Archive for the ‘Organization’ Category

Declutter Your Fall/Winter Wardrobe

Wednesday, August 24th, 2022

declutter-boho-capsule-wardrobe

Today I’m going to show you how to declutter your wardrobe to make more space for what you truly wear and love. Getting rid of everything that you don’t wear and don’t like will eliminate so many clothing choices, so that you have fewer clothing choices in the morning, but all of them are your favorites.

I will also give you a glimpse into my clothing style, which is mostly Boho. I discovered that my favorite way to dress is Bohemian style, which includes flowy feminine tops and dresses that may remind you of the 1960’s. When I was in my early 20’s, I loved this style and had forgotten about it when I became a mother and focused all my attention on raising my family. It was not until my kids reached their teen years that I realized that I didn’t like the way I looked in many of my clothes. By going through this process that I’m showing you today, I came to find out that I feel most myself when I wear Boho style.

boho-wardrobe

If you have a different style, go ahead and look up online what clothing styles are out there, and see which ones suit your personality the best. My daughter loves vintage style. She likes, for example, dresses from the 1920’s, along with a variety of hats. She wears these to church, to square dancing, and to any other function where a dress would be appropriate. But then she also wears classic style clothing whenever she is hanging out with friends.

So if you open your closet doors and remove all of your clothing, throw all the hanging clothes onto your bed, and go through each one. I tried on each one, realizing that some were scratchy or didn’t fit any more. I got rid of anything that wasn’t beautiful and comfortable. That left me with about 33 pieces in total, which is what fashion designers call a capsule wardrobe. A capsule wardrobe is the essential pieces that you wear all the time, but for me, they are the only pieces I have, aside from a couple of Christmas sweaters I found later in a cupboard. Whenever I get a new piece of clothing, I get rid of one that has stains or isn’t as nice as the new piece. This way I always have a reasonable amount of clothing.

You don’t have to whittle down to only 33 pieces, but if you go through these steps, you will find that you have clothing that intermatches. Your favorite colors are probaby seen multiple times in your wardrobe. If not, you can build a wardrobe that includes more of the colors that you love.

Look at what your main colors are in your wardrobe, and see what pieces you would like to buy to help you wear what you love more often. You can get clothing inexpensively at resale shops, where I’ve gotten most of my clothing over the years. You will be glad to wear what you love more often with accessories that intermatch what you already have.

Finally, when you hang up everything you love in your wardrobe, you will see that your life is simplified, and you feel better about yourself. Because your style is what makes you feel more yourself, you will feel better about how you look, which will help you to take better care of your body in general.

I hope you enjoy my runway-style video, showing you how you can intermatch your clothing, using basic colors like blue, gray, or black as a blank canvas for your brighter splashes of color. Have fun with it!

Spring Clean a Messy Drawer

Sunday, April 24th, 2022

spring-clean-a-messy-drawer

Everyone I know has at least one junk drawer. Drawers can be hard to organize without dividers of some kind, especially if you have a lot of smaller items. Good places to have drawer dividers are bathrooms and kitchens. Today I will show you how to spring clean a messy drawer, and I will use a messy drawer from my bathroom to give you an idea for how to section off objects that are similar so that those items are easier to find.

Not only will you save time in finding the objects that you own, but those objects will be better taken care of, because they will not be thrown and manhandled while jostling around in the drawer. Eyeshadow, for example, when tossed around, can break and will require more money to replace because of rough treatment. Eyeliner pencils can break inside when tossed around also.

The first thing you will want to do is empty the drawer completely. Clean out the drawer with a damp cloth, and then dry with a paper towel. You will want to have dividers of some kind, either a drawer organization system like I show you in the video, or a wooden silverware tray that I also show you in the video. Or you can use small boxes, bins, or baskets to place inside your drawer to contain your items so they are not bouncing around.

messy-drawer-organization

After emptying and cleaning the drawer, and placing the containers in the drawer, you can look at all your items and get rid of everything you are not using. Either toss it in the trash, or give it so someone who would appreciate it. With fewer items, it’s so much easier to organize.

With the remaining winning items that you like and use the most, organize them into like categories. For example, all the small bottles were placed in the back of my drawer, standing up, and they were easier to see. My smaller hair clips were easier to find when I had a whole separate container for them, placing the larger hair clips and headbands in another section. Extra toothbrushes and floss can go together, as well as makeup having its own divider.

organize-a-drawer

Hopefully by spring cleaning a messy drawer, you can feel refreshed and less bogged down by life, feeling tranquil and and good about yourself each time you pull that drawer open!

To organize your entire house and homeschooling supplies, check out Organizing for a Fun Homeschool.

Homemaking for Teens

Thursday, May 27th, 2021

homemaking-for-teens

Are you looking to teach your homeschooled kids how to run a home? Today I’m going to show you some of the homemaking materials that we used in our homeschool.

My daughter has been learning more advanced homemaking skills for the past year, as she is more involved in the management of the home. One of the electives for high school is home economics, which includes cooking, baking, sewing, cleaning, and taking care of children. When I was gone for several weeks last month, my daughter managed the home perfectly, cooking meals from scratch, keeping up with the laundry, and tidying up the house. I was impressed.

My three sons also learned the basic skills of cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry before going to college, so that they would not squander their money by eating out every meal. They learned a lot of these skills through Cub Scouts when they were younger, including basic sewing skills. So home economics is good for anyone to learn.

We also did Dave Ramsey’s Foundations in Personal Finance: High School Edition for Homeschool. This personal finance course is a one semester high school course that has DVD’s and a workbook, where you learn all the basic financial skills to manage money well, including staying out of debt and budgeting. It goes really well with a homemaking course, since it includes skills needed to run a home.

stuffed-bell-peppers

One of the homemaking materials we loved was The Homemaker’s Journal: Practical Instruction for the Keeper at Home. It’s an online PDF, which we printed and had spiral bound. It’s a simple e-book that has information on how to maintain a home. It’s not curriculum, though. But if it was the only book you had, along with teaching the practical skills beside you, that would be enough for a home economics course. Not everything has to have written tests. PE doesn’t, for example. Most practical skills are learned best through hands-on learning.

However, there is something charming about a proper curriculum for home economics that has vocabulary, instruction, and quizzes and tests on the information. I found that in the Home Economics high school elective from Christian Light Education. There are 10 workbooks that teach all the skills for maintaining a home. We did not do all the workbooks, but instead, we did whatever we wanted. We spent 2-3 hours a day on homemaking this year, and we used a lot of materials, not just this set. So we flipped through the workbooks and did whichever ones we needed. For example, we did not do the health workbook because I had already done a full year of high school health from Apologia several years ago.

We loved the Introduction to the Kitchen workbook from this set. I flip through some of the pages in this video, so that you can see why we liked it:

There are many black and white sketches and illustrations to show hazards in the kitchen, for example. When my daughter tried to pick out the hazards, we were both laughing hysterically because some of the things, she would never have done instinctively, but other things, she was learning for the first time. We had many conversations we would not have had if we had never gone through these homemaking materials.

We also used another e-book called The Kitchen Primer: A First Textbook on Cooking & Keeping a Proper Kitchen by Martha Greene. We liked it a lot, but it is much more expensive than The Homemaker’s Journal, and most of it is recipes. So in the video, I show this, and I explain how you can use a basic Betty Crocker Cookbook as a textbook for cooking and baking.

We also went through a mother-daughter devotional called Beyond Beautiful Girlhood Plus Companion Guide, where we answered the questions aloud instead of writing it down. It took us a full year to get through the book, even though it only has 7 chapters. We did a little bit most mornings before doing anything else. I loved how the questions were often a springboard for deep conversations with my daughter that deepened our mother-daughter bond. And it had to do with homemaking.

I don’t know if I mentioned the fact that we didn’t write in any of the books or workbooks, but that we went through them together. I love the fact that my daughter now knows how to run a home way more effectively than I ever did at her age! My husband snapped a picture of my daughter’s stuffed bell peppers she made from scratch while I was gone on a two-week road trip. I was delighted to come home to a clean house with laundry all caught up and put away. Home economics is definitely worth teaching your teens!

5 Ways to Homeschool Without Stress

Wednesday, February 24th, 2021

homeschool-without-stress

What are some ways to homeschool without stress, or to at least reduce the amount of stress we experience as homeschool moms? Today we are going to cover 5 simple things you can do to make your homeschooling a lot more pleasant and a lot less stressful.

5 Ways to Homeschool Without Stress

This is a collaboration with other homeschool moms who can be found in the playlist under this YouTube video:

Here are the top 5 ways to homeschool without stress:

1. Pray about what you are supposed to be doing, and drop anything you’re not supposed to be doing. The best time to do this is in the summer before the new school year. Make sure you also focus on character qualities that will make your homeschooling easier, and ask God how to grow in those areas. Ask Him what you should be teaching your kids, or if you need to switch programs with a specific kid who is struggling.

2. Prioritize what has to be done, so that you are doing those first each day, so that everything after that point is gravy. That might mean doing at least a math lesson before being done for the day on hard days. Other important things might include listening to Scripture on audio while eating breakfast, so that you at least accomplished something during the day. This gives a sense of satisfaction that you are not a failure, but that you’ve cut back just for the day, so that you can rest and be refreshed to do better the next day.

3. Have a time during the day that is quiet. If you have babies and toddlers, you can put them down for a nap. If not, have silent reading time or a quiet activity for the kids to do on their beds. All kids can learn to be quiet for an hour or an hour and a half. Noise pollution drains everyone, especially parents, and we re-charge with silence.

4. Simplify other areas of your life, like meal planning. Make simple meals. Make two meals at one time and then freeze one of them, or swap a meal with another family to not have to cook the next night. Simplify other chores like doing a load of laundry each day at a certain time, or clean bathrooms on Fridays so you don’t have to wonder how long it’s been since you’ve cleaned the bathroom.

5. Do more homeschooling outdoors to de-stress. There is something relaxing about the outdoors.

Hopefully by applying these tips, you will reduce the amount of stress in your homeschool.