Working out the kinks

Any suggestions from folks out there on how they keep on top of all that they need to do to keep a large family with small children running smoothly? Oh, and get them educated, too?

I can tell that some of my recent feelings of floundering are coming from a decided lack of organization. I have made efforts to do a few little schedules up this evening, though I admit I am terrible at following a moment by moment daily schedule. I am terrible at follow-through on many things in my life, and that is a personal weakness that I am working on and will continue to work on as long as I live here on earth, no doubt. But I would like to get a better handle on things around here.

I have mastered the laundry schedule, finally (which is no small task... so I'm really quite pleased with that one!). But I am really woefully inept at meal planning and chore scheduling. I am pretty good at getting my kids interested and learning each day, but I can't say it's because of my great school planning skills. I think much of my daily energy goes into figuring out things to do on the fly, especially with the younger set. I just put most of my thought into the first grade stuff for Punky, and the little guys just kind of float, or I pull out a quiet activity like play dough or diggers and rice. I do follow Sonlight for much of what we learn, but I still just pull stuff as we go through the day.

I dream of setting aside an evening each week and really planning out what we do for the week, so I have activities for all four of my children at any given point in the school week. Is that a reasonable goal?

But, for tonight, I feel pretty accomplished after having made a weekly schedule for Finny's occupational therapy activities. I'm supposed to have him doing some sort of sensory activity every two hours or so every day. And I have failed at that daily since we started it all before the holidays. So I hope that I can at least stick to this and maybe our days will feel a bit more smooth. I also got a little chart of an extra daily chore for myself. I do the daily stuff - kitchen cleaning, picking up, laundry, meals, all that stuff. But the bigger things like bathrooms and keeping our master bedroom clean tend to fall by the wayside. So we'll see if one bigger chore each day is doable.

It must be something about my baby getting closer to a year. I seem to recall getting back on schedule when Goose was closing in on one, too. Girly Pie is still not even nine months old, so she's not coming right up on her birthday, but as this second half of her first year of life winds down, I realize how much grace I have given myself over the past year (because of course I was less diligent as my pregnancy came to an end, too). Now, I can honestly say that I do not regret a moment of the "slack" time I've had. All that slacking in schedules and chores went mostly to welcoming our newest family member and spending as much time as possible with each of my children as we grew accustomed to that one new little soul in the house. I made a conscious effort to spend time daily just staring at her new little face, memorizing her features and soaking up all those fleeting but precious little newborn moments. I really tried to make time for Goose even though it was easier many days to just let him do his own thing. I put in the time to read the really memorable books with Punky and Finny, even if they were happy to play off together without me - I didn't want to lose touch with them.

So no, I did not get as much done this past year as I might have planned. But I got a ton of things done that really, in the long run, were much more important and worthwhile.

But still, this first year of life as a family of six is winding down, and I realize that it is indeed time to get in gear and step up my expectations of myself. I have memorized Girly Pie's features by now, and she's crawling and into everything, so I do not need to set aside so much time in the day to just sit and stare at her. She's going to bed at a very reasonable hour so I have free hands every evening now, so there is no excuse to just waste away all my evenings puttering and relaxing. I really can get practical things accomplished in the few hours between the kids' bedtime and my own. I can still get the fun stuff done, as well as push myself just a bit more in the down moments to get something useful done.

So, off I go to wrap up an evening of planning and plotting. Any suggestions for nice daily home managing techniques would be greatly appreciated. I love seeing how others do things and finding ways to tweak them to fit my own needs.