The Game Plan

Okay, so in the last post, you can find it here, I talked about the importance of my schedule in direct proportion to my ability to function in daily life and still find time to spend with Jesus.

Today I am going to give you a glimpse of what my schedule looks like.  On the front end I will tell you how I came about this schedule and be as honest as I can about how I work this thing.

First off, I did not even have a schedule before I had children. I didn't see the need for it, I was so overly confident that I could run the world without any sort of organization in my approach. For as often as my no-plan approach to running a house failed me, I always excused the failure with the idea that the lack affected no one but myself. If my husband was inconvenienced by the failure, I silently argued that he was an adult and could take care of his end of things when I didn't get around to it. I was really selfish during that stage of my life. Just being honest.

It was when children entered the picture that I realized my foolishness at not having a game plan. Now my failure did affect others much smaller and much more dramatic than myself. Kids thrive on routine, and I had none. All that to say, my life was a mess. My house was a mess. My emotions were a mess.

My husband told me to make a schedule. I laughed, I cried, and told him all the reason why a schedule was not the answer for me. Then I tried it.

First schedule, with one baby, was only a partial success, but it was still more of a success than having no schedule. So I revamped it, made it rather flexible. Tried again, a small increase in the success margin.

Revamped it again, and again, and again, enter baby two. More revamping. Shifting things to make a way for me to work part time while still running my house successfully. More success, but with success came the lesson of saying no, even to good things. How did I know which things to give up and which to keep?

With my 'Mommy Manifesto'.......another topic for another day, but it is pretty much a list of life goals, life vision if you will. Wanna read about my beliefs in having a life vision....check it out here. Been there, wrote that post a while back. Enjoy.

So these goals in my Mommy Manifesto help me know what is important to me personally. Some are general, others are more specific, but they help me pick which things to put in my schedule. For example, if intercession is important to me, then putting time in my schedule for that is one of the first priorities.  I put in the things that are the most important to me first, then I fill in the gaps with other things in order of decreasing priority.

Something I started a few years ago was an attempt to start 'tithing' my time to the Lord. That equals about 18 hrs of God time a week. Since that is pretty important to me, I put that time in my schedule first, giving it priority even above cleaning.

Now that I have confessed to something as radical sounding as 'tithing' my time to the Lord though, I should go ahead and mention that my schedule is not a cruel task master to me. It is more like a game plan, an overall goal for the week. More often than I care to mention, I do not get all 18 hrs in for the week. Heck, I don't even get all my scheduled cleaning in for most weeks. It is a goal people. I'm not perfect yet and neither is my schedule. If something doesn't happen though, I no longer beat myself up over it, I just shrug my shoulders and try again the next week.

I also leave a lot of flexibility in it. I have laundry on Wednesday and Friday mornings and I have a play date time slot on Thursday afternoons. If my friends can't hang out Thursday afternoon though, then I can switch one of my laundry mornings for that week to Thursday aftrnoon and have a morning play date instead. Or if I allot myself an hour for making dinner, but we have lots of left overs, then my girls and I can do something extra that afternoon because dinner will not take that long to prepare.

Making sense? I hope so.

So now that you know how I have developed this schedule, I am going to show you my current schedule. I have had this new schedule for about a month. My previous schedule I had for about three months. I would have to say that three months is about how long on average I have any given schedule before I need to make some changes to it. I usually re-evaluate my schedules every three months because with little toddlers, things just change that quickly. With a new baby, who knows how long this current schedule will last. Here is is anyways.

8/1/2012	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
7:15 A	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls
7:30 A	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast
7:45 A	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up
8:00 A	computer	computer	computer	computer	computer	computer	computer
8:15 A	prep	prep	prep	prep	prep	prep	prep
8:30 A	prep
8:45 A	prep
9:00 A	MSF
9:15 A	MSF
9:30 A	MSF	prep	prep	Laundry	prep	Laundry
9:45 A	MSF	prep	prep	Laundry	prep	Laundry
10:00 A	MSF	errands	Coffee	Laundry	Coffee	Laundry
10:15 A	MSF	errands	Coffee	Laundry	Coffee	Laundry
10:30 A	MSF	errands	Coffee	Laundry	Coffee	Laundry
10:45 A		errands	Coffee	Laundry	Coffee	Laundry
11:00 A		errands	Coffee	Laundry	Interc.	Laundry
11:15 A		errands	Coffee	Laundry	Interc.	Laundry
11:30 A	prep	errands	Coffee	prep	Interc.	prep
11:45 A	prep	errands	Coffee	prep	Interc.	prep
12:00 P	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	Interc.	clean up	clean up
12:15 P	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Interc.	Lunch	Lunch
12:30 P	make up	prayer	clean up	prayer	Interc.	prayer	swing cl
12:45 P	make up	prayer	clean up	prayer	clean up	prayer	swing cl
1:00 P	make up	prayer	clean up	prayer	clean up	prayer	swing cl
1:15 P	make up	prayer	clean up	prayer	clean up	prayer	swing cl
1:30 P	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading
1:45 P	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading
2:00 P	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer
2:15 P	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer
2:30 P	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer
2:45 P	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer
3:00 P			school	outing	school		school
3:15 P			school	outing	school		school
3:30 P			school	outing	school		school
3:45 P				outing	clean up
4:00 P				outing	clean up
4:15 P				outing	clean up
4:30 P				outing	clean up
4:45 P				outing	clean up
5:00 P	dishes	dishes	dishes	dishes	dishes	dishes	dishes
5:15 P	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking
5:30 P	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking
5:45 P	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking
6:00 P	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner
6:15 P	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner
6:30 P	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	Sm. Group	clean up	clean up
6:45 P					Sm, Group
7:00 P	MESH/MOMS				Sm. Group
7:15 P	MESH/MOMS				Sm. Group
7:30 P	MESH/MOMS	clean up	clean up	clean up	Sm. Group	clean up	clean up
7:45 P	MESH/MOMS	reading	reading	reading	Sm. Group	reading	reading
8:00 P	MESH/MOMS	Bedtime	Bedtime	Bedtime	Sm. Group	Bedtime	Bedtime
8:15 P	MESH/MOMS	Prayer		Prayer	Sm. Group	EGS	prep sch.
8:30 P	MESH/MOMS	Prayer		Prayer	Sm. Group	EGS	prep sch.
8:45 P	MESH/MOMS	Prayer		Prayer	Sm. Group	EGS	prep sch.
9:00 P	MESH/MOMS	Prayer		Prayer	Sm. Group	EGS	prep sch.
God-hrs	5	2.5	1.5	2.5	4.5	2.5	1.5
							20

Please take note of all the blank space. I no longer feel it necessary to fill in all the gaps with something. The blanks are free time, places to stick extra things that pop up from week to week. Some of my other scheduled entries are rather general, like 'reading'. I would like that to be my Bible most of the time, but sometimes it is a really good Christian book instead.  You will see my totals for tithed time at the bottom, which totals 20 hrs. instead of the 18 that I told you. That is so if I miss a few hours a week, it still comes out to 18 or so. If I get all these hours in, then I give the Lord a bit extra. No harm in that, right?

A few of the entries you will not know what I mean, like 'make up' day and 'swing clean', which both deal with my specific cleaning chores for the week. Hey, it's my schedule, it makes sense to me. Yours will make sense to you when you make it!

Now, if you have questions, let me know. Seriously, if you have questions, I want to try to answer them. Post them on here, and thanks for taking the time to read about me and my schedule.

The Lord is a God of order, He can help you be more so. Be encouraged.


*Note, after posting this I realized that part of my schedule is cut off.....but is mostly just more of the same format as the portion you can see. The only thing to note is most of my Saturday is wide open on my schedule because that is my Sabbath. You should always try to protect your sabbath and really try to rest and keep it low stress. :-) It's healthy.