Organizing, Day 1-3

Recently, I ordered a book that has changed my life......for the last three days anyway. It's called Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider of simplemom.net:




It's full of great information on how to simplify, organize and just plain enjoy the simpler things in life while letting go of the stress our "stuff" causes us. Tuesday, I began tackling one room at a time using her clearly defined steps to declutter and make beautiful. She includes wonderful homemade recipes for all-purpose cleaner, furniture polish and much more.

Most of you know, I am a fairly uncluttered person, but it is amazing how much we have accrued since moving to our current home (we "accrued" two more kiddos as well :-)!). It feels good to get the motivation back for simpler days around here.

The family room was my first project, I then moved on to the living room and yesterday tackled the kitchen. I am happy to report every drawer, every cupboard, every nook and cranny has been thoroughly cleaned and organized. In fact, I was able to condense my armoire and china hutch into just the amoire, so the hutch can be sold in this spring's garage sale!

I love that Tsh has you take on one room at a time with such clear direction, it has helped to keep me from biting off more than I can chew. Her plan is for ten days, but our house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, school room, living room, family room and the dreaded basement will probably take twelve if I want to be thorough. When there are seven people living under one roof it makes for a lot of "stuff"!

Here are few shots of the kitchen yesterday after I unloaded all of the cupboards and pantry (sooo glad Randy was on shift!):

I finished at eleven last night, so there are no "after" pictures yet. My plan each day has basically been school with the kids in the morning, lunch, Addie down for a nap, kids to quiet time and I spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning the chosen room for the day. I break to make dinner, do dishes and take care of bedtime with kids (Randy has been on shift most nights this week, otherwise we work together on this)and pick up where I left off until the room is completed. The kids have been super helpful and have been excited about getting rid of things.....we'll see if that attitude remains when it's their room's turn!

Today (Day 4) is the laundry room and downstairs bathroom, so I should finish pretty early and get a jump start on the next room. The basement. The mother load of toys, I'm sure I will need a couple of days down there.

Tsh has written a lovely book I'm so glad I found. One small note though, Tsh has younger children (kindergarten and under), so if you're like me and have older kids (especially kids schooling at home) you'll need to come up with some creative ideas for scheduling your day beyond the toddler years, but she has lots of helpful tips that will get your creative juices flowing! Thanks for the great book Tsh!

Grace Based Parenting, a book review.

Before we left for Wisconsin, I came across a parenting book that intrigued me, Grace Based Parenting by Dr. Tim Kimmel. I was so happy to find our library had a copy and was able to take it with me so I had some reading material on vacation.

Wow.

Can I just say this is the most compelling parenting book I ever read. Ever.

It's one those books you just dive right into and any person that crosses your path while you are reading it will probably be read a paragraph or two. They do look at you like you've lost it, but inside you know you've finally found it!

It's not a book that contains precise formulas and methods for raising your kids. It doesn't give you a check list of do's and don'ts. It doesn't instantly transform you into the world's best parent. What it does do is open your eyes to God's infinite love for each of us, for His amazing grace that He continually pours out on us and His everlasting mercy that not one of us deserves.

And yet, it is there for you and for me, totally free of charge. And, it is there for us to shower upon our children so they too can know Him. Dr. Kimmel reasons that Christianity in our culture today is so often simply a checklist of being good or bad (I imagined santa's naughty or nice list) that kids grow up and don't have any real or meaningful relationship with their Maker. They only know, "If I do this, it's bad. If I do this, it's good."

He begins the book describing many styles of parenting and points out that most are fear-based. That one hit me lie a brick as I know a lot of my parenting tends to lean that direction. He also listed three driving inner needs that children are born with:

1. A need for security
2. A need for significance
3. A need for strength

These three needs are in turn met by love, purpose and hope.

"If we've done our job adequately, our children should leave our homes with a love that is secure, a purpose that is significant, and a hope that is strong." (p.25)

Here are a few of my other favorite passages:

"The proof that any model of parenting is effective is not how the parents and children get along. It isn't even how well they treat and respect each other after they are all grown up. Even nonreligious families can accomplish this. The real test of a parenting model is how well equipped the children are to move into adulthood as vital members of the human race. Notice I didn't say "as vital members of the Christian community." We need to have kids that can be sent off to the most hostile universities, toil in the greediest work environments, and raise their families in the most hedonistic communities and yet not be the least bit intimidated by their surroundings. Furthermore, they need to be engaged in the lives of people in their culture, gracefully representing Christ's love inside these desperate surroundings." (P.9)

"You may not want to hear this, but raising safe Christian kids is a spiritual disaster in the making. Your effort will produce shallow faith and wimpy believers. Kids raised in an environment that stresses safety are on track to be evangelical pushovers. They will tend to end up either overly critical of the world system to the point where they won't want anything to do with people in the world system-an idea that comes directly from Satan's playbook. Or, they will become naive about the world system, which ultimately makes them putty in Satan's hands. He chews up these kinds of people like they are spiritual McNuggets and swallows them whole. When they're finally confronted with the full thrust of the world system as young adults, few know how to turn it into an opportunity for spiritual impact. (p.113)

"Raising children in evangelical hideaways and creating a spiritual Disneyland works directly against the development of an empowered relationship with Christ. If anything, safe Christianity isn't about a relationship with Jesus Christ; it's about a relationship with a Western, middle-class caricature of Jesus Christ. It's an option that the majority of Christian parents around the world (especially the Third World) wouldn't consider for their children because it isn't even a remote possibility. Raising safe Christian kids is as much a product of middle to upper-class wealth as it is anything else. Putting it bluntly, the reason parents choose to raise their children in highly protected spiritual enclaves is because they can afford to." (p.117)

And I could go on and on. Buy the book, whether you have children or not, you will be amazed and what you get out of it. Check out Dr. Kimmel's website here.