Trying to keep up with housework, paying bills, cooking, etc. is the hard part of homeschooling for me. Forget that I was never good at these things even when I wasn’t homeschooling…so now it’s much worse.
I’m trying to add little things, one at a time, until I get it all mastered! (if God allows that many days on the earth, I’m not sure?!? 120 years it says in Genesis…not sure I’ll make it 
) Maybe mastered is too strong a word…until it becomes more of a habit.
So here are a couple of things that have helped me:
First thing is having the kids help. This year I changed my list of chores in for just “Room for the Week.” I have one child that has kitchen, one for the front bathroom, and one for the living room. These are the most lived in areas! There job is to help keep it cleaned and picked up all week. They also have to keep up their rooms and help with their own laundry (not wash, but take dirty clothes to laundry room and fold and put up). This is much easier for me to remember who has what and not have to always refer to a list.
I’ve tried the flylady a couple of times. I still am not a full-fledged flylady…but she has some great advice on keeping organized. Best advice from her that I got…give up perfection! If you wait until you have time to mop the floor and do it perfectly…then it never gets done. So why not do a little here and a little there…at least it’s semi-clean most all the time. Hope that makes some sense–probably should read and check it out yourself. She even has some tips gathered for homeschool moms here.
Planning meals has helped as well. I’ve never been good at planning and cooking so I’m trying to do a better job about it and it has been nice to have so many meals at home. Getting everyone to eat home-cooked food is another challenge we have yet to master! Menus4Moms has been a help in trying new things, the recipes seem to be regular food that at least a few in my family will eat. Check the website and sign up for their weekly menu–it’s free! Another thing that is nice is when I just double my recipes and put half in the freezer to eat in a few weeks. I haven’t done a lot of that, but when I do it is so nice to have that in the freezer on busy days. And I found this nice article from the same website that I thought was great.
I love your “Room for the Week” Idea! I am going to steal this idea and use it here with my children.
Great blog you have here and the article that you linked to is really helpful.
Planning meals has definitely helped us with time and money management. So has placing a large basket in each room. When the clutter gets to me, I tell the kids to throw everything in the basket. Every other day, we get one of the baskets and go through the house placing everything back where it belongs.
I wish my husband could grasp letting go of perfection. I’ve never been particularly good at all this balancing housework stuff, but it gets discouraging when I spend the day trying to get things neat for him and it never is quite good enough.
He seems to be realizing that perfection is probably not a reasonable expectation…and has seen how much time he spends running in circles trying to maintain the “perfect” house when I am gone for a bit even though the kids are pretty good and like to help. And he isn’t trying to homeschool on top of it : ) But when he is already feeling grumpy from being up all hours with the railroad, it always comes out as some complaint about the house.
Enough whining from me…I didn’t mean to go on quite that much : )