None of us are given unlimited days on planet earth. It may be shocking to realize that a person who is 70 years old has only lived 25,500 days.That’s not a lot.Each day is precious, so I try not to be wasteful with my time. I try and put as much meaning in every hour as I can.One way I do this is to use blocks.Hi there, dear mommies, this is Sherry Hayes. I’m the interesting mom of 15 children who’s been homeschooling for over 36 years and I love sharing something that will add to your life.So, grab something to do, such as sorting through the piles of junk mail, and listen as we dive into the good life in Jesus!As I have discussed before in the introduction to this series on being seriously organized:I am the wife of one energetic, but retired, man; the mother of 15 children, the mother-in-law of eight spouses, and the grandmother of 20 grandchildren.All of these people need me in one way or another, even if only via concern and prayer, in different ways and at different times.Almost none of their needs are consistent or predictable. Their schedules are mostly erratic, and their needs vary according to age, availability, proximity, etc. And none of these variables are within my control.To sum things up: I rarely have an uneventful day.My life is like a flowing log drive; I am simply being carried along with the current, jumping from one log to another.However, there are areas which God has helped me build plans and routines, and I am sharing a few of them with you today.Also, as I stated before:I don’t share these things without a caveat.The caveat is this: These are the routines God has helped me create for my specific life situation.I suggest you take them more as an example or an inspiration, but never as direct application. If you do, you will end up a nail-biter, because you will have skipped the most vital part; relationship with Jesus.Walking with God, no matter how crazy that my look, is the fastest way to efficiency on our mission to love others and bring His Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven.Any other way may bring about some worldly goal, but that goal may in turn lead people to hell. (The concentration camps in Nazi Germany were a model of efficiency.)Thank God, I’ll never be that successful at organizing my life.Today we are going to be tackling three areas of serious organizing:* Time blocking* Creating daily focus areas* CentralizingWhat do I mean when I say “blocks”?These are the natural spans of time in a day naturally suited for certain tasks.For instance, when I had young children at home it was natural to think of early mornings as time to spruce up for the day. Later in the morning we might think of making breakfast and doing morning chores, or having the “active” part of the morning. Then the hours before, during, and just after lunch were better for concentrated learning.The early afternoon was a spent in quiet and rest, and after this is I would send the youngest outside to expel their energy while some of us were getting the dinner ready.After dinner clean-up was family time, then nighttime routines and bed.Blocks are good because they:Keep things tidier.If we know we are supposed to be doing chores in the early morning hours, we can keep the school books put up. Then, when the chores are done, we can put away the cleaning supplies and appliances in their proper place to make room for the schoolbooks.Later, when it’s time to rest, we can put the school books away and tidy for the afternoon.When we don’t have boundaries like these set up, everything gets jumbled together in one chaotic mess!They help us have better focus.When we know we are only concentrating on one thing at a time, we can zoom in and concentrate.They give security to children.I’ll never forget the line in a movie where a young man, after drowing up in a dysfunctional, drug addict riddled neighborhood said he joined the army so he could know when dinner time was.There is so much in a child’s life that is new and unfamiliar. Knowing what time they can expect dinner, learning time, play time, and family time gives them some continuity and helps them feel more secure.When children feel secure, they are much less likely to experience emotional melt-downs and do bad things to get attention.They give security to adults.There is something comforting and restful about knowing what comes next in my day. No matter if my actual time schedule is thrown off, knowing that the next block of time will be for cooking, eating, and cleaning keeps me on track and allows me to use my brain for higher things, such as how to write this podcast script...Now, on to creating daily focuses.As I suggested in a past podcast, I have split up my home into zones, such as a kitchen/dining room zone, and then I assign each of these zones a day in which I focus on this particular area.This may mean I have a weekly, monthly, or yearly day when I spend my time and energy in that space.In older times, the focus days sometimes looked like this:* Sunday—Sabbath Day* Monday—Cleaning Day* Tuesday—Laundry Day* Wednesday—Hobby Day* Thursday—Shopping Day* Friday—Business Day* Saturday—Family DayHere is an example of how I assign my weekly focus areas:* Mondays are for extra cleaning in my kitchen and working on my online presence.* Tuesdays we work on the master suite and bathrooms.* Wednesdays are devoted to the basement and the laundry room.* Thursdays the focus is on putting away the laundry. This is the day I have set aside for online consulting or getting together with people outside the home.* Fridays are for cleaning the house generally for Saturday, then having some fun.* Saturdays are for resting and relaxing with my husband; a sabbath unto the Lord when I also enjoy fellowship with other believers (no, I’m not a Seventh Day Adventist—more on my denominational stance another time).* Sundays are when I have a loose schedule but try and catch up in any areas which have been missed throughout the week in preparation for the next week.Please note that there are a whole bunch of other things going on these days, such as helping with school work, shuffling people around, and regular cooking and cleaning.Thankfully, my dear husband takes care of the yards and the cars, unless there is something special I am aching to do.Also, when I get a bit of extra time I try and fit in a special project in each of the areas mentioned, such as cleaning out the fridge-door shelves and labeling them, which is something I did last week.Now, let’s discuss the idea of centralizing.What is centralizing? Well, it’s a variation on the theme of “a place for everything and everything in its place,” only with a slightly different emphasis.It started many years ago, when we lived in a huge house with lots of bedrooms and loads of shoes, socks, hats, scarves, coats, etc.The job of sorting out all of these items and putting them away in everyone’s rooms after an outing was so difficult that it never got done, which meant the next time we went out it took hours to find everything we needed.So, I came up with the idea of putting each type of thing in a centralized place.* For socks, we had a bin in the hall closet upstairs.* For shoes we had a space in the bottom of the front coat closet.* Coats were hung in that front closet.* Hats, gloves, and scarves were stored in bins on the top shelf of that closet.This is the system we used for over 17 years, and the system we modified slightly and still use today, only now I have two three-drawer storage units in the bottom of our coat closet, one for socks sorted into dark, white, and colored, and the other for scarves, hats, and gloves.Although we had four separate bathrooms at that time, we had one place to keep medicines and extra personal hygiene supplies. I even had a centralized place for hairbrushes and barrettes (remember, we have 11 girls).Some large families have used this principle to create a “family closet,” where all of the clothes are hung together to make laundry easier. We used a form of this for our last four little girls when we had a walk-in closet in our bedroom. The bottom clothing rack on one side was dedicated to their tiny outfits (we hang all of our clothing up on hangers except for pj’s and underwear).On each of our three floors I kept a centralized place for baby needs as well. How I miss caring for all of those tiny ones—our 15th baby is 16 now!My lifestyle of serious organization is based on the Biblical idea expressed in this verse:A man’s heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.Proverbs 16:9In case you were wondering, this does not mean that I never make plans or build routines. I could not live without these great helpers.There are two distinctives which make these part of my serious organizational lifestyle:* I allow God to help me build these plans and routines so that they flow with His plans.* I allow these plans and routines to be rerouted or forgotten altogether whenever is necessary, and I accept this with grace and expectation that God is going to help me keep on top of the log flow anyways.If you just stumbled upon this podcast, I hope you will take the time to watch the foundational recording which explains the scope and purpose of this series. You will find it linked in the description.In the future we will be covering even more portions of how I organized in a serious way, including creating stations and flows and purging.Until then, be sure and enjoy the freebies and other things on my website, momdelights.com, as well as on my Substack as Mom Delights.If you are interested, I have produced a planner which includes places for just about everything a large family mom would need. It is undated, which means it won’t be wasted even if you get off track for a while. I’ll put the link in the description below.Of course, there are lots of other things you can purchase which I have produced on Amazon which are helpful and, hopefully pretty as well. You will find those links below as well.Hope this has blessed you, have a great day in Jesus! Bye, bye.👉 Visit momdelights.com Here's the link to the planner on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3X8RAcR I'm trying out Substack. 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