There are often times in our life that seem full of extra activity, or we become aware of a particular need in our family and that becomes our particular focus. These are seasons in our life and instead of trying to do it all, adding these things to an already full life, we need to cut it down to just the basics.

1. Know your objective for this season
2. Identify the key things that are needed to make things tick in your home
   • What are the nonnegotiables in your children’s routine?
   • What are the important household chores?
   • What things maintain a peaceful atmosphere in your home?

Basic Parenting

Know what maintains order in your child’s life. No project, no activity is worth chaos. The retraining that needs to happen after a period of chaos is always bigger than the effort to maintain things day by day.

• maintain the standard of obedience
• maintain a semblance of routine – even if it is just meal times and rest/nap times
• maintain healthy food choices

Basic Homeschooling

Many of these seasons of life that we see as interruptions are actually full of learning opportunities for our children. But, making the most of these learning opportunities is where the parent comes into it. We don’t need to create a lesson plan for every learning opportunity but we do need to ensure that our children take in what is happening around them.

• be intentional about talking together
• involve the children in the planning and decision making if possible
• encourage the children to record their days – a blog, a photo, an email, a notebook page

Basic Homemaking

The KISS principle (Keep it Simple Sweetheart) is never more applicable than how we deal with housework in times of extra activity.

• Laundry
• Dishes, and
• Cooking

are the three basic things that have to happen to maintain a healthy family through these times. You may have one or two other tasks that are important to you – for me it is a clean floor – this means things get picked up and I sweep daily. If these simple tasks are all that happen in our family home for a week or two, it will be okay. We may need to schedule in some catch up time – the ironing pile won’t stop growing, the dust won’t stop appearing but it all doesn’t have to be dealt with now.

Basic Social Life

It does depend on your personality but there can be a tendency not to look closely at our social life and we keep this going at a frantic pace when other things are being added to our schedule as well. We need to look seriously at the commitments we make, and especially during these times of particular focus we need to choose to do only the things that are in keeping with our specific goals for this season.

So next time you feel things overwhelming you – consider the basics – and know that this is for just a season.

Over to you:

What does ‘the basics’ look like for you?  They may be different than mine…