So now that you are convinced that “delighting in the dailies” will help you accomplish your goals, how do you get them started (and keep them going) during the initial stages—when there isn’t a lot of fruit to show for your efforts, and you are convinced some day that you should just forget making dinner and go play solitaire or buy some sort of farm equipment (on the computer…lol)?

Here are some tips for learning to truly “delight in the dailies” and make those dailies a long-term reality in your home:

1. Start out with a few of the very most important dailies—and make these things happen every day for a couple of weeks.

(See “Delighting in the Dailies—Part I of II” here.)

Don’t make a huge dailies list and wake up on Monday morning assuming that the magic list will all happen on that day. At times, my “dailies” (not including the children’s daily chores) could be thirty tasks long. If you are not used to doing certain things every day, this can be very overwhelming.

There are two ways to start tackling your dailies (which will eventually lead to your delighting in them):

a. Start with the four or five most important dailies for yourself and one or two per child and tackle these. Attach them to something that you already do every day (get up in the morning, eat breakfast, eat lunch, etc.). And start carrying them out over and over again. Once this is going well, add more. See my post about making a change a week or a change a month here.

b. Start with the first thing in the morning—and do your morning dailies only (for everyone in the family). (You might do others, but focus on making sure the morning ones are done consistently.) I often give the advice that when you want to change the way your days are going, start with the first hour of the day. Get this hour looking exactly like you want it to look (constantly!). Then move on to the next hour, etc. I personally like this approach because I love to make my day great by getting my morning started right.

2. Find someone who “delights in her dailies” and get a vision for this way of life from her.

Believe it or not, I actually knew several moms (either in person or through seminars/conventions) who were “delighting in their dailies” as many as thirty years ago! And this prompted me to make this a way of life. I could see the fruit of their daily disciplines, and I wanted that in my home as well. A well-run home is a beautiful thing, and we older moms need to teach and help younger moms learn these vital skills.

3. Believe in the daily approach to life.

Additionally, as an incremental type of teacher, I knew that “precept upon precept” and “line upon line” was the way that my children would master their subjects—and that incremental learning comes through dailies. I also knew from past experience that skipping things that needed done all the time in favor of things that either didn’t HAVE to be done or things that needed done less frequently didn’t work.

I had to believe in this approach in order to really carry it out. If you are waning in your ability to carry this out, make a list of all of the benefits to doing the dailies on your list (i.e. new reader will blossom through daily reading aloud to Mom, no more five o’clock scrambles for dinner, etc.). Pull this list out to help you “believe” when your faith is weak (and, once again, Farmville is calling!).

4. Notice the fruit (the real fruit!).

After a very short while, you will notice that something (or more than one thing) you have developed as a daily in your life is REALLY benefiting your family. Note this! If your struggling mathematician suddenly knows his x8’s because math drill became a daily for him, you have some juicy fruit! If your husband happily puts on his clean dress shirts in the morning (instead of the former morning clothing scramble!), then you have fruit. If you don’t dread four o’clock any more but actually sit down and read online articles for a while until sweet angels wake up from their naps, you have an entire fruit bowl! Notice it. Enjoy it. And realize that this fruit is there because you learned to delight in your dailies.

5. Believe that these dailies are truly the most important parts of your ministry to your family right now.

Anybody can swoop in and be a hero once or do something big here and there—and those have the potential to be ministries to your family too. However, when we understand and truly believe that what we do when we get up first thing in the morning is truly a ministry to our family, we will look at our dalies differently.

I know there are entire books written about the ministry of magic of motherhood. And they are right. But we have to do more than believe it in theory. We have to have it deep within us that when we consistently cook with our ten year old every day for lunch, we are doing God’s work. We have to breathe it in, take it in, and know it at that moment. When we lie down at the end of the day, we have to feel, believe, and KNOW that we have fulfilled an amazing calling on our life that day—because we did our dailies, God’s task list for us at this time in our lives.

6. Realize that you have accomplished a great thing.

Have you ever heard about the research for mastery in life? Some studies show that it takes repeating an action ten thousand times to become accomplished in it. Just look at each time that you do something (plan the next meal, do a reading lesson with a child, reach out to your preteen’s heart) as a step towards mastery. It really works. You will become so good at the things that you do over and over and over again!

It is rare to find a “work-at-home” mom who can juggle really well. How many times have you personally heard someone say that she could never do what you are doing—that she couldn’t spend all day with her kids or that she wouldn’t have the motivation that you have or that she can’t get organized without the structure of employment? What we are trying to do here—manage a home well, educate our children, and spend all day every day with kids—is not easy to do. If you continue to improve yourself as a home manager and a homeschooler, year after year, you will get more and more accomplished—and you will soon realize that you have done something very rare and very great.

7. But don’t get smug! 🙂

After delighting in your dailies for a while, and continuing to add more and more important dailies into your life, you will be amazed at the skills you have. Bask in that. It is such a great feeling to delight in your dailies. Such an awesome peace that comes with knowing that you are doing—day in and day out—what you are supposed to be doing. Actually, this feeling alone is enough to keep you going. (While I don’t advocate in living on feelings, there is a calm and peace that comes with doing what you are supposed to be doing—and THAT is a great feeling!) So enjoy it…but don’t be smug! Soon there will be someone else who wants you to help her learn to “delight in her dailies”—and you will be just the gal to do it!

In the meantime, here are some places to learn more about my beloved “Dailies”:

1) Short blog post: Dishes, Trash, Laundry Twice a Day

2) Short blog post on “after the Dailies”: Timely Tasks & ABC Weeklies

3) Video With Outline: Following Through on the Dailies

4) Video With Outline–How I Found My Dailies

Hope these help! Blessings to you as you seek to prioritize your life, school, and home!

The post Delighting in the Dailies—Part II of II appeared first on Character Ink.

Twenty-five years ago when I was a young mother, housewife, and homeschooler, I had trouble getting all of my work done every day–while teaching a young son to read, keeping a curious preschooler out of everything, taking care of a toddler, nursing a baby, etc. Truly the statement “the days are long but the years are short” was never more real to me.

I had problems that many people who are “self employed” have–plus the added “benefits” of having a lot of littles around making messes and needing seemingly-constant attention. (I really do think they are benefits–but when a man is self-employed, he usually doesn’t have to take care of a home, feed a crew, and provide constant care and supervision to little kids! He just, well, works!)

The greatest problem that those of us who are self employed and/or homeschoolers and/or housewives with littles is that of prioritizing. The second greatest is motivation. Why clean this up when it is just going to become a mess again in thirty minutes? Why fix a hot meal….three hours later, I will need to start another hot meal!

I have found many ways to get the motivation needed to make it through those days of many littles and lots of homeschooling needs–but that would take a book to explain, so for today, I would like to address the concept of prioritizing.

When I had little kids, I loved creating systems–toy storage systems, closet organization, bookshelf perfection. These were things, however, that should not have been high on the priority list. The priority list needed to include daily work, like dishes, laundry, meal preps, child cleansing, reading lessons, and unit studies. Not systems!

My husband would come home at the end of the work day, and I would take him by the hand and lead him through the house, making a path through clean laundry, unbathed children in pj’s, and stacks of dishes, to show him the toy shelves with all of the toys sorted into baby wipe containers with picture labels on each shelf so that the kids could put the toys onto the right shelves. It didn’t even dawn on me that I should have done dishes and laundry BEFORE doing those amazing toy shelves.

After he saw my prize-winning shelves, Ray would roll up his sleeves (literally) and dig in to help bail me out from my day of misplaced priorities. We would get the dishes and laundry done; he would call me “closet lady” –and then we would often repeat the cycle again in a few days. 

As we added more children to our home (and more kids in school), it became obvious that I could not continue to put contact paper on every box that came in the house and hand make labels with bright magic markers. Something had to give–and it was then that I came up with the solution to all of our laundry and dish (and trash!) problems:

Treat laundry, dishes, and trash just like brushing my teeth. I brush my teeth at least twice a day (sometimes three or four if I eat something spicy or I am going out in the evening). And I began doing the same with dishes, laundry, and trash. 

We still adhere to the below schedule twenty-five years later–though I have seldom done this daily work once the two oldest children could handle these tasks, about ages ten and seven–the youngest child or two of the family who can handle the work has always done the daily tasks (so that we more, um, accomplished kids and parents can do harder jobs, like cooking, shopping, cleaning out freezers, weekly bathroom cleaning, discipling teens, mentoring young adults, teaching fractions, organizing closets (!), etc.).


                    TWICE A DAY LAUNDRY, DISHES, and TRASH TASKS

Bedtime: (1) Run the dishes from the evening in the dishwasher

 (2) Put laundry from earlier in the dryer (“fold ups” only; we have always done hang ups in the moment, moving it before it spins out and hanging it up when it is nearly dry so that we don’t have to iron)

3) Start another load in the washer before sleeping

Morning: (1) Unload dishwasher and put away any big dishes that were drying on the counter after last night’s dinner

(2) Fold and put away laundry in the dryer

(3) Move washer load from washer to dryer and dry it

(4) Gather trash all over the house in the big bag out of the kitchen trash can and take it all out; replace bag

Noontime: (1) Do second load of laundry in dryer (fold and put away)

(2) Start tonight’s first load of laundry in washer

(3) Load dishes from breakfast, lunch, snacks, and cooking and run dishwasher

Evening chores: (1) Unload daytime dishes

(2) Load dinner and dinner prep dishes

(3) Bag kitchen trash again and take it out (we only gather from everywhere else once a day, in the morning)

This assumes chore sessions are in place. Even if you do not have good chore sessions right now, you can start with a five minute session before or after each meal and get laundry and dishes done then (even if it is just you doing them). Four five minute sessions can keep everything up if you have a dishwasher. (Note that we do a load or two of “hang ups” in another chore session in addition to that twice-daily laundry schedule. “Hang up” laundry is a weekly chore, separate from the daily laundry.)

When I didn’t have a dishwasher, I still kept this same routine, but I just kept hot sudsy water in the sink all day (reviving it as needed) and washed dishes and put them in the drying rack as I had them, definitely at least after each meal, but I (or a child) would often run out and wash a sinkful here and there.

Doesn’t TWICE A DAY for each chore (fully done–trash, laundry, and dishes) and twenty total minutes of work a day sound completely doable??? It is! You can do this!

Twice a day–just like brushing your teeth!

The post Laundry, Dishes, Trash–Twice a Day Forever! appeared first on Character Ink.

Take a look at what we do below—and contact us to learn more!

“Raising Kids With Character” Christian parenting seminar—available in four, six, eight, or ten session formats! For churches, parenting classes, homeschool groups, conventions, and more!

Ray and Donna enjoy helping homeschoolers with parenting, marriage, homeschooling, language arts, writing, family life, and more!

Ray, Donna, and Joshua enjoy speaking to groups at homeschooling conventions and have over fifty topics to choose from, including fathers, mothers, parenting from toddlers to teens, character training, how to teach (reading, writing, English, speech, debate, history, literature, and more), study skills, home management, marriage, reaching your children’s hearts, organizing, and much more!

Donna explains her three writing and language arts programs at homeschool conventions: Character Quality Language Arts, Meaningful Composition, and Really Writing (ebooks–coming out fall/winter 2014/2015).

Ray and Donna enjoy speaking together in their “Raising Kids With Character” parenting seminar (for Christian parents) as well as at homeschooling conventions and their homeschooling workshops.

Ray and Donna Reish, directors and founders of Character Ink, write, speak, and teach at their “cottage classes” to test Donna’s books, parenting seminars, small groups, and homeschooling workshops.

Joshua enjoys writing new Meaningful Composition books with Donna, teaching over one hundred “cottage class” students each semester, and speaking at homeschooling conventions with his parents or on his own. Check out his speaking topics and cottage class offerings!

Ray and Donna enjoy helping parents raise and reach the hearts of their teens in their homeschooling workshops (“Reaching the Heart of Your Teen,” “Homeschooling Through High School,” “What Your Teen Needs From You,” “What Your Wife and Children Need,” and more!) as well as in their “Raising Kids With Character” parenting seminar (non-homeschool-specific or homeschool-specific version).

Meaningful Composition, our composition-only Christian writing series, covers grades two through twelve (see specific titles for availability) and teaches students how to write using Character Ink’s “Directed Writing Approach.” Check out our two week samples to see how your student can learn to write well—and enjoy the process!

Character Ink’s writing methods, from our “Directed Writing Approach” to our signature “Checklist Challenge” for editing papers to our “Overview Source Method” for research writing, will have your student writing amazing papers in no time! Check out our Character Quality Language Arts samples, our Meaningful Composition samples, and our new Really Writing ebooks (non-religious shorter writing books)!

Our Christian parenting book, The Well-Trained Heart, explains how we discovered a heart-training method for raising children, while instilling character qualities into their lives. Check out our first chapter!

Character Quality Language Arts (CQLA) is our anchor homeschool product. Four levels of books, covering grades two through twelve, each 1200 to 1500 page work-text provides all of your student’s language arts needs (copy work, vocabulary, spelling, editing, outlining, writing, grammar, usage, dictation, and more) in one book!

Ray and Donna love to speak to married couples about the parallels of ballroom dancing and marriage in their sessions called “Dancing With Your Star–Insights From the Dance of the Ballroom to the Dance of Marriage”!

Students engage in lively discussions in many of Joshua’s “cottage classes,” including literature, world history, US history, economics, government, apologetics, speech, and debate.

In Character Ink’s “Cottage Classes,” Ray, Donna, and their assistants teach up to two hundred students in four locations each semester—from complete CQLA classes (all language arts) to writing to high school sciences and many high school social studies (taught by Joshua with his own syllabus and materials). Check out the class descriptions and registrations forms for upcoming classes!

Character Ink materials use our signature “Directed Writing Approach” method for teaching writing. No more questions about what to write, how to write, or when to write. From Brainstorming Boxes through our Checklist Challenge, we leave nothing to chance when it comes to teaching students how to write!

Contact us to enroll students in cottage classes; order our products; book a speaker for your event; or host a parenting or language arts/writing seminar!

Character Ink

11120 Aboite Center Road0-450-

Fort Wayne, IN 46814

260 450 7063

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