Latest / The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler / Why Your Homemaking Systems Feel Like a Straitjacket (And What to Do Instead)

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Why Your Homemaking Systems Feel Like a Straitjacket (And What to Do Instead) · The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Christian homemaking podcast, Simply Convivial.
• 0:04
  I'm Misty Winkler, and I help moms beat back overwhelm and
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  perfectionism and learn to love what must be done around their home
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  Today I have a clip for you from a live paid workshop that I
• 0:20
  recently did called From Chaos to Consistency: Your 90-Minute Reset.
• 0:27
  In this workshop, we went over establishing four frameworks that will
• 0:32
  help us make some pre-made decisions so that our average days at home
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  flow more smoothly, and we have more bandwidth to handle incoming life
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  This was a 90-minute workshop, but I wanted to share a small clip with you
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  from it on what consistency really means and why we are so stressed out
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  about our lives and what might make us think that our homes are chaotic
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  So grab a basket of laundry to fold and let's dig in
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  Speaker: But what does your current chaos state look like?
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  Which is really a, a diagnosis prompt for what are you calling chaos?
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  And this is a good tip if you are able to, to actually write this down.
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  Your what's coming to mind, what are the circumstances, what's, what are the facts
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  around you that prove or that are what you call chaos in your life right now?
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  You know, maybe everything's cluttered.
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  Maybe most days it's 5:00 and you don't know what's for dinner.
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  Um, maybe you wake up and you aren't sure what you should be
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  doing today, what's happening
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  Oh, thank you, Betsy, for sharing.
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  Not knowing what's for dinner, can't walk through the living room, lost my
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  to-do list, and my head is spinning in circles stressing about something,
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  and I don't feel like doing anything because I'm not in control of my life.
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  Thank you, Betsy.
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  That is pretty much a good description of a normal mom chaos feeling because, um
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  OK。 My head is spinning in circles stressing about something.
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  And that really is the core of chaos is not the mess, it is the clutter in
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  our own heads, and it is that sensation of just spinning mentally through,
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  like trying to remember, trying to process, trying to figure things out,
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  but like losing the plot and not being able to complete whatever process it
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  is you're trying to figure out because you're just looping or ruminating,
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  and your thoughts are not productive.
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  And then that causes us to feel more easily stressed, more on the
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  edge, where we are then not as mentally or emotionally available
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  to handle life as it happens, right?
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  The kid's interruption then becomes a threat because we are trying to
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  hold this thread in our head that can't be interrupted, and so then
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  we snap, and we're frustrated.
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  Um, or noise in the house where things are disordered, confusing, aimless.
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  A lot of that is originating in our thoughts.
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  So these, you know, systems that we are going to put in place today are less
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  about, you know, installing a program in our life that will suddenly make
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  everything run smoothly, and it's more about- Getting a mental handle on our
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  life so that we can handle adjusting things on the fly, handle people
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  interrupting us, handle the noise.
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  We don't have to eliminate the children interrupting us.
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  As long as we are mentally and emotionally available for them, it's not
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  gonna even feel like an interruption.
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  Part of the reason it feels like an interruption is because of
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  what's going on in our head.
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  So we need to get stuff onto paper and recognize that we have a lot
• 4:36
  more control, and probably we're even exercising more control than we realize.
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  We just need to get some decisions made in advance and use them to free
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  up our mental energy to be available, and that, that mental energy to be
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  available is what we're lacking.
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  That's what's going to make a difference.
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  It's not really these different pieces we're going to put together.
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  It's that having these pieces in place, these planning systems in place, allows us
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  to open up- mental availability to life.
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  And then when we have that availability, that openness,
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  We're more calm, we're more available, we're less stressed out, then we can
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  take these systems that we're putting down on paper and not woodenly apply
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  them, but flex and adapt depending on the day, and the people, and
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  the circumstances in the moment.
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  Because consistency does not mean doing the exact same thing every
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  day, or even the exact same thing across a week, where every Monday
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  is this, every Tuesday is that.
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  And if anything doesn't happen on that day, or doesn't happen at
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  the same time that it was supposed to, then we're inconsistent.
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  That is, that kind of, um, definition of consistency is thinking
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  of ourselves and our lives as machines, and we are not machines.
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  And our home is not gonna run like a machine.
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  Our home should run like a home for people, for building up people.
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  Uh, homemaking and mothering is a caretaking job.
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  Caretakers come in and respond to the needs in front of them.
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  They don't come in and make everything run like clockwork.
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  So as homemakers, we are caretakers, not engineers.
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  Instead, these are thinking exercises that then free up our bandwidth to be available
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  caretakers to our home and our people.
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  So we wanna make sure and come at these systems with that proper mindset.
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  All right, so we are going to make some decisions ahead of time, but
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  these systems are not straitjackets that you're putting yourself into.
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  These are tools you are setting up for yourself to use.
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  That means if you use them, they will get dirty, they will have
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  to be sharpened and adjusted.
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  Um, they, things will happen when they're actually used.
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  So it's not that we set up systems and then we conform ourselves to the system.
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  What we're doing is making some decisions ahead of time to open
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  up our mental bandwidth and then be able to adjust those decisions
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  that we made on the fly depending on how our actual life turned out.
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  So we're setting up tools for ourself, not really structures even for ourself
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  if, if, 'cause a structure doesn't give.
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  Something, something is wrong with a structure if it gives.
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  But if a tool chips or needs sharpening or gets out of alignment, that happens
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  when it is used heavily, and so that's the kind of thing that we're setting up here.
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  All right.
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  So the first system then is your calendar.
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  And that's it for this episode of the Christian Homemaking
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  Podcast, Simply Convivial.
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  If you want to participate in this reset and work through the four structures
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  Setting up your calendar and time budget
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  A 15-minute morning and evening routine
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  basic personal habits of prayer, Bible reading, and actual book
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  reading, and a meal strategy
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  then you can still get this workshop on demand as a replay.
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  Just go to simplyconvivial.com/reset.
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  That's simplyconvivial.com/reset
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  it will help you to repent, rejoice, repeat