Latest / The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler / How I Built a Home Routine That Doesn't Rely on Schedules

Transcript

How I Built a Home Routine That Doesn't Rely on Schedules · The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler

0:00
For years, I thought that a good home routine required
0:05
a detailed cleaning schedule
0:08
bathrooms on Monday, dusting on Tuesday, laundry on Wednesday.
0:14
And not just the overall task on that day, but a detailed checklist
0:19
for what needed to be dusted, what needed to be cleaned in the bathroom.
0:24
And then every day, I would just do that checklist.
0:28
I'd have a rotating list of monthly tasks, seasonal chores, deep cleaning
0:34
The problem was that my house never cooperated with my schedule.
0:41
We had a kitchen disaster on bathroom day
0:44
The clutter exploded in the entryway during bedroom week, and the
0:49
entryway didn't even have a day.
0:51
Laundry always piles up every day
0:56
And then every time I missed the assigned day, I felt behind
1:00
So I stopped trying to use a schedule for every household task,
1:06
and instead have built a routine around three simple time containers.
1:13
They don't hold everything, but the secret is they hold enough
1:20
to make more containers later.
1:22
I'll explain that at the end.
1:24
The three containers are 15 minutes in the morning and evening, we're counting that
1:29
as one container, 20 minutes working in one zone, and one 10-minute transformation
1:37
I'll show you how these basic routines work, why they adapt better than a rigid
1:43
cleaning schedule, and how they can help you keep your house humming without
1:48
turning homemaker into a system where we're supposed to run it like machines
1:54
This routine allows me to pay attention to my actual home and my actual life,
2:02
and so I wanna share it with you too
2:04
Hi, I'm Misty Winkler, and you've found the Christian homemaking
2:07
podcast, Simply Convivial.
2:10
I'm a wife of 25 years, homeschooling mom of five, and grandma
2:16
I'm also author of the book Simplified Organization: Learn
2:19
to Love What Must Be Done
2:21
If practical Christian homemaking without perfection or overwhelm
2:26
sounds useful to you, then subscribe.
2:29
I talk here every week about building home systems, about building home
2:34
routines that support real family life and effective Christian living
2:40
So grab a basket of laundry to fold and let's talk cleaning schedules
2:47
The reality is that family life does not use the home in a scheduled kind
2:54
of fashion You never can tell which day which rooms are going to be most messy
3:01
And if you try to keep the whole house clean all the time, then cleaning is
3:06
really all you're going to be doing, and your children will start to feel
3:11
like little undo buttons walking around But the house exists for the children,
3:17
not the children for the house.
3:19
So we need to have a way of managing the house and managing the mess that
3:24
does not make us feel constantly behind, but that helps us be attentive
3:29
and engaged to, with our real life.
3:33
And that's what this system has helped me do
3:37
with a 15-minute morning and evening routine, 20 minutes in one zone, and
3:43
a transformation 10, where I take care of something that's bothering me.
3:48
With these three containers in place, I'm actually freer to take care of
3:56
other emergencies and problem places that pop up that can't be taken
4:01
care of inside of these containers.
4:03
These three containers, these three routines allow me to keep
4:08
the house at a base functional level, and they free me up.
4:13
They open me up to being available to take care of other home
4:19
projects that get on my radar
4:22
Okay, so let's start with the morning and evening routine.
4:25
The real trick with the morning and evening routine is that
4:28
each one is only 15 minutes.
4:32
There is always more than 15 minutes of cleaning that could be done
4:37
in the morning or the evening.
4:40
We're not saying clean the whole kitchen and end the day with a clean kitchen.
4:45
We're saying spend 15 minutes cleaning up after dinner.
4:49
What's done gets done, and you count it as done.
4:53
You don't keep working and working and working until you say,
4:57
"Well, that's good enough now."
4:59
Because who says what's good enough?
5:02
Some days good enough is gonna feel like not much, And some days good
5:07
enough doesn't come until we have spent an hour scrubbing the kitchen down.
5:14
We can't rely on our feelings to determine what we're gonna do each day.
5:19
We have to be able to trust that we will take care of the basics
5:25
no matter what, and that no matter what is more likely to come when
5:30
we limit ourselves to 15 minutes.
5:33
We can do 15 minutes no matter what kind of day it is no matter how tired
5:38
we are And the other key that happens when we limit our routine to 15 minutes,
5:45
we end up choosing the items that give us the biggest bang for our buck.
5:51
We wanna choose the tasks that will really make a difference in how
5:55
functional our home is for its job, which is helping the people that live
6:02
in the house develop and flourish
6:05
So if you have only 15 minutes, you're not gonna rearrange
6:09
bookshelves or alphabetize your spices
6:13
You're not gonna be wiping down drawers and cupboards.
6:16
You're gonna be making sure the dishes are done, and the main workhorse
6:22
surfaces are decluttered and wiped down.
6:26
And because you only have 15 minutes, you're probably gonna work faster
6:31
than if you told yourself that you had to work until it was done Because
6:35
when we think that we have as much time as we need, we work more slowly.
6:41
We dawdle And so giving ourselves only 15 minutes is a real key
6:47
To getting the important things done quickly.
6:50
And we practice them day after day, we again get faster and faster 'cause we're
6:56
doing the same things again and again.
6:59
So you might have more work that needs to happen in the morning or the evening
7:04
than fits into 15 minutes, but still, even so, whether or not you do all those
7:11
other things or anything else, choose a 15-minute morning and evening routine
7:17
and practice that no matter what, and the other stuff will fall into place.
7:23
I'll explain more about how it falls into place at the end of this video.
7:26
After you have your morning and evening routine locked in
7:30
You're going to choose one zone for each day of the week.
7:36
Not Sunday, of course.
7:37
Sunday is our day of rest.
7:39
But every other day gets some zone, and that might be a room,
7:44
but it might also be a theme.
7:47
Like Saturday for me is the day that I make sure the groceries are put
7:51
away and start a few meal prep items.
7:55
I might make sure we have granola made.
7:58
I might
7:59
straighten up the pantry as I put groceries away.
8:03
But in this 20-minute zone
8:06
You're not attempting to complete a predetermined checklist, because
8:13
the checklist never knows what state that zone is gonna be in.
8:17
So instead, you go into that zone, whether it's a bedroom, the living
8:24
room, the dining room, the kitchen, the laundry room, and you assess.
8:30
Given that I have 20 minutes, where should I start?
8:34
And again, this time limitation focuses, focuses us in on the reality in front of
8:42
us, and kick-starts an effective choice for the best way to spend our time We're
8:50
not outsourcing our thought process or our agency to some checklist that someone in
8:56
an office wrote down and publicized We're walking into a room and saying, "Okay,
9:04
we need to put things in their place.
9:07
Okay, this room needs to be dusted," or, "This room does not need to be dusted."
9:13
We're looking and seeing what actually needs to be done in
9:17
this room to make it better.
9:20
What are, what are the most effective things you could spend the next 20
9:24
minutes on to make this room better?
9:26
And then after 20 minutes, you're done.
9:29
You're not trying to attain some level of perfection or
9:33
doneness or photo op worthiness.
9:37
You're spending 20 minutes making the room better.
9:41
Week over week, that time will build up most of the time.
9:46
Sometimes there are gonna be disasters, and you'll get set back, but it doesn't
9:50
matter because you put in your 20 minutes, and you will make progress in that area,
9:56
and you will see a significant difference
9:59
Sometimes we think we need deep cleaning schedules or checklists
10:04
because we won't get to things.
10:07
But if you spend 20 minutes in a zone once a week And you step into
10:12
that room and start paying attention.
10:15
Over time, your own awareness
10:18
zeros in on what needs to be done in your space.
10:22
And so you'll start to notice the buildup on the window trim,
10:26
and you'll just wipe it down.
10:28
And you don't need a schedule for that.
10:29
That took you two minutes out of your 20.
10:32
It's not a big deal.
10:34
You'll notice cobwebs building up some seasons but not others.
10:39
There's not a checklist that says you have to do it.
10:42
You just look around and you say, "You know what?
10:45
That needs to be done."
10:47
And the fact that you noticed that something needed to be done is the point.
10:51
Noticing that there are cobwebs is not noticing some failure of yours.
10:56
You're just noticing what to do next.
10:59
So it really changes our perception of walking into a room and noticing
11:05
something needs to be done.
11:07
We're used to walking into a room, noticing something needs to be
11:11
done, and immediately thinking, "I should have already done that.
11:16
That should have been cleaned before so that I never even
11:19
noticed that it got dirty."
11:21
Who's that?
11:21
And I know
11:23
You are the homemaker, the home manager.
11:25
You walk into a room, notice something needs to be done, and take care of it.
11:31
This is changing your own ability to handle your life and your job
11:38
And this leads us into the third and final regular daily
11:42
container, the transformation 10, which again is time limited.
11:48
This is on top of the zone.
11:50
The zones get assigned one zone per week, or depending on usage
11:56
and what works for your family.
11:58
I have kitchen on Mondays and Thursdays as a zone because the
12:02
kitchen needs that much extra attention
12:04
But then the transformation 10 is just 10 minutes on something in
12:11
your house that's bothering you.
12:13
It doesn't matter if it's the same thing that was bothering you yesterday
12:16
and you're putting another 10 minutes in that same spot, or if you took care
12:20
of it last week but now it's bothering you again, you put it on there again.
12:25
10 minutes, take care of something that's bothering you.
12:29
It doesn't matter that it's not the scheduled zone.
12:32
It doesn't matter that it's on someone else's checklist.
12:35
If it's bothering you, spend 10 minutes making it better.
12:39
And what this does, again, is changes the way that we relate to our to-do
12:44
list, and it changes the way we relate to what we are noticing around the house.
12:51
We're not noticing something's bothering us and thinking that our deep cleaning
12:55
schedule has failed, and we have to update it to add that onto it, and
13:00
then somehow predict how often it's going to bother us in the future.
13:04
We notice that it's bothering us, we take 10 minutes and make it better.
13:10
We are the kind of people that can notice something is wrong and just deal with it.
13:16
This is a change of approach, a change of perception about ourselves and our work.
13:24
And so with the 15-minute morning and evening routine that takes care of the
13:29
basics of a functioning household, and then the 20-minute zone and transformation
13:34
10 changing the way that we notice and respond to the work of our house, there's
13:40
going to be more to do in the house, but we now have this mode and this default
13:48
setting that says, "Oh, I can tackle that.
13:51
Hmm, what do I think?
13:52
30 minutes?
13:54
Maybe an extra hour on Saturday, and I will take care of that closet."
13:59
It puts us in the position to be able to handle noticing that something needs
14:05
to be done and giving it a chunk of time and making it better and moving on.
14:11
And we can do that in more containers than these basic three
14:15
And when we do, we really move into embodying our role as a
14:22
homemaker, and even come to enjoy it because we're doing it well.
14:27
We're doing it intentionally.
14:29
With agency and engagement.
14:32
We're not just machines where you insert some kind of card or program that says,
14:38
"Do all these things," we do them, and then get a uniform outcome from it.
14:44
No.
14:45
We are engaged with our real life and our real home situation,
14:51
constantly making it better
14:53
noticing our progress
14:56
and not falling behind because there's nothing to fall behind from.
15:01
There's just another day to put in our time and attention where it matters most
15:07
Another way that we can do this with our time is to use a daily card where
15:12
you pick your top three for the day.
15:14
Again, this also takes practice and a change in your thinking about your tasks.
15:20
So I have a free workshop all about that called From Overwhelmed to Organized:
15:25
The One Practice That Changes Everything.
15:27
You can find that at simplyconvivial.com/organized,
15:32
or the link is in the episode description
15:35
Whether it's planning or cleaning or just homemaking and family life in general, I
15:41
wanna help you to repent, rejoice, repeat