Attempting Organized Planning

I love planning. I like lists of any kind. I love beautiful, crisp pages printed with lovely colored designs. I like to see headings and titles with lines to fill in. I am a sucker for binder with quotes and calendars. I like to color code things and have labeled tabs and dividers.

Those are quotes and a couple love notes from my boys. :)

I like to search out the best of the best for planning pages provided by other planner type people. I have been known to even make my own if I can not find what I am looking for. I poured over websites all summer trying to find ways to make myself more organized. I printed and printed and printed some more! Determined to Be Organized.

Isn't it pretty?

 
With a family of seven, kids coming and going, husband working out of the zipcode most of the time and a homeschool I Need Organization.

I need a plan. I need a piece of paper I can checkmark things off of to say I accomplished something today other that brushing oatmeal out of Petunia's hair and duct taping the sink hose together. I need some guidance that says in non-threatening terms 'Number three under cleaning isn't checkmarked! Please clean the sheets this week!' or 'Prince Ray really needs to clean the cobwebs from his entire room and since he is out of underwear perhaps he could pick up his dirty clothes and place them in the laundry room.' I need to be reminded that the four loads of dishes, 3 loads of clothes hung on the line, bathroom cleaning, meals made, devotion read, homeschool lessons half finished and a moment of scheduled quiet time is A Great Day.

One of 10 calendars in my School Planner... yes 10.

I love lists. I have made lists since I could write. I suppose it helps me break down the million things that are in my mind into useable and workable mini-goals. Then I can systematically check them off or postpone them if I am feeling a bit like Scarlett O'Hara and don't want to think about it till tomorrow.

I do organizing chaotically. Often I have three list going at one time. Not the most productive to some folks but things do get done. Especially when I make Kid Cleaning Lists! :)

The problem is that I love the pretty printables but I can't make them all work. Out of all those beautifully colored daily goal sheets I printed in August when I was determined to break up my day and use every minute wisely I have used two. I couldn't schedule in the time to fill them out! I ended up changing my homeschool weekly planner sheet three times and I am still not completely satisfied. I have tried to plan menus and I just can not be disciplined enough to follow through! What if I don't want to make beef stew on Thursday?! What if we have unexpected company or the basketball game goes late and I can't make spaghetti and sauce?! I have then failed to follow the schedule and then I feel like I have personally failed. I need to find a chaotic-friendly, flexible, organization sheet. For everything.

Notice its is only half filled out... December was a bit lax...

With the coming of the end of the year and the continuation of our homeschool year starting up again in January I got the organizer itch. AGAIN. I'd like to challenge myself to do some more during the day that I want to get done and be okay with what I don't get done. I want to hone those three lists down to one I can manage.

So is planning is it not?

So I began the search and thought I'd share what I found!


If you Blog, here is a nice, simple, free, weekly planning sheet from Living Locurto! Or you could just sit down and write completely unplanned stuff like me....

Find it here.

This is a pretty basic Daily Goals sheet for free. Find it at Life's a Journal!

Freebie!

Plan of Attack for your day! I love these and they are customizable! Thank you Jessalyn at Desiring Virtue!

They come in many colors, too!

Also customizable are the Daily Docket sheets from Money Saving Mom!

Customize!!!

Gricefully Homeschooling has a Mom's Everything To Do List!

A sweet looking little list sheet. I like it!

This is the one for me. I have fallen head over heels with the simplicity of it. And it prints in black and white. ;) Thank you Ann Voskamp from A Holy Experience for the freebie.

Planning Love.

I will sip my morning coffee and fill out my Day's Draft.

I will set daily goals.

I will try to finish it all in the few hours we have during our turn in the sun.

And if I don't complete it... God will forgive my messiness.


Always Blessed,
Gretchen :)

 This post was featured at:

The WholeHearted Home!

Possibly Linking With:
Cornerstone Confessions

Raising Arrows 

Modest Mom Blog 

Deep Roots At Home

The Better Mom Monday Link Up

Frugally Sustainable
Artful Homemaking
Far Above Rubies
A Wise Woman Builds Her Home
Wholehearted Home
Growing Home 

Wisdom Wednesdays and Link Up
No Ordinary Blog Hop
Frontline Moms Friday Fun
The Welcoming House

~Simple Christmas~ Cleaning Up the Clutter

De-Clutter the Decorations!

In the hopes that we will be doing Simple Christmas from now on I had decided to sort through, trim down, throw out, and unclutter the Christmas Boxes.
Honestly, I did not do the best job.
It is so very hard to get rid of lovely, once beautiful ornaments and wall hangings! We have been on the receiving end of so many once loved Christmas items from friends and family. I have been blessed to be given pretty things when we had no money to buy anything decorative.
So blessed that I now have too much.
Hence the need to pare down our Christmas pretties.
We did however get rid of the broken ornaments and old, moldy looking snowmen.
I have a small box of give-aways started but I may just keep them
for our annual Gag Gift Game that is tradition for our family Christmas celebration.

One of seven mini stockings. Why do I have these? What do they hold?

Today I tried to de-clutter a bit more!
I kept all those decorations that have sentimental meaning.
The candle holder with the kitten by the fireplace that I remember using as a child.
A sock snowman Princess Peony made me when she was 7.
A wreath my sister and brother gave my first Christmas I was on my own with two small children to provide for and barely money for food.
Our stockings are hung with care next to a string of lights my daughter hung painstakingly.
The tree is broken but usable so it is still up. (I'm not that cleaning crazy ... yet. See here on my inclination to clean. )

What didn't make the cut?
A nativity set with more pieces missing than present. (I feel so sorry for that, but it isn't like I'm throwing out a real baby, so what is with the guilt?)
Several wooden ornaments that I think I bought for that first on my own tree with no sentimental feeling other than perhaps the desperation I felt that year.
A beyond fixable ceramic tree. (No gorilla glue was gonna fix that thing again!)
And a few more randoms that just have no connection and no room in my rambler.

Now to re-purpose and reuse some items!
I have kept every piece of artwork and school made Christmas bag for years.
I even have coloring pictures the kids have done.
I also keep any Christmas cards I get. I love them!
But what in the world do you do with them after rereading them? Many times.

My idea is to save all the favorite pictures and paintings and place them into a Christmas binder with a section for each child.  I will probably add a section for old Christmas messages and photo cards. Then every year we can peek at it. Instead of digging through boxes of scattered bits and pieces we can have a one of a kind coffee table book.

Lovely bags made by my kidlets in years past.

All the extras will be used to wrap small presents for giving away. Perhaps for a few stocking stuffers?? Why buy paper when we have some pre-decorated wrappings made by beautiful, little fingers clutching fat crayons?

A few of these will make the Book. The elf was colored in 1998 by Pirate Rob when he was just a wee little peg leg.

My plans for all the broken off pine cones, leftover red bows, mini pieces broken off of ornaments that I have now thrown out, and the ribbon chunks are perhaps slightly ambitious for our Simple Christmas theme. I just have such a hard time throwing out things that can be useful! I would like to use them to make some lovely gift tags so we aren't buying those sticker ones. I plan to employ the glue gun, arm the children with some Elmers and let them just go to town! These artistic creations will be appreciated by our family and most especially by grandma.

Bows, baubles, and bits of cards to be made into gift tags.

There you have it. Clean the clutter! Less clutter means less to set up and less to take down. Less to dust around and less to find a place to store. 
Dispose of the broken.
Give away what you don't need.
Reuse and re-purpose the extras.

Always Blessed, 

Gretchen :) 

Linking up with some Of These Fine Blogs:

Cornerstone Confessions

Raising Arrows 

Modest Mom Blog 

Deep Roots At Home

The Better Mom Monday Link Up

 Frugally Sustainable

Artful Homemaking 

Far Above Rubies 

A Wise Woman Builds Her Home