prone.

Use good light blocking blinds; dark rooms promote deeper, more restful sleep.

If you like to write or do some sort of handiwork, then create a place for that in your bedroom. For some people that might be bringing work into the bedroom and for others it’s bringing a restful activity that promotes a quiet spirit. Be sure to put a good light in the task area.

Put a CD player in your Master Bedroom to play peaceful music or whatever suits the mood of you and your beloved.

To make my room more convenient I have an old sofa draped with quilts that I use when nursing the baby, reading, and when we have a sick or scared child at night (with nine children, there is a limit to who fits in the bed). I also have a soft light if I need it at night.

Put your bedroom lamps on a timer to turn off when you need to sleep and come on with your alarm clock in the morning. This one convenience has improved my sleep routines immensely.

Add beauty with art, pictures of you and your husband, fresh flowers, or other expressions of who you are and the things that you enjoy. Try to create a harmony of favorite things expressing all of the senses. What fabrics do you like to feel? What do you like under your feet? What do you want to wrap up in while you sit and peruse a new magazine? When you want a peaceful setting what do you want to hear? Guitar music, ocean waves, the breeze in the trees outside, or silence? What do you want to smell? A favorite flower, a mug of hot chocolate, the night air drifting in? What do you want to see? Blank walls, art, photography, wallpaper? Lots of drapes and luscious fabric or simple, straight lines? Dark or light? Warm or cool? Simple, elaborate, or somewhere in between? Think about these things. Get some magazines and books from the library or visit Pinterest.com to collect ideas. Don’t copy a photo of someone else’s idea of beauty. What my Master Bedroom looks like will not be the same as yours. It should be an expression of who you are and what you have available to use. Spend time in thought, with pen in hand. What is beautiful to you and why? Do what defines who you are and your needs for a restful retreat. What are the simplest things that give pleasure and rest for your soul? Bring these pieces of beauty into your master bedroom.

Put things in your Master Bedroom that express who you are as a union with your beloved. Include photographs and mementos that reflect your history together. Create ambience through soft lamps or candles for your evenings together.

Embrace your femininity and dress that way in your bedroom. Throw out the old T-shirts and boxer-shorts, this is not a college dorm room. Throw out the ratty bath robe and tattered gown of yesteryear. This is your master bedroom--the place where the heart of the family finds a restful haven. It is the heartbeat of the castle. Wear what enhances the romance and makes you feel like the queen. Create it to be a place of honor to your marriage.

The mandrakes give forth fragrance, and beside our doors are all choice fruits, new as well as old, which I have laid up for you, O my beloved.
Song of Solomon 7:13 ESV

It is natural how God created  females to feather their nests. Every mother in nature does it. We were born to nurture our families and part of this is by creating beauty in our homes. 

When the stress of constantly being needed by your family weighs heavy on you, go to your nest within the nest and spend time with the Lord of all. Take your cares to Him. Slipping away for a break in the day to read the Word, quiet your thoughts, and pray in your retreat surrounded by your favorite things will inspire you for the rest of the day. Prayer and rest bring healing to our innermost beings. We need this to remain healthy Christian women. Jesus gives rest to the weary. Go and create a haven of rest. Make it a place where you meet your Helper who enables you to be a helper to your husband.

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Matthew 14:23, ESV

Blessings,

Kim Brenneman

Kim is the joyful wife of Matt and the blessed mother of nine children.

When not busy homeschooling and farmschooling, she enjoys writing, gardening, cooking, reading, sewing, and crafting.

Kim lives on a farm in Iowa where her family grows beef cattle, corn and beans, and operates a micro-dairy selling cheese at farmer’s markets. She loves to write and speak about her passion for home and family. She is the author of Large Family Logistics: The Art and Science of Managing the Large Family. She blogs about the same subject at:
http://largefamilylogistics.blogspot.com.

If you'd like to leave a comment, visit Time-Warp Wife on facebook: Click here

And you can also find Kim on facebook too: Large Family Logistics

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Organizing on a Wee Budget

Use The Space You Have

At what point in our lives did we grow up and stop having fun? When did we change?

When my daughter was handed her seventh-grade locker combination, the first thing she asked was, "When can I decorate the door?"

I was taken back to those mornings at Glenlawn Collegiate when I'd tape up the last of my posters before the first bell rang. My locker was small, but it was my own corner of the world where I was free to decorate as I pleased. I'd often clip photos from teen magazines, or jot down Bible verses on pretty stationery, so I'd have something new to look at each week.

After coming across this photo by Country Living, I realized that I have similar decorating space in my kitchen that's waiting to be creatively used--interior cabinet doors.

What a great place it would be to hang a small calender, or a photo of my latest heart throb, Michael (*wink*). It would also be a fun place to tape artwork that that kids give me or pretty Bible verses that I want to remember. The insides of our cupboard doors give us extended wall space, where we can get creative and make our mark on the world without breaking the budget.

"Guess what, kids? Mom has a locker too!"


Look For An Alternative Use

Look what putting up a simple magazine rack on the wall can do to clear up space in your entrance. This photo from Desire to Inspire, shows us that it doesn't have to cost all that much to add storage space, as long as we're willing to use our imagination.

When I'm shopping at the thrift stores, I'm always looking at items wondering what alternative use they might have. For some reason shoe storage has been a big one for me this year!

Take a look further down the checkerboard hallway, and you'll see that the decorator has put hooks on the wall to hang purses. What does that cost? Maybe $3.00 each?

Group "Like" Objects Together

And finally, this is a cute idea  (below) that I found through Better Homes and Gardens.

This look can easily be achieved by picking up a group of small baskets from Walmart or the dollar store and adding a printed label to each one. Of course the painted cupboard undeniably adds to the charm. But lining up baskets like these would give any shelf an instant face-lift, don't you agree?

You'll also notice that they have used a group of three planters on the top shelf. I'm guessing that these would be inexpensive, and placing one alone on the shelf wouldn't give us nearly the same affect that grouping a few together does.

A tight budget is often a blessing in disguise. It moves us to be creative with the resources we have, and in doing so we'll often come up with some awesome ideas!!

Drawn from my archives



You are loved by an almighty God,


Darlene

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How To Boost Self Discipline

Weekly Contributor, Kim Brenneman

Have you made your list of New Year’s resolutions? Or did you give up on that tradition years ago? When you make your resolution list, do you promptly lose it? Does your preschooler find it and use it for handwriting practice?

A classic New Year’s resolution is to be more organized. Everyone recognizes that being organized and efficient improves productivity and makes life more pleasant. But while it's one thing to make the resolution it's another to accomplish it.


Some say that people are either born organized or they're not. I agree to a point; I have seen in my own children how their brains work differently and make them better at certain tasks than others. I do believe though that everyone can become better organized and disciplined in their personal habits. I certainly have room for improvement. I have had years when I was very organized and efficient and other years where I felt as if I were drowning in mess and so tired that the thought of where to start was overwhelming. I can easily blame it on workload, babies, hormones, too many outside-the-home activities, and more. Whether you are on top of things right now or not, there’s always room for improvement.

Why do you want to be more organized? What are your goals? Who are you aiming to please? Write the answers to these question on the paper that you have been writing your New Year’s resolutions on. We want to know why we’re doing what we’re doing to help motivate us to follow through.

Work on putting life in line with God’s Word. Use Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 as a reference point in making your goals. 

Once you’ve motivated yourself with getting to the underlying reasons, let’s move forward to how we’re going to be more organized. It’s not enough to just make a goal or a resolution; we need to make a plan to reach it. We’ll work on the basics of planning the work of being organized. Sometimes planning the work can be so much fun but takes so much time that we don’t get any real work done! Keep the planning simple. Maybe you are one that hates to plan and just wants to get it done so you dive in and make a bigger mess in the process and “oops!” you forgot that people need to eat? Planning your work helps avoid those kind of “oops” moments.

While you have your pencil and resolution paper out, let’s make some simple plans. Divide your home management into different areas. Mine is divided into six:

• Cleaning
• Kitchen
• Home Office
• Laundry
• Town (shopping and errands)
• Gardening

Your life might look slightly different. Give each area of home management a day that you will focus on. For instance, Monday is Laundry Day and Tuesday is Kitchen Day at my house [you could also use the daily housekeeping schedule Darlene has posted on this site]. On the assigned day, do all the chores associated with that work on that day. This improves efficiency in dramatic way.

This is not new--I did not invent this idea. It is how our grandmothers and great-grandmothers worked. We’re recovering the lost art of home-management and we’ll teach it to our daughters. Where are your daughters by the way? Set them beside you and make these home organization plans together. Do you think they are too little? They aren't. Maybe they will only do art work beside you or practice writing their name but tell them what you are doing. Watching is learning. If you have an older daughter, let her plan the management of an area. Work on this together.

Once you have assigned each day of the week to an area of home management, make a big list of every single task in that area. This is your new organized life. You will need discipline to stick to it. That’s a huge part of establishing new habits, reaching goals, and changing your life. What are your habits now? When are you doing the lists of tasks that you made? If you aren’t doing those tasks, what are you doing instead? Identify time wasters by watching yourself and writing down every single little thing that you do. You need to replace each bad time wasting habit with one of the things on the task list for the day. Match a time wasting habit with work task and every time you start to do that old habit, do the work instead. This is called "The Put-Off, Put-On Principle" which is found in Ephesians 4.

To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. ~ Ephesians 4:22-24

A big boost to self-discipline is in changing our attitudes! How is your attitude towards your home? This is a choice we make every day. Do you love your home? Do you love the people that live there? Do you love God who gave you your life, your home, and your family?

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. ~ Galatians 5:13 

It doesn’t say “through bitterness serve one another” or “through manipulation serve one another” it is through love that we serve one another. It is through God’s love in us that we can do this with joy. The things that are before us to do are His calling for us today. We are serving Him when we serve others. The Holy Spirit will help us in our calling.

God wants us to be full of His joy that comes from knowing Him (John 15). When we live in His will, when we put off our old self, when we serve Him with gladness, then we understand that the joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10).

Serve the Lord with gladness! ~ Psalm 100:2

The best way to keep your attitude right is to spend time in God’s Word every day. We learn to know Him and love Him and how to better serve Him through His Word.

As you go about your day, pray without ceasing. He knows how many hairs are on your head, He sees the sparrow fall, and so of course He cares for every nuance of your day. Pray for strength, pray for wisdom, pray for understanding, and pray that the fruit of the Spirit will flow out of your life.

Your Christian ministry is your home! It is at the center of everything you do! Make time reading God’s Word a priority in your morning. It is your bread and water, it is your strength. Feed your spirit and in turn your attitude will be right with God. When your attitude is right, it becomes easier to put off bad habits and put on Godly habits. Our New Year’s Resolutions for being more organized are easier to achieve because we have Godly attitudes towards the ministry of our homes to others.

May the Lord, Maker of Heaven and Earth, bless you with strength and help you with your efforts to bring glory to Him in organizing your home!


Blessings,

Kim Brenneman

Kim is the joyful wife of Matt and the blessed mother of nine children.

When not busy homeschooling and farmschooling, she enjoys writing, gardening, cooking, reading, sewing, and crafting.

Kim lives on a farm in Iowa where her family grows beef cattle, corn and beans, and operates a micro-dairy selling cheese at farmer’s markets. She loves to write and speak about her passion for home and family. She is the author of Large Family Logistics: The Art and Science of Managing the Large Family. She blogs about the same subject at:
http://largefamilylogistics.blogspot.com.

If you'd like to leave a comment, visit Time-Warp Wife on facebook: Click here

And you can also find Kim on facebook too: Large Family Logistics

If you would like to have Time-Warp Wife delivered to your inbox daily, simply click here: Subscribe to Time-Warp Wife