A New Home Rhythm
I have been in need of a new rhythm. When I first chose to stay home, I didn’t realize how rooted in structure I was. I thought discipline was something that came naturally to me. It turns out, I had always had an established routine. From childhood I had a schedule. From school to extracurriculars, to jobs, college, and a career. I have never had complete “freedom” to develop my own schedule. Keeping a home was easy. First of all, when it’s just two people it’s simple to keep a home looking as if it’s not currently occupied. Secondly, when you understand that the weekend is the only time available to do a deep clean of your home, otherwise your home may in-fact become “lived in,” it’s easy to have the motivation needed to complete your chores.
Enter stay-at-home motherhood. “Your home all day, how hard could it be to keep a clean house?” Well there’s at least two correct answers. Hard. And without any sort of routine? Very hard. When you chase children around all day cleaning up their messes and toys, make all meals at home, and genuinely just try your best to be a good mother, your energy is zapped. Ironically, many things we do are built around a routine. Meals, baths, nap and bedtimes. We keep our children on a schedule. However when our homemaking is not also on a schedule, our homes can quickly begin to feel out of control.
I’ve noticed that as I created a rhythm for my children, I expected my traditional home keeping routine to flow with that rhythm. Tears of failure were the only things that actually flowed as my old system just wasn’t conducive to having a home full of children. I now need a system that can function as smaller, daily tasks. This is not revolutionary. I’ve seen many mothers come to this same conclusion. But stubbornly fond of tradition, I’ll captain my sinking ship until I have no choice but to change course or drown. Unfortunately, drowning has been a frequent feeling as of late. Now stubborn as I may be, I don’t consider myself insane. Continuing down the same old path of failure again and again is not a usual practice for me.
Thus, a system shake-up. A new rhythm. It started as reminders and alarms set on my phone. For a time they were successful, but they quickly felt like a bombardment when life caught up and I couldn’t get to something when I meant to and the alarm would continue to sound again and again and again until I was half mad. Like the old saying “don’t fix something that isn’t broken,” pen and paper do the trick. I can look over my tasks for the day, complete them when I’m able to, and enjoy the dopamine rush from physically checking a task off the list.
The Home Cleaning Checklist. Created by me for me. But if you feel you could also benefit from a new routine or a place to organize your day to day tasks, please download one for free below! They can either be printed new each week (I’ll probably have different themes at some point) or placed in a clear cover and marked off with a dry erase marker and erased to start new each week.
Having a home to keep and a family to live in it is a beautiful blessing. Establishing a rhythm helps us remember that by erasing overwhelm and replacing it with accomplishment and appreciation of those blessings.
