I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and I really hope it speaks to someone out there.

I often get convicted of my poor use of time at home. Yes, I homeschool but my children are young so that doesn’t really take but about two or three hours of my day. The fact that I am home pretty much all day, every day, means there is absolutely no excuse for having three or four loads of clean laundry piled on my bed when Josh gets home at 5:30 or 6:00pm. There’s no excuse for dust that I could write my name in on my living room furniture. Or how about a nasty kitchen floor that desperately needs mopping but I just can’t seem to get it done until the weekend?? It would be one thing if I had a baby (or two) that required much of my attention, but I don’t. My children are at a wonderful stage in life where they are very much self-sufficient in day-to-day tasks and even complete several chores of their own in a daily and weekly basis.

I began to think about how we (stay-at-home moms) can get all bent out of shape because our husbands don’t do much around the house, or we constantly have to remind them about the trash, or “could you please put your laundry IN the laundry basket”?? Then I thought about Josh’s job and the amount of stress he is often under due to deadlines and increasing work loads.  I imagine him coming home from a nine hour day at the office and saying, “Hey babe, I really need you to respond to these client emails for me and wrap up this project from earlier in the week.”  My response would likely be, “Are you crazy?  You’re at work 40-50 hours a week.  Why can’t you get it done in that amount of time at the office?  What do you do all day?  Watch a movie?  Check your facebook?  Blog?  Play outside with your friends?” Of course this is a huge exaggeration but there are certainly days when I do those things.  I wonder if my husband ever gets tired of seeing laundry baskets in our room, or digging through them in the morning to find clean jeans or socks?  Because the reality is, it doesn’t take me that long to complete my laundry chores.  If I do laundry two days a week and finish it to completion, it’s not a huge task.  Or, what if I began waking up a little earlier so I can do some of the mundane things like clean mirrors, counter tops, or dust before anyone else wakes up….and it would take me all of five or ten minutes.

On Monday I decided to stretch myself a bit.  I wanted to see just how much I could get done if I simply went from one task to the next without stopping to read or sit at the computer.  It was amazing how much I accomplished.  It’s Thursday, but here is what I can remember:

*made four loaves of bread, which should last us for three to four weeks.

*changed the sheets on the boys beds

*two and a half hours of school work with the boys including a sweet devotional time and presentation preparation for Tuesday.

*put nursery reminders in the mail

*Sam’s Club for fruit and Tractor Supply for oyster shells for the chickens

*cleaned out the chicken coop (yuck.)

*put dinner in the crock pot (southern living slow cooker meatloaf….Yum!)

*managed to tidy every room in the house before Josh got home.

It was wonderful.  And I think about the many things I’d like to do today:

*clean out the fridge and freezer

*clean out the pantry in the kitchen

*laundry (yep, it never ends does it??)

*once again, clean out the chicken coop

*change the sheets on my bed

*straighten the book shelves in the office

That’s not too much for one day at home!  And the advantage of Thursdays are that Josh has worship rehearsal at church tonight so I have all the way to 9pm to get the house looking (and smelling!) spiffy!

So that’s my little challenge for you stay-at-home moms.  What are you doing with your time; each and every minute?  Is our use of time honoring to God?  Does it give Him glory and praise for the privilege of staying home with our children?  Just a few thoughts.

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I’ve been making these sneaky little smoothies for my kids for about two weeks now and I’m thrilled that they have never walked in on my making them or the cat would be out of the bag!!  As I tried to think of ways to get more whole food nutrition into their diet, a friend suggested green smoothies.  I laughed as I tried to picture my kids sipping green goop out of a straw with a smile on their faces.  Ha!  But, she said if I’d just add a small handful of blueberries, the smoothie would always be purple and never green.  It works!  They request these smoothies each and every day and so far they’ve gone through two large boxes of spinach in about ten days.  Raw.  In their smoothies!  Here was yesterday’s smoothie.  There is no recipe.  Simply add what you have.  Frozen blueberries are great because they make the whole smoothie cold and turn the green into purple.

First, I fill the blender half way up with spinach.

Then I start adding fruit. Bananas first:

Then frozen strawberries:

Blueberries:

And finally some crushed pineapple:

The finished masterpiece, loaded with nutrition! Mommy gets the small glass of whatever is left after I pour the kids’ cups.

Give it a try!

~audrey

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2011 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.