Latest / The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler / After 25 Years as a Homemaker, I Wish I’d Known This From the Start

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After 25 Years as a Homemaker, I Wish I’d Known This From the Start · The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler

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I used to think that there was a planner that I just hadn't quite found yet, one
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that would finally make everything click.
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My house would stay clean, meals would be planned, laundry would never pile up again
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Somehow with the perfect planner, I would never feel like I was
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forgetting something all the time.
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So I kept searching.
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I got a new planner, tried a new checklist, made a prettier
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layout, installed a better system
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I was convinced that if I could just find the right planner, it would
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solve all my homemaking problems.
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But after 25 years of homemaking, I've realized something that I wish
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someone had told me from the beginning.
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Of course, someone might have, but I just didn't believe them.
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Let me tell you, believe me, no planner will ever run your home.
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The women who seem to have it all together aren't using a magical planner
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that you just haven't discovered.
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They have learned how to make good decisions quickly for
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their family and for their week.
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That's the skill that I was missing, and that might be the
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skill that you are missing also.
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So today, instead of searching for perfect planners, I spend about 30
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minutes each week reviewing what's actually happening in my home and making
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a few simple notes on paper to myself.
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And that one habit has done more for my homemaking than any planner
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I have ever bought or made.
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So in this video, I'm gonna show you why the search for the perfect planner was
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the thing keeping me stuck, and what a weekly review does that no planner can.
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This simple 30-minute habit helps me run my home with far less
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stress, and I want the same for you.
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Hi, I'm Misty Winkler, and you have found the Christian homemaking
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podcast, Simply Convivial
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I'm a homemaker, homeschool mom of five, grandma of two, and author of
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Simplified Organization: Learn to Love What Must Be Done, as well as Home is for
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Hospitality: I want to help you learn the skills that it takes to build the home
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that you always wanted as a cheerful, productive Christian mom And the habit
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that we're gonna talk about today is key to any other habit system or routine
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that you might think will be the magic
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If you don't have this in place, probably none of those other things
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are going to have near the payoff that you actually want and can have.
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So grab a basket of laundry to fold and let's dig in
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Now, I am not against planners.
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I've used them, I've designed methods about them, I've made some
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of my own printable templates, I've taught women how to plan.
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I wrote a book on how to plan.
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How to Use a Planner Without Wasting Time, that's the book.
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But here's the thing, a planner is only paper.
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It holds information.
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It provides you prompts.
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It makes your weekly responsibilities easier to see.
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That's its job.
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It cannot understand your family It's not going to tell you which child
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needs a little bit more attention.
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It doesn't know that Wednesday looks open, but is emotionally
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or practically overloaded.
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Your planner doesn't know that your house needs a little bit
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extra in the cleaning department.
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It doesn't know that maybe you need a quiet week this week, or that your focus
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is hospitality preparation for next week I have to know these things for
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my planner to reflect that back to me.
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And the only way that I can know those things about myself and my home and
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my family and my week is by remaining engaged, by actually having and
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keeping an appointment with myself to recognize those needs in the household.
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After raising and homeschooling five children, managing a home through
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many seasons, writing books, running a business, I have found that the
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most useful planning practice is not finding a planner with all
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the right fill-in-the-blank spots.
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A planner is not a comprehensive system, but a 30-minute weekly review
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with an up-to-date calendar and a few notes to myself works no matter
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what those notes are written on.
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If it's daily planning where things tend to fall apart for you, then you
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need to check out my free workshop, From Overwhelmed to Organized: The One Practice
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That Changes Everything, where I will teach you the daily card practice that
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I use to decide what matters every day.
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The link is in the description below, or you can go to
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simplyconvivial.com/organized,
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simplyconvivial.com/organized
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For that on-demand free training.
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Now, for this weekly review though, let's begin with the mistake that made
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planning so much harder than it needed to be for me, and then I'll share my light
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bulb moment that helped me to pivot, and then I'll share the weekly practice
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that will make any planner actually work
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You see, when I was hunting for the right planner, making my own checklists,
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browsing Etsy or Amazon, asking friends what they used, going to the office
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supply store and flipping through all their options, I assumed that
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the planner contained the answers.
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It has all the things.
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I knew that I wanted one that had the little water drops to fill in to make
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sure I was drinking enough water.
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Some also had sleep tracking.
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Some have habit tracking for three habits or five habits or 10 habits.
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Some have lists.
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Some have categorized lists.
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Some have really no space for lists, just blocks for days of the week.
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I wanted to be able to fill in the blanks presented to me on that page, and then
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that would mean that I had a plan, right?
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I wanted the planner to tell me what it took to run a home But no checklist really
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ever seemed to apply in my real life.
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It would look great on paper, But Monday would say change out the
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kitchen towels, which I'd actually just done the day before because
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there was a disaster that required all the towels, so I'd changed them out.
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Did I still really need to?
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Those kind of adjustments just kept snowballing and made me question
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a scheduled system altogether It's so easy to treat a planner like
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a fill-in-the-blank worksheet, where as long as we put the right
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information in the blank provided for us, we're gonna get a good grade.
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But a planner is not a test or a quiz for your life
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Life doesn't just roll on the same every week.
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Some weeks the laundry is double what it is other weeks, and so
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your plan to do one load every day might work most of the time.
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It might work 50% of the time You might assume that one load of laundry
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a day sounds great, like that's plenty, and then come to find out
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that your household actually needs two loads of laundry most days
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and when we find that out, we often don't just roll with it and adjust our plans.
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We assume all of our plans are broken, and we need to start over again from
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scratch, maybe by finding another planner, maybe by creating a whole new
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custom planner or routine or schedule for ourselves where we can predict ahead
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of time what we will need in the future to have everything come out even Steven
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But a well-run home is not produced by completing the correct worksheet.
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That's not how homes work
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A well-run home is produced through attention, good
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judgment, action, and adjustment.
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These are skills that we can increase and grow in continually
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And we really can't outsource any of these skills to someone else, and
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definitely not to a piece of paper.
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You can use paper to support yourself in remembering the skills and exercising
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the skills, but it always comes down to our own engagement as the homemaker
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and so what I saw after many years of planner hunting and planner trial and
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error, is that once I stopped expecting the planner to solve my homemaking
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problems, I began seeing the real work more clearly and just jumping in
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Good homemaking, a well-run home, depends on noticing what our
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own family needs in each season.
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Engagement means looking at what's really happening right now in real
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life, paying close attention to the details and the facts, but also to
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what's happening underneath the surface.
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What obligations are on this week's calendar?
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Where are the pressure points in my life or my husband's life
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or my kid's life right now?
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Which meals need to be simple this week, and where do we have a little
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bit more bandwidth for something fun?
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What preparation step would prevent so much unnecessary stress?
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Which responsibilities really do have to happen this week,
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and which can legitimately wait?
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No planner company can answer those questions for us.
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The answers change from week to week, especially as children grow, schedules
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shift, and family needs develop.
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A system that works in one season can become completely unrealistic in another.
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So being engaged means that I stop asking, "What does the
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planner say I should do next?"
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And start asking, "What would help this household function well
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today, this week, right now?"
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Paying attention to our own real life is not some preliminary step before planning.
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It is the heart of homemaking.
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Wisdom, exercising wisdom and prudence requires observing actual
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conditions and applying ourselves faithfully in those circumstances.
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I can't manage a home well if I'm detached from its actual needs.
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So a pre-printed page might give me categories to consider, but I still
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have to be attentive and engaged to my own reality, to my own interpretation
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of what's going on in our household.
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And that ability to interpret and apply well is where the
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real value lies in making a plan
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And the weekly review gives me a regular place to do that work of
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bringing my attention and engagement and then giving myself some notes,
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which is all a plan really is, so that
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I don't have to carry those decisions and all those details in my head all week
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long But I can make some key decisions up front that help me roll and adjust and
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give my family what they need each week.
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So a weekly review is about 30 minutes of focused attention that prevents
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a week full of repeated thoughts, confusion and procrastination
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Here's what it looks like for me.
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Once a week, I sit down with my calendar and my planner.
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I do â¦ I'm currently using a pre-printed planner
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It's where I write my notes to myself.
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I make sure that my calendar is current.
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I look at appointments, commitments, travel time, deadlines, family activities.
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I notice which days are more full and plan easy dinners on those I identify things
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that require preparation on my part, like leading a book club, and then look
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at where that's gonna fit in the week.
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I think through meals, I write down reminders to myself, and that's
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really the core of the practice.
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I'm not trying to schedule out or predict every hour of my week.
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I'm clearing away avoidable surprises.
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There are always gonna be surprises, but there are also avoidable surprises, and
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the weekly review is what prevents those.
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I'm making notes to my future self while I have enough perspective
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to see things more clearly.
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So the weekly review works because it brings together
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information and clear thinking
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The calendar shows where my time's actually going this week.
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My notes and my lists record what I need to remember.
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I write things down right away, and then you have to look at what
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you write down for it to work.
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And then my attention in those 30 minutes connects these two things,
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where my time is committed and where, and what work I need to do.
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And the result there is not a perfectly choreographed plan for the week.
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It is actually just self-preparedness.
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I'm prepared enough to make the coming week feel significantly more
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manageable, to be significantly more manageable, because I've taken just
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a little bit of time to think about it, to make some upfront decisions
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that will smooth the path for making the right choice in the moment.
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And because of this simple review, I don't need a specialized planner.
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I don't need weekly review prompts in my planner.
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Let's talk about what we really do need in our planners or what we should be writing
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down in a spiral notebook, which totally counts as a planner, or maybe just a
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simple blank sheet of paper on a clipboard
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Now side note, this same principle applies to the daily card as well.
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It's not the format of the card, it's in stopping long enough to decide
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what matters and then write that down.
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You can use a notebook for your planner.
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You can use an index card.
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You can use a blank page.
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You can use a Post-It note.
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It's the practice, not the template, that reduces mental load.
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So right now we're talking about the weekly perspective, but if daily
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priorities are where things fall apart, then I teach an entire daily
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card process in my free workshop, Overwhelmed to Organized: The One
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Practice that Changes Everything.
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You can find it at simplyconvivial.com/organized.
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The link is also in the episode description.
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But for your weekly review, all you need is a calendar and a place to
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write things down This simple tool keeps the focus on thinking rather
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than on maintaining the system.
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And so it's not so much the planner, it is just writing things down.