Latest / The Rooted Family / Ep 36 | Our Family Rhythms Aren't Working Anymore— How We're Reworking Our Week (Part Two)

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Ep 36 | Our Family Rhythms Aren't Working Anymore— How We're Reworking Our Week (Part Two) · The Rooted Family

• Christian Cornish: I think that's the point of rhythms. Yeah. They create more margin for us to do the things we really care about. I think you make a great point. It's really no different than when you budget for your home life. if you look and you're like, I'm spending more than I bring in. Or spending all that I'm bringing in. You can't sustain that. It's not going to work. Yeah. And our our time is really no different. And so rhythms are a way to create margin. within the time you have. We're making space for what matters most. Hey friends! What's going on? Welcome back to the Rooted Family Podcast for episode 36. Wow, 36 already? Isn't that crazy? It's actually really crazy. It's amazing because we set a goal at the beginning of this year that we wanted to hit episode 50 by the end of the year. And we are on track to doing that. That's exciting. I'm really proud of us. I am too, in all honesty. Yeah. There's been a lot of random things that have come up or you know, times apart because of medical things that were unexpected and there are a lot of reasons we could have gave up by now, for sure. Yeah. And I think we intentionally made space for this because it was something we've been dreaming about having a podcast for years and really feeling led to do so. But it really required us to make actual space for recording. Yeah. And making space to record when you have seven young children, it can seem impossible sometimes. I think that it's pretty cool that we've been consistent with this. And it's a good lead in actually to what we're talking about today because this is actually part two to our episode last week, episode thirty-five. On how we are reworking our rhythms in this new season of our family and our marriage. And if you haven't listened to last week's episode, we would encourage you to pause this one and go back and do that because that first part is going to give you actually those first steps that you need to rework your rhythms. Yeah, reworking your rhythms is this multi-layered. Difficult process, and it's not just a a task, there's emotions attached to it, every individual person in your family has different needs, and things change. And I think we really do a great job in that last episode of addressing why things change and how the approach and the pre steps to really throwing things on the calendar are so critical to how. having a successful weekly plan. Yeah. And I think that once you start getting into building more rhythms for your family, you're gonna find that there will be seasons, whether it's like literal seasons of the year, spring into summer, summer into fall, or just seasons of your family, whether you're having a new baby or you're starting a new job or moving to a new place. And these different seasons of our family life actually are the perfect time to sit down if you're married with your spouse and really hash out what does our current life look like? And are we actually doing the right rhythms? And not just doing the right rhythms, are the rhythms that we're doing in the right places? Because oftentimes it can feel like things are just taking up space on our calendar. And we don't want to live where we're just living day to day, moment by moment, just trying to make things work when actually things are very frustrating. Things aren't working the way they used to. It's not like a well-oiled machine anymore. And so that's kind of the place that we have found ourselves in recently. We just started the new school year. We have five kids that are in a hybrid school, which is like part homeschool and part in the classroom. And then our two littles are going a few days to a Montessori style school. we just have a lot of new things happening. We have kids in new activities, new music lessons, yada yada. And so it has really felt like we have really good rhythms. It's just that these really good rhythms don't fit really well anymore. In our calendar. Yeah. we have all the right things, but we've realized they're happening at the wrong time. Yeah. At this point. Yeah. And it's been leading to a lot of stress, a level of burnout, a level of frustration. Yeah. But you can't stop and look at our week and say, Well, you can stop doing that because we're pretty basic. pretty much core rhythms at the end We're pretty simplified. And so yeah, it was just so important. You could be into rhythms for years. And I think that's what's encouraging about this episode. This might be your first time organizing your week together, or this could be ten years in. And these are still helpful practices that will allow you to thrive. in an abundant life that we get to live. And if you are brand new to rhythms, if this is like something you have not done intentionally with your family, I would say that this may not be the first place to start because this type of episode is one for someone who is already building rhythms and having rhythms in their life. If you are brand new to rhythms, you don't have one single rhythm in place. Which I guarantee if you're listening to this podcast, you have something in place. Maybe you'd never called it a rhythm before, but I can guarantee you you have some sort of foundation. But if you're starting from ground zero, I think it's important that you go back and listen to some of our other episodes, earlier episodes on just building rhythms in general. something like this might overwhelm you if you're hearing all of our rhythms, because you're essentially listening to nearly 15 years of progress. You're listening to our chapter 15 and you're on chapter one. And it's not good to compare your chapter to our chapter. And so I just want to share that as just like a little disclaimer of hey, if you're super brand new, I don't want you to feel frustrated right out of out of the gate because you're just trying to create all these rhythms, but you don't even have one Yeah. And where where this is helpful is this is kind of your your end goal. this is where you're trying to get to. Yeah. but you're absolutely right. If you try to start with all of this, you may feel very overwhelmed. Yeah. And we don't want that either. Think of it as like a toolbox, I find this analogy helpful is thinking of you're building each rhythm individually, one by one. Tackling the rhythm. And once you build this rhythm, it really becomes this very purposeful tool for your family. And essentially, five, 10 years down the road, you can you can look back and say, okay, I built this toolbox of all these tools that support our family. But you can't just jump right in and learn all the tools overnight. You have to truly take it time. Get your one rhythm. Like let's say meal planning is the one rhythm that could be very beneficial for your family in this season. And you don't have a good meal planning rhythm yet. Just take that one rhythm and smooth it out, work out the kinks. you know, focus on that rhythm until it feels very helpful and something that it's not hard anymore. And then start to build a new rhythm and fit that new rhythm into your plan. So let's review what we've already talked about because we are doing our whole process. We're just gonna have a raw conversation here about our own rhythms and kind of where we're at. And the last episode, we talked about steps one, which is making a three different lists. You're gonna list out your current rhythms or your core rhythms is what we call them. These are the rhythms that are very functional. They're rhythms that are necessary in order for your family life to thrive. And these rhythms might include like meal planning, laundry, if there's certain household chores or household projects that you do on a regular basis, washing your car, etc. Those would be like your core rhythms. You absolutely need them to function. your next list would be your nice to have rhythms. So for us in the season, I would say watching our car kind of lands in the nice to have because it's not a rhythm, unfortunately, that we need to have to function, but it definitely is nice to have a clean car. Doesn't always happen. I feel called out right now. No, I mean it's kidding. I'm kidding. No, you're right. to some you may really, really, really desire to wash your car every week. For us, it's just not feasible to squeeze that in or it's just not as high of a priority. Right. So it's a totally fair call out. I feel like the difference is like, do you need this rhythm to function? and then your third list is your ideas list. So as you and your spouse are brainstorming these three lists, new rhythm ideas might pop up. And so it's kind of nice to have a third list where you can just jot down those fun new rhythm ideas or even just rhythms that you don't currently have, but you're like, wow, we actually could really use that rhythm. So we did those three lists on the last episode, and then we encouraged you to head into the next step, Step number two is to put in your big rocks on your ideal weekly plan. And we created this plan, a worksheet for you. You can go into the description of this episode and download this for free. And it is a very simple tool, but it is so, so helpful to becoming a rooted family. It is. So we encourage you as your big step last week at the end of the episode was to go in and put in your big rocks. So your big rocks are the immovable things in your schedule. And by that we mean you are committed to them. You're going to no matter what, have to be there at these times. for example on our weekly plan, our immovable rocks would be our church time because we have one service that we can go to that has child services. another big rock is our school, like our kids' school, they do go to classroom a couple days a week, so they have to be there. And our kids are in some music lessons and orchestra. And so those are also immovable. So just to give you an example of what we mean by immovable big rocks. And then we pretty much feel like at this point of the process, all of your rhythms. For the most part, are flexible. And that's why we're doing this exercise because we want to be open-minded to moving rhythms to new places to be a better fit, if if needed. You know, I don't think this is like ditch everything that you have in place and try all brand new things. I think a good example, let's go back to the church conversation. for us, we said church was immovable because we have a large family with lots of young kids. They love going to kids time at church. There's only one option. You might be in a situation where that doesn't matter to you. Maybe you don't have children, or maybe your church has children's options and multiple services. If that's the case, I would say if you have multiple services, be open minded to Changing service times if it would serve you better or in a different way. Make that flexible so that you can really evaluate what's gonna give you the most joy and peace in this season. Totally. Yeah, and I I think there will be somebody in every relationship that tends to be a little bit more flexible than the other person. And that's something to keep in mind because obviously God designed us all very differently. We all have different strengths. And there's a strength in the person that is flexible. There's a strength in the person that is more steady and consistent. And so bring your strengths together right now. Try not to create a friction point either way here. I think that the The more flexible person can be more mindful of your spouse's desire to be more consistent. And then the spouse that is more consistent, steady desires, you know, things to not change. I would say that spouse, I would encourage you to be open-minded right now because we're gonna actually talk about one of our rhythms that we have been very, very steady with for many years and we've kept it at the same day of the week, the same time. And we are very much going back to the drawing board and saying, Hey, does this rhythm need to be moved in this season? And we started talking about this several days ago and it has taken us several days to really wrestle with this new idea of moving this rhythm I think before we jump into talking about this one big rhythm that we know we're probably gonna be moving. let's just catch you all up, listeners, so that you're on the same page with us. we are going to be jumping into step three of this process. Before we do that, we want to make sure you have the right tools in front of you. And so the same thing that we talked about last week, you need to have a weekly, ideal weekly plan. And like we said, go in the description, print that out. It's a free gift from us that we created for you. And then you're gonna need some loose leaf paper. And those you probably had last week because you did all your brainstorming of those three lists. And then your parking lot, and that's a separate sheet of paper where you're just putting random ideas that come up during this conversation, but you don't want to take the time to talk about right now. You also need some small sticky notes, and we would encourage the small size because we're gonna be moving them around on our ideal weekly plan. You're gonna need a pencil and then your family calendar or planner. And that's very important right now because you need at least some sort of idea what your current schedule is, so that we can put this together on your new weekly plan. Now you bring up a great point there because there is nothing more frustrating than going through this whole exercise and forgetting something. Uh-huh. Because it's easy to feel defeated and be like, Our whole plan has to get thrown out the window because we forgot something. And it's very easy to forget something. Yep. And I want to remind you again why we are doing this exercise. We are asking the question: are we actually making space for the things we care about? Or are things just taking up space? We're not here to create some perfect family schedule. Okay. That is not the goal right now. Christian and I are working together right now because we want to do a rhythm reset so that this next season for our family feels smooth and feels like we are truly making time and space for the things that we really care about, like the rhythms that we truly want to make happen in this season of life. So let's jump in to this week's. We're gonna finish up the process. And this week we're jumping in at step number three. And Christian, do you want to explain what we're gonna do here in step three? Yeah, so what we've done after we put in the Big rocks is the sticky note puzzle. And so the big rocks already penciled on the ideal sheet. Now it goes on these different colored sticky notes are the things that you're gonna play around with. You're gonna move it. And the reason we do that is, you know, simply because we don't wanna keep erasing and making our ideal plan totally messy and feeling frustrated about how it looks. We wanna be kind of organized and play and move things around. And so, here we've got some different colors, which you're welcome to do. we have orange for some kind of more core family time. spiritual time is kind of a component of some of these as well. I did yellow for kind of our our chores, if you will, or kind of the the administrative like things that have to get done, like meal planning. I would say these are more like functional. Them. That's a good idea. Yeah. I like that name, functional things. in green, I threw down some personal and work things that apply to just you and I. And just to clarify, these are all rhythms. Yes. Everything that we're putting on a sticky note are rhythms. And rhythms, to take it back to the basics of a rhythm, it's a few activities that take up a very specific time. Or You do them on a very specific day of the week or a day of the month. Yes. And then the last color we did was pink, which had some marriage items like time for us together, a date night. we do the marriage journal by the roll offs every week. and so this is how we chose to organize and kind of group our stickies. And you're welcome to do that any way you you'd like to, but that was just a helpful way for us to kind of organize these. so just to review, you're gonna take your small sticky notes, you're going to put one rhythm from your needs list. So we're just working with your core needs rhythms right now. We're not worrying about anything else. You're gonna put one rhythm. Her sticky note, like Christian said, you could color code them if you want by categories. And then we're gonna begin placing these sticky notes onto our ideal week that we have here printed off. what's best for us is really to start with some of the more important core rhythms, and that one that I was just talking about a couple minutes ago, the big one. That we have not touched or moved in many, many years is the Sabbath. So we have been very seriously discussing moving our Sabbath, which, if you've been listening or following us for the last few years, you know that this is probably this is a very big deal that we're even thinking about moving our Sabbath day because we've been really hardcore about kicking off our Sabbath on Friday night. And going through all day Saturday. And what's changed? Why would we consider doing this now? for us, I think Monday through Friday feels more stacked than it's ever been. And we just come into every Sabbath for the last several months completely exhausted. And instead of enjoying the Sabbath, taking delight. Feeling like it's a time where we can pause, reflect, restore. We're just kind of like surviving that day. It's just been brutal. Yeah. so just a question for you is what would make moving the Sabbath one extra day further from the week helpful? you know, I would think, okay, well, if your week is really intense Monday through Friday, you're like ready for a Sabbath Saturday. Yeah, so I would agree. And that that was true for a very long time. I think we've also gotten to the point where we get to the end of Friday and in our hearts there's all the leftover things that need to happen. Like for the house, really. Really for the home. That's a good way to put it. And for us, we go to church on Sunday. As we've talked about, our church time is 10 a.m. on Sunday. Like we have to get out the door. Service is actually at 10 30. But by the time we get back, it feels like Sunday's half over and we don't actually have enough time to take care of our home to do the necessary administrative work for our family. And now we're starting the week stressed out. And this is just personal to us. And We tried this last week for one week and I think what we just test it. Just to test it. And we took Friday night slow. We didn't work hard or anything on Friday night. We slept Friday night, actually into Saturday, but we counted the hours and we're like, wow, we can get a few extra hours for our home. And we had a lot more peace starting Sabbath on Saturday night. Mm-hmm. Because then we kind of felt like we had closure to the week. Uh-huh. And I I don't know, that was how I felt. I felt like it gave me closure to the week. I had worked in the garage all day. You had helped out in the afternoon. It was still a go go day. But man, I sat down at that dinner table that night and personally I was like joyful. Yeah. I had ended feeling like, all these things were off my shoulders. Yeah. And I just felt way more ready than I have in Probably a few months. Yeah. It's interesting 'cause, you know, we haven't been homeowners for most of our marriage. We were homeowners in North Carolina and we had that taste of what does it look like to really take care of a home. And we're currently renting, but we do treat this home like it's our home, like we really do take care of it. And so I think as we have become more in tune with home. care and those rhythmic things that you need to do to take care of a home. It really does require more than just a few hours on Sunday afternoon, which is what we have been doing, is like, okay, after church, we kind of start knocking down the to-do list. We get ready for Monday. But I think that as we get closer to wanting to own a home again, we want to make room for taking that responsibility seriously. I mean, there's no way around it. Owning a home requires a lot of somebody. And we can't really do a lot of that during the week. You know, our priority is our children. It is discipling our children. It is work. Like the the work both you and I do. It's getting sleep, it's working out, you know, these things that keep us just healthy in general. We don't really have time for bigger home projects. And I think you and I realize, like, hey, if we have all day Saturday to work on the home, whether it's like physical labor, you know, the yard, the garage, chores, or if it's truly just like you and I sitting down and having these type of conversations, we could get more time given the whole day of Saturday versus just a couple hours after church on Sunday. Yeah. So with our sticky note, what we're actually doing is playing with the time to start our Sabbath. And we've kinda gone back and forth on this because the goal is, okay, we're not giving up the Sabbath. We're not actually shortening the twenty four hour rest period. We're actually talking about moving it. So we've talked about and I'm putting the sticky right now of picking it up. I'm going to the four o'clock time block on Saturday for the moment and I'm placing it there. Why we've chosen to say four o'clock was we wanted to start on Saturday and give ourselves a little bit of a runway because we are going to church on Sunday and that doesn't always feel restful. And so we just wanted to give ourselves a couple extra hours here on Saturday. so it kind of gives us a point to aim for each week that we're gonna be complete by. we're trying to give ourselves a break still in the afternoon and then use all day Sunday for our Sabbath rest. Yeah, so let's talk about the bookends of Sabbath because we always kick off our Sabbath with some sort of formal sit-down, But then I think about wrapping up Sabbath on Sunday and we head into the week on Monday. A rhythm that we've always had on Sunday night or for a very long time have had on Sunday night is a family meeting, which we do over Sunday night dinner. Do you feel like that is still the right time, the right place for that family meeting is almost like wrapping up Sabbath with the family meeting on Sunday night around like five to six o'clock? I personally agree with you on that. I was leaning the exact same way. if you're curious about this family meeting rhythm, we talk about how it's probably the one rhythm you're missing that will make a massive impact in your family. We have a whole episode on that. so go back and check out that episode. We can link it down below in the description. Yes. And I agree with you that that is a a great way to actually end our Sabbath because now we're gonna be going into Monday and it really will continue. That value of all of us being on the same page is a large family going into the week. Yeah. I would say that's so important to us when I think about our family and how we've chosen to grow our family over the years. That is definitely a descriptor of us is like we desire so much to be on the same page, to be aligned. And we want not just you and I aligned, we want our kids to be aligned. Like we all want to be focused on the same family mission, the same values. And that really helps direct. how we choose to do some of these rhythms. Can I ask you something? When was the last time you actually felt at peace? Not just productive, not just caught up, but settled. Because most of us aren't lacking desire for a slower, deeper life, we're just stuck in the busyness that keeps us rushing right past it. That's why we created the Slow and Savor Society. It's a snail mail club. Yes, it comes straight to your mailbox. It's a simple, tangible way to slow down each month with a piece of art, a cozy recipe, and a letter designed to help you reconnect with what actually matters, with God, with your family, and with your own soul. if your life has felt full, but not meaningful. This is your invitation to begin again. You can learn more or join us at legacyrootsco.com slash Mel Club. And right now, if you use Code Podcast, you'll get 50 % off your first month so you can try it out. Now back to the episode. Hi five. Hi five. Things are going on. Making progress. Okay, so let's see. We think what other core rhythms? I think one core rhythm I would love to talk about is our current meal planning, grocery shopping rhythm. Because I am sensing in this season we are not needing to change the rhythm at all, just move the day of the rhythm. Yeah. I agree with you on that because these steps I don't think need to change. But we're going into this new season of committing to a small group is one thing on there. You've also done quite a bit in the past on Sunday around this rhythm. And now Sabbath is going to take that time that at least as of now with our sick current sticky note plan. So you're right. These components of meal planning, grocery shopping. And picking up the groceries probably will have to shift. So that's a great call out. And we broke our whole food rhythms into three separate timestamps. so we have three timestamps here. We have a meal planning timestamp. So we're what I actually sit down and plan what we're actually eating. And then a grocery shopping timestamp where I'm sitting down and loading up our online shopping cart. And then the third timestamp is when are we actually picking up the groceries, which Christian usually does, which we can talk about if that's gonna look a little different now. in the past we have been picking up groceries on Monday evening after you pick up Lila from her school. And now Lila's not going to school on Mondays. And so we don't have a need to leave the house Monday evenings. Now here's another thought. Because one thing that we both have learned over the years is that our rhythms are even though they're separate, there's still an interconnectedness to them. So let's just say, well, we used to do it Sunday. Let's just move it to Monday. I'm realizing that's not so simple because we do homeschool on Mondays and we do homeschool on Fridays. And so that creates something to make sure we don't lose sight of you could easily say, well, I'll I'll meal plan and I'll grocery shop and homeschool, like your day might feel a little overloaded if you try to do all that, plus a full load. So one thing we might want to talk about is it really feasible since we know it's flexible, but homeschooling needs to happen Monday. Can you really homeschool meal plan? And shop Mondays, or do we need to like be really open and think about different days? Yeah, one thought I had, I have two thoughts. Mm-hmm. We could either do homeschool now on Friday and Saturday. that's a good point. And leave Monday for more admin type stuff. Or we keep homeschool Friday and Mondays and we do some planning stuff on Saturday. So meal planning on Saturday. I could even do the grocery shopping in the online cart on Saturdays. Uh-huh. And then maybe we then pick up on Tuesdays. maybe we pick up groceries before after I get Darla from her school on Tuesdays. And and as you hear us talking. We don't mean to be in the nitty-gritty, it might be boring for you, but we do want you to hear how we are thinking through adjusting our rhythms. One kind of key thing we always think about is how can we stack our rhythms? So that way they can piggyback off of each other. So we have to pick up kids from school. Can we, since we're out and about already, pick up groceries? You know, we don't wanna just have loosey goosey rhythms just kinda hanging around. Yeah, I think that's a really great call out and it's important 'cause for us this is a huge change. I mean, it used to be Sunday do this stuff, Monday pick it up. And so we're talking about moving multiple days around. So it does really require us to think differently. One rhythm that I really would love to talk about is our weekly planning rhythm. You and I have our own separate rhythm where we discuss the week coming up. And we get on the same page before we then talk about it during our family meeting on Sunday night. Yeah. And I am seeing potentially an opportunity to do that maybe over coffee Saturday mornings now. You took it right off my brain. And so if you have used the marriage journal, this is a a change for us. So I'm explaining it here. We love the marriage journal tool. I think we've promoted it here several times on the podcast. That has a weekly planning component to it. We've realized for the last few months we get through the weekly plan and we were out of time. For the journal questions that you get more to the heart, you know, like it's more like heart conversation questions. We weren't getting to those. And that was really important to us. So we as a change have said we'd like to do weekly planning one time. Separate. Separate, which is what we're just putting on the sticky note right now and putting under Saturday morning over coffee. So that we can have our marriage journal rhythm. On Sabbath. On Sabbath, because that's just an enjoyable moment for us. It's it's connecting. I love this. This is looking really good. And just to remind you as a listener, we are taking our sticky notes and as we're sharing with you right now, we're actually moving these sticky notes and putting them on this ideal weekly plan so that way we can pick them up and move them around as needed. So we have a couple other rhythms to choose from. I'll let you choose the next set because to me some are equally as important. Yep. I would say let's talk about laundry. It's so funny because I posted about our laundry rhythm yesterday and I had a few people reach out and ask, how the heck are you doing laundry all in one day? the people want to know how are we doing laundry all in one day? You know, I didn't think about we're home, like working all the time. So it's not difficult for us I have a timer on my watch. I set it for like an hour and when it goes off, I just come back and flip it. Yep. And I just keep going on my day. Yes. I don't think it's even that. I think people don't understand how can we do all of our laundry or most of our laundry in one day with the size family we have. maybe we've just been doing it for so long. Yeah, it just didn't even occur to me So we split the whole concept of laundry into three rhythms. The first rhythm is washing the laundry because we can put clean laundry into baskets and it can be folded, which is a different rhythm, at a separate moment. And then the last component is to have a rhythm around when we choose to put that laundry away. Yeah. And the reason we do this is because we kind of liked having a start and end to the laundry. It can feel, especially in the big family, like laundry is never ending. I'm sure that feels like it for you. And there are some people that choose to do like a load of laundry every day. I know that's another common rhythm, which is totally great if that works for your family. I just felt personally like I didn't want to have another daily rhythm. I have so many daily rhythms. And so sometimes I like to have rhythms that just take one day of the week or a couple days of the month. And so I personally, because we're home, we work from home, I can reasonably wash most of our laundry in one whole day. And we do have other things around laundry that probably help us do that. Like for example, we have a rule that our kids cannot change their clothes during the day. But long story short, we have been washing the laundry on Wednesdays and then folding the laundry. You, Christian, have you've been folding the laundry with some of the kids Thursday nights. And then We've been putting the clothes away on Fridays. Yeah. And I would say that's been working pretty well. I would say that I don't really like the putting the laundry away on Fridays because we're so focused on homeschool and it feels like there's so much to do on Fridays already. and I don't mind washing the laundry on Wednesdays still because I am not really working on those days. So it feels good to me to wash on Wednesday. So I think we just need to talk about do we still like folding on Thursdays? And then when do we want to put the laundry away? whatever day we choose here, I think we just commit to putting it away the following day. for instance, this is the value of the sticky note. I can pick up the sticky note, I'm taking it off Thursday, I'm putting it on Wednesday evening after dinner. And then I have to put away laundry sticky in my hand. And I've see this gap after the kids get off of school where not too much is happening. Although I think we did talk about this being a work block for you, but this was an open block for this moment where I thought, what if we did it here before dinner on Thursday? Another option is we just put it away Thursday night. if we were to do it that way. Another thought is, you know, we've talked about me adjusting my work schedule. I have that opportunity. To work longer Monday through Thursday, do a half day Friday. One of my afternoon tasks could be to put that laundry away. Yeah, and then maybe we keep folding laundry on Thursday nights. So It sounds like we're gonna keep washing Wednesdays and I put the sticky there. I we put the sticky back from Wednesday for folding to Thursday, which is the value of the sticky thing, right? We get to move it around and we're gonna put putting away on Friday. And it sounds like you're gonna take that on? I'm happy to do it. And I'm actually gonna write on the sticky my name. And I think that it's good to make sure you have clarity on, you know, not only when something's happening, but if there's any thing that needs to be worked out on who owns it, that you have some clarity around who's gonna really own it. Yeah. All right, let's run through a couple more of these sticky notes that I think are important. and they're things that have been on your mind lately, especially. so let's let's talk about home administrative time. I think we've always taken these little what feels like one off tasks like, call and make this appointment real quick or schedule this thing or sit down and pay XYZ bill. and you know, when we were younger, these things were just fewer, to be honest. So we could kinda and we had less kids, we could sprinkle them in between stuff way easier. my to-do list just around home administration this week. is completely full. and so what we've come to realize is we'd really like to have a rhythm where we are setting aside an intentional time frame, even if it's 30 minutes to an hour, but where we're just focused on these And we want we wanted to call this rhythm family administration time. And we both need it because we both are managing different parts of our home. And so for me, I've actually found that after homeschool on Mondays and Fridays feel like good home admin time for me. Uh-huh. I don't know for you if you would like the Friday afternoon because you're hopefully gonna have those extra few hours open, or if you would find value in doing it on Saturdays, now like the new work day for our home. I would say I need to do it during the week. And the reason is that what did I go over my current list? There's a lot of like calling businesses, calling insurance. Yeah. Things that are business hours. Things that need to be done within a business hour. And I don't always have time during a work day to take that gap that's needed. Like today I I don't have an extra thirty to for forty five minutes to call on a bunch of refunds that I'm waiting for and then I need to call about insurance. those places won't be open on Saturday. so I love that you're throwing it on that Friday afternoon that Friday afternoon sticky time. That's great. along with that we obviously need time for our various work rhythms. Yeah, so I would say rhythms about the times that we are working together in legacy roots, you know? Yeah. again we each have things that we do, but then we also need these moments to work together. And so I think what I'm seeing and feeling as you hold that sticky in your hand is we've kind of been able to create space in this new season with kids gone a couple of days a week. We get things done quite in the quiet. We have not had time without any of our children in like two years. Multiple minimum. Yeah, minimum two years. We've always had some amount of kids at home. So now we have a couple time blocks where all seven kids are in school. And we would like to start recording our podcasts in those time blocks. Yeah. I'm I'm personally thinking about how we have some bigger rocks on Thursday in place. including Right now I'm taking a workout class for a special training for a race I'm doing. Uh-huh. So Tuesdays for me would be really good before going to pick up Darla from school, maybe. Mm-hmm. Like that eleven o'clock time frame. Okay. I'm curious, so what what do you think though? 'Cause I you have some moving pieces here. We also have a few other stickies that have some core rhythms for you and your work. Yeah. I would say Tuesday or Thursday. would feel good either of those days. So we could put it on Tuesday for now and then we can move it if we need to. So let's put podcasting there. And then my painting time, I think this is going to be something we just have to keep talking through because I need painting time for work, which I'll do during my work hours. But I also want to create a new rhythm for myself where I'm painting for fun. And I need to do that as an artist who is now a professional artist. you know, having time that I'm practicing and painting with no strings attached, essentially. So I think that's something that we can just kind of put on the side here of like, hey, we still need to find a home for that. I think we're kind of getting to the point now with our sticky notes here where we want to take you into the next step, which is similar to what we just have been doing, which is putting in a few nice rhythms. So we have just put in all of our core rhythms, which we call the necessary ones. But, you know, we made those three lists at the beginning of this exercise. And one of those lists was the nice to have and the good ideas. And so let's just take a couple of those. We don't need to hash them all out in this moment, but let's just take a few of them and put them on as sticky notes and talk about those. Like one that's coming to my mind is the big kids Bible study rhythm. as our kids are getting closer to teenage years, we really want to be intentional with kids' discipleship. We're always intentional as a group, but we want to really take out those older kids and do that. So do you have a thought on which night or time you would like to do big kids Bible study? Like one idea that that comes to mind for me is Sunday night. Right, after family meeting. Yeah, it's kind of a sweet way to end Sabbath is like with Bible study. I was thinking the same thing. one value I'm finding from the sticky note conversation is seeing the open spaces. And so another night that I just see an open space right where you're putting that sticky is Tuesday night. Or Wednesday. Actually you're moving it to Wednesday. Now I'm very open to Sunday night. I don't think Sunday is so full that it doesn't work. so again, maybe it's better because who knows what may pop up. And right now the value of an open Tuesday and an open Wednesday is the ability to say yes. Or the ability to just have nothing going on. Well, there's nothing going on most of the time, but if something comes up that we would like to say yes to. Yeah. we have open space. Somebody calls up and says, Would you two like to come play pickleball? That would be a definite yes. Yes. You know, that just brings up a good point. We did not put pickleball rhythm on our core rhythms. What is wrong with us this morning? we need more coffee. We need more coffee. This is what I'm talking about. You can forget stuff. So we're gonna pull out of this pink sticky note. We're gonna write, no, I'm kidding. But no, it's a great call. We both enjoy it's a great thought though. Yeah, but it's nice to have. It's a good idea. A good idea is pickleball rhythm. We've we enjoy playing pickleball together. Now, granted, the snow is coming very soon in Colorado. So this It's called a shovel and you shovel it off. Shovel the court? Yeah, that's what we used to have to do. I grew up in Iowa. Like it was literally snowing still when tennis season started. Uh-huh. We would go shovel the court off. Wow, you are very hardcore. So one idea is to do family game night. Yep. Which we used to kick off our Sabbath a while ago with the game night. But maybe we could make Friday night just game night. Yeah. it's almost like a break in the weekend. Yeah. Because it's we could do fun thing on Friday night, which is game night. Then we have a good work day Saturday for the house and for the family. And then we kick off Sabbath Saturday evening. It's like we kind of have sprinkled in now moments of fun and play. Yeah. And to be frank with you, one reason we stopped game night was we were coming into Sabbath so exhausted. Yeah. Right. We did not have energy to think about it. Yep. Or be like, I'm too tired to play a game right now. Like, can we just get ready for bed? Not adding the Sabbath project. prep yeah on Friday, but moving our prep to Saturday, I think is going to give us the energy for that family time on Friday. totally. And it will turn out to be a blessing in the long run. Yeah, a moment of fun. we get to just put the littles to bed, have a big kid game night. Yeah. Play some settlers of guitar. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, we have one more sticky note I want to talk about because we've not been great about date nights over the years. Yeah. Not consistent. Not consistent. and lately we've done date nights, but they're just kind of random. Like what night of the week is open. that does not mean I think we talked about this in the last episode, that doesn't mean you have to go out. Yeah. Sometimes we just stay in. Many times we just stay in. But it's a time where the kids are in bed and it's just actual space for you and I to hang out. Totally. so I definitely would don't want to lose sight of date night. we've talked about a couple things. One getting a local membership to our Hot Springs Resort, so we might want to pick a day of the week we could if we chose to Do that as our date. I have a proposal. What if we don't call it date night? We just call it date time. And we do it during Tuesday or Thursday when the kids are in school. So we don't require any babysitting for it. It would require us to move like we don't have to talk about it right now, but it would require us to move around your work schedule just a little bit, maybe create some space. But it would be kind of cool to do like a date breakfast or a date coffee or like a, you know. Time at the hot springs and then grab breakfast. I know Tuesday mornings are not good for you, but potentially Thursday mornings could be or even like a date lunch. It doesn't have to be a date breakfast, it could be a date lunch where we just go we have to eat lunch anyways. and we just take like maybe an hour before I pick up Darla from school to go to the hot springs or go have lunch. I like it. as I look over Tuesdays consistently, that definitely seems doable. I do have a lunch hour blocked off. so I could simply move when we choose to hold that lunch hour. So yeah, I'm really open to that. why don't we just put it as a parking lot idea to talk about? Because I think there's a few moving pieces we need to talk through is podcasting. We probably can't take an hour for podcasting and an hour for a date on the same day. I would not be able to do that. Right. But you also have Thursday workout. So I think that there's a few things we need to hash through And let's just put it on the parking lot as like a date lunch or date breakfast as an idea. Yeah. And we can just solidify that later. And what I'm doing, just full disclosure, because we have people listening in, because regardless, I think this exact time slot is going to get filled either with the podcasting as you discussed, or it's gonna get filled with The time, the daytime. So what I'm making sure is that the time is set aside. Yep. Going forward. And then we can choose how we're gonna fill it. Sure. That's what So I I did move it, but there's value in moving it. We can decide. So on this step, this is step four, just to remind you where we're at. This is adding a few nice rhythms in. And a few questions you can ask yourself in this step is what would genuinely add life to your family? Or what are we willing to say no to in order to make room for this? Because we don't get to add everything. You know, there's a lot of nice ideas, there's a lot of great rhythms that you might want to add, but you can't add everything. That's just not feasible. And so I think it's it's cool to be able to add one or two nice ideas. And I think the thing that you want to add should really add more joy, more peace, more fun. To your week, or something that really does help your family move forward towards your goals. And I want to remind you also about the 80% rule. this ideal weekly plan that we're making right now, it's not something that we are trying to live up to perfectly. Life happens. Like last week, our baby girl got admitted to the hospital, which unfortunately for our family is not a Abnormal. Abnormal activity. It's it's pretty normal for her. And so we have to know that there are gonna be weeks, and even for your family, where kids get sick, things get thrown off, rhythms just don't seem to work on a given day for whatever reason. And that's okay. It is. And the value that this also brings, this exercise, is I can pull this calendar or our family calendar, and when that happened. Laundry still got done on Wednesday. Uh-huh. I still was able to say, here's what I need to do. Sorry, that was like the most Midwestern op you could possibly do. but laundry still has to get done. Gotta do the laundry. But it's true. On Wednesday, I did the laundry. on Thursday I folded it as usual. Yeah. so the value is, yeah, we could we follow this 100% last week? No. But were we on the same page about How to continue the rhythms of our family so that it didn't feel like life was falling apart. It's so true. But something hard was happening. You know, this is kind of morbid, but I think it's fair to say there could be a time where one of us passes. And this is reality for some families, like a very devastating situation. Yeah. Where a young parent passes away. And I think what would be even more devastating is for the parent who is alive. To pick up the pieces, but not even know which pieces to pick up because they didn't have these rhythms in place. So if the worst case scenario happens where one of you passes away unexpectedly, the other parent with children still can look at what you and your spouse determined ahead of time would be sustainable rhythms for your family to keep life moving forward because that is the truth. And I think that let's go less morbid. Last year we were apart for eight months of the year. Not because we were truly separated, but because of our daughter who was so sick, she had to be in the hospital for months and months. And we were physically not in the same location for many months on end. And so, you know, that. That became reality and you're absolutely right. we pull this out and we work together to continue even though we were not together. Yeah. You could keep the the home life moving forward because you knew which rhythms we cared about. Which rhythms were absolutely necessary and which rhythms we could actually do without for a season. And I had the tool to move things forward so that you could be present. So you weren't calling me on Wednesday and be like, Did you wash the laundry? Yeah. It it was just done because it was already regular, it happened, you didn't have to think about it. Yeah. So we're not trying to create a perfect week. We are trying to create a sustainable week. And I hope that's what you're hearing us say today is that we're not trying to be legalistic here. We're not trying to be so rigid that we have to follow like robots, the schedule. We are trying to create sustainability so that we can go deeper as a family and be more rooted when the hard things in life happen. And these rhythms that you're putting on these sticky notes and you're putting on your calendar, they should be creating margin for you, not removing it. So if you're looking at your ideal weekly plan plan right now and you're thinking, wow, we don't have any margin. There's no white space on this calendar. I think that you gotta go back to the drawing board and you gotta rework it. Start stacking some of your rhythms, maybe say no to a few things. But I think that when you look at this weekly plan in the end, you should be able to see some margin in this plan for you to just live life, have fun, have rest, be with your family with nothing to do except just exist. I think that's the point of rhythms. Yeah. They create more margin for us to do the things we really care about. I think you make a great point. It's really no different than when you budget for your home life. if you look and you're like, I'm spending more than I bring in. Or spending all that I'm bringing in. You can't sustain that. It's not going to work. Yeah. And our our time is really no different. And so rhythms are a way to create margin. within the time you have. And I love what you've said over and over again in this conversation. We're making space for what matters most. Just like in your finances, right? Food, shelter, clothing are what matters most. we've determined what matters most and we put that on there first and we work everything else around it. Yeah, actually looking back on our session here today, we started with Sabbath. And I think anyone that knows us personally knows that we deeply care for Sabbath. again, not to be the legalist that because it it has literally changed our life. And we do live our life where Sabbath is the priority. We know that working hard and resting hard both bring bring glory to God. And I think about some of these other rhythms that we decided to put on here, like big kids' Bible study, our date night. even just meal planning and making sure our kids have nourishing meals every day, that we're not frantic about those things, just seeing what we're putting on this, you can tell what we care about by looking at these sticky notes. And I I do think that what gets missed when a family doesn't do this exercise is they miss out on the opportunity to have these very special rhythms in place. Because the reality is time gets filled. If we don't fill it intentionally, it's gonna get filled up by something, scrolling on social media, saying yes to things that we really didn't want to say yes to, just watching TV because there's nothing else to do. And what happens is we we live our life saying, I wish we would have done Sabbath, or I wish I would have discipled my kids more. I wish we would have made time for a small group or church. And we wish and we wish, but we didn't actually make Time for those things. And I think that's the true heartbreak when we don't intentionally plan our rhythms and our time. I agree with you 100%. So we're gonna leave you with some homework. Christian, do you want to share? This is step five and step six of this process. And they're very simple pieces of homework, but we're gonna do this ourselves after we get off this episode. And we would encourage you to do this because I think that if you don't do step five and six, you're gonna kind of miss out on the final piece that makes this this whole strategy work. Yeah, these pieces are all about getting it off the paper and getting it into your real life. And so step five is please put it on your real calendar. you want me to be super practical? We use Google Calendar and we will literally take this sheet of paper. We have a certain color for rhythms we use and it's on our Google calendar for these rhythms or actually in place like appointments. And we share that calendar together. I don't care what calendar you use, I don't care what colors you use, none of that is important. But definitely make sure you put it on your calendar and treat these rhythms like appointments that you would keep and that you would go to. so put them on your calendar and make them recurring events so that instead of someone should probably do that laundry on Thursday, it says laundry on Thursday. So instead of saying, Hey, let's do that family meeting sometime on Sunday night, it's on there six o'clock Sunday night. Mm-hmm. I really like the tool that Google Calendar offers where you can create reoccurring events because you don't have to do this every week. We essentially are gonna go into our Google calendar, we're gonna take these sticky notes, we're gonna set times for most of them, and then we just change the setting on that event to happens every week. And it will literally populate for as long as you want it to on your calendar and you never have to think about it again. I think the key though is looking at your calendar. Yeah, you do have to look at the calendar. and this relates to that. Step six is create the review loop. Create the opportunity where you're gonna sit back down with your spouse and evaluate these new rhythms and say, is this working? This is really, really important when you've put in new rhythms or new time slots for your rhythms. So we really we want to give our new Sabbath rhythm, for example, a try. for two to four weeks and then we're gonna decide we're not gonna give up on it. We're just gonna say, is this working? What tweaks do we need to make, if any? Okay. We split our weekly planning to Saturday morning. Do we still like that? I mean I'm looking at this and like, okay, there's definitely a few new rhythms for us or time slots things have moved to. we're gonna set up a meeting or a reminder in about three to four weeks to say, hey, we gave this everything our best shot. Is this working? Is there a layer of tweaking we need to do? Yeah. And I think that's the key is tweaking. Like we're not gonna re-haul this whole thing. We might rehaul it again in the spring in a new season, but we're just going to give this a fair shot. And a fair shot for me is really like four to six weeks because it really does take time to work out the kinks. And to get past the frustration zone, every new rhythm has a frustration time period where you're learning how to do it, your family's trying to do it, and there it's just frustrating. And so I think you got to give yourself a fair shot. And so we're gonna pick a time on our calendar where we're gonna sit down and just review this and make adjustments if needed. And in that time frame, we're gonna talk about what's working. Is there any friction here? Is there any rhythm that we're consistently skipping? That maybe we just need to say no to right now. what feels peaceful? What feels forced? What did we forget to do? Is there anything that we need to add? You know, these are the type of things we'll talk about during that review meeting. And so we're not creating a forever plan here. I hope you'd hear us say that. This is not a set in stone thing. we are creating a plan for just this current season. Yeah. But the big thing we want to make sure to leave you with is our rhythms serve us. They are not our masters. And the value, the beauty of doing this exercise and following these six steps are that you will master the rhythms. You get to master your schedule. And you don't have to be a slave to it. Yeah. And even if you're in a season where Man, maybe just to get by, you're working 60 plus hours a week. But if you do this exercise even, I promise you will turn around and say, I'm choosing to do this to be a blessing to my family. And I own my time. I'm choosing to do this to get through this hard season. And even in that difficult time, you get to change your mindset. And so I want you to hear us say that because you may say, I'm in a season where I feel like I'm a slave to my time. But do this exercise. And I promise you, you will feel like instead you're getting to serve and that this that your time is serving you. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I think the biggest key is not believing you're a victim to your life. As rooted families, we believe that. Obviously, God is the leader of our life and and ultimately he has given us free will to be responsible, to be good stewards of our time. And I really want you to see this exercise as just being a good steward of the life that God has given your family, given you. And I hope that you feel empowered by doing this this exercise, by completing these steps and taking, taking control of the things you can take control of. So thank you for being here. Thank you for taking the time to do this for your family. We believe that rooted families are are going to change the world and that God is using rooted families to truly make himself known. And so we are we are really proud of you. If you took the time to do these things, that's a really big deal. And you should really be proud of yourself. we hope to have you again. next week and we look forward to sharing more of our family strategies with you. Yes. Thank you for joining us on the Rooted Family podcast. Make sure to leave us a five-star review on whatever platform you are listening on so other families can find us and that we can be a blessing onto them. So thanks for being here and we'll see you next time. Bye