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How a 31 Day Menu Plan Makes You a Healthier, Better & Smarter Homeschool Mom + Free Editable Planner

January 1, 2016 | 28 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Free 31 Editable Menu Planner. Because menu planning for a longer period of time makes you a smarter, healthier and better homeschool mom. @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Losing weight has always been hard in my family. Besides that though, I have tried to focus on the inside person by focusing on my health. Not that I don’t try to lose weight, but a 31 day menu planner makes you a healthier, better and smarter homeschool mom for several reasons.

Take Back Your Family

Look at this list of why a 31 day menu plan is vital for busy homeschool moms.

Coping like career moms.

Whether you are new to homeschooling or not, it doesn’t take long to figure out that you have a career.

It’s true. We are working moms because a career is something that is our first importance and progress is our focus.  And we have made our decision. Our family, our home and Educating the WholeHearted Child becomes our career.

It almost seems like a contradiction to think we would glance at tips for career moms since we are stay at home moms, but we do need to steal a few tips from working moms.

Working moms have to plan if they don’t want to compromise the health of their families and we need to also.

Planning meals becomes essential to success as homeschooling moms.

Eases stress.

Stress is one of the biggest reasons homeschoolers quit.

Don’t underestimate the weight of stress and not to mention guilt as moms when we just wing a dinner that is not particular tasty, let alone healthy.

Knowing just one trick like taking about 30 minutes to plan for the whole month not only lightens your load considerably, but it eases day to day stress.

For me 31 day menu planning eases evening stress.

For example, I had to take a honest examination to see where my struggle was on meal planning and find a solution to fix it.

Breakfast is easy for us. We love smoothies, oatmeal, cereal and waffles. It is not a stressful time in my household.

Lunch is the same way. My children love leftovers, sandwiches, soups and other options.

Dinner or supper, however, is quite another story.

I am tired by the end of the day. On top of that, there is not a worse feeling than to start a meal and to be shy one key ingredient on hand to finish it and get my meal on the table. Tell me that I am not the only one that has done that?

The point here is to use 31 day menu planning as a stress reliever not stress inducer. If you think you struggle with all the meals, then start there by planning all of your meals.

I know there are homeschoolers who plan every meal, but for us it just makes no sense because we basically like the same things for breakfast and lunch.

The bottom line is that 31 day menu planning should be about what your family needs. Find your weak point and fix it.

It means flexibility, saving money and being healthier. That equals smarter.

I am all about following budgets, being healthier and working smarter.

A 31 day menu plan has saved me thousands, yes thousands of dollars through the many years of homeschooling because I don’t overbuy and have things in my pantry for years that are not used.

It saves me money because I don’t throw away food in my refrigerator that does not get used up.

And meals are healthier because I have a plan before I go into the grocery and choose healthier ingredients.

Being tied to a menu planner is not my style either. But with a 31 menu planner, it’s easier to switch around my meals as life happens instead of trying to wing dinner. Give me flexibility anytime with my 31 day menu planner.

I don’t think it’s wrong to want to have it all when it comes to the health and education of our family.

Though it’s hard to lose weight in my family, I never want to use that as an excuse to stop trying. On top of that, I want to model for my sons the example of making healthy food choices.

I don’t like complicating healthy choices or taking an all or nothing approach to food.

We love ice cream in our family and swing by and grab ice cream sometimes in our family outings.

Knowing that our evening meals are stress free, relaxing and that I have healthy options with organic ingredients has only added to the fulfilling career I have chosen as a homeschool mom.

For You – Free 31 Day Menu Planner & Editable  – To Ease Your Stress!

Grab my free 31 day menu planner.

I have made it editable for you. I used it when I started homeschooling. I made it editable too since you’re planning several meals.

31 Day Menu Planner for planning ALL meals and it's editable too. @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

DOWNLOAD HERE FREE 31 DAY MENU PLANNER . To plan 3 meals a day and it is editable!

Now, I have created a second one, which is for dinners only because that is the area I want help with the most.

Free 31 Day Menu Planner for Dinners @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Download here Free 31 Day Menu Planner for Dinners Only.

Plan just what you need and don’t organize something you don’t struggle with. Save time and plan the meals you need help with the most. If it’s breakfast, plan only for breakfast.

If you struggle with all meals, then be determined to make your homeschool journey less stressful by planning all the meals. I promise planning doesn’t take as long as you may think.

Let me help you. Grab my 31 day dinner only plan for January.

31 day dinner plans for January @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

Grab my 31 days of dinners for this month.

My 31 day dinner plan reflects my family’s like and dislikes.

Where possible, I linked to recipes for you that can be found on the internet and the other recipes are ones I have cooked for years.

I included this picture below so that you can see how I organized the planner. Use it over and over each month.

Fill in the month, add the week day and the grocery list right sidebar coordinates to that week’s list of items needed for those 7 days.

Look how I color coded the menu planner for you to use @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

I will continue to struggle with the rotundness that runs in my family, but I am celebrating the fact that for many years I have been limiting as many unhealthy ingredients as possible.

What do you struggle with most when it comes to menu planning? And what are you celebrating?

Hugs and love ya,

Tina Signature 2015c

Guess what? I don’t have enough to do, so I have a SECOND Pinterest Account. It too is full of organizational Pins. Follow Me!

Visit Tina Robertson’s profile on Pinterest.


For more tips that work, look at Homeschool Organization: Are you Collecting Recipes or Cook Books?

28 CommentsFiled Under: 2. My FREE Organizing Printables {Any topic}, Home Tagged With: menu planning

11 Tried and True Ways to Tame the Home When You Homeschool

August 28, 2015 | 3 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

With the new school year comes different grade levels for kids. It may mean more relief for mom or it could mean more work when adding in younger children to the day.

Add a few preschoolers that need naps in the afternoons and a newborn baby and I was left many days wondering how I was going to fit in grocery buying, cleaning the house, menu planning and running errands.

11 Tried and True Ways to Tame the Home When You Homeschool @ Tina's Dynamic Homeschool Plus

It didn’t take too long into the school year before I was behind on cleaning the house and preparing for meals.

Tips and Tricks for Making a Messy House Clean

Though I thrived with schedules, my do-a-little-each-day method to cleaning wasn’t working.

Stepping back to examine even my method of cleaning, I want to share these sanity-saving tips that I used through the years.

  • If your kids are real young and you are outnumbered, make your shopping day Saturday or when Dad is off work.

For a few years, I took my oldest to the store while my husband took care of the youngest boys. It just had to be or otherwise my whole day was wasted getting only a small portion of what we needed.

  • As the boys got a bit bigger, I joined a local co-op in my neighborhood where I get could get fresh fruits and vegetables.

That was awfully convenient and I didn’t really need much preparation when they showed up in the neighborhood.

  • Also, the Mr. didn’t mind a bit stopping by the store after work and grabbing a few things.

So I would go about once every two weeks for the big items and the Mr. would grab perishable items if we ran out.

  • Limit your days to the grocery store. You only have so many days in the week.

It’s exhausting to not plan meals and go to the grocery store every other day.

I never wanted to do that and didn’t. When I could, I went once every two weeks, but sometimes I had to go weekly but not every day or every other day.

  • Then as the boys grew older and entered middle school, I was able to go to the store weekly and more on a schedule, but it had to wait until after school or about 2:00 or so.

This still gave me time to shop and get back before dinner.

  • As the boys approached high school, I made sure my grocery list was organized by aisles so that when Mr. Senior 2013 learned to drive, he could take over the grocery shopping.

There was no guessing what items or brands we liked because he had been shopping with me for many years since he was little.

Now, just organize your grocery list and let your highschooler do it.

  • Another tip that saved me countless of hours was investing in more than one crock-pot.

I would have 3 crock-pots going at one time.

Sometimes it would be two meals and one side dish and then sometimes it would be 3 meals and one of them a breakfast for the next day.

There is no such rule that you have to have only one crock-pot.

Our lives are very different from most families and we need to think outside of the box.

  • Did I mention that I even ordered once in a while from the Schwan’s delivery grocery? They have a few great tasting dishes.
  • Nowadays, you can even shop at Walmart and with free delivery, things can be delivered straight to your door.

My sister does this all the time. It’s a great way to shop with no stress and everything comes to your door.

  • As far as cleaning, I learned to have less products to clean with so that I could do all of the rooms in the house quicker instead of a different cleaner for each room.

I had to change the way I liked doing laundry too.

  • I tried to do a one day laundry day and get a majority of it over with.

I saved back things like linen and towels, which could be washed and dried, but could wait on being folded.

Those kinds of clothes I did while we did school and of course the baby’s clothes were washed just about every day.

I learned that by washing a bulk of them on one day, I made a dent for the week and could focus on school.

Those are just a few quick tips that saved me during the time school booted back up and during the year when I felt like I was getting behind.

What do you do to get it all in for the day?

Hugs and love  ya,

Tina Signature 2015c

Also, look at:
Inspiring Your Homeschooled Kids to Do Chores
Should You Switch to a 4 day Homeschool Schedule?

Link up @ these awesome places:
Motivation Monday|Inspiration Monday|Inspire Me Monday|Mommy Resources|Pin Worth Wednesdays|A Little R & R|Good Tips Tuesday|A Little Bird Told Me|Moms Library|Wonderful Wednesday|Wholehearted Wednesday|

3 CommentsFiled Under: Home, Organization, Schedule/Balance Home & School Tagged With: housecleaning

Homeschool Organization – Forget Once a Month Cooking When Meal Planning

March 28, 2014 | 4 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Though I love to cook, I have been slow about sharing my tips about organizing meals only because I would rather organize my kitchen than cook in it.

But this month, my habit of freezing meals regularly paid off because my mom has been in and out of the hospital twice this month.

Besides the trips back and forth to the hospital, and feeding my family, my mom and dad also needed meals.

Simple Meal Planning – Forget Once A Month Cooking

Look at a few easy tips for meal planning that don’t take as much time as once a month cooking and is a great back up system when life is unplanned.

Homeschool Organization - Forget Once A Month Cooking

{I have spaghetti, stew, soup and breakfast frozen back.}

  •  Focus on freezing regularly while you cook.  Though I have done once a month meal cooking a lot more when the kids were young, the truth of it is it takes times.  Though the rewards are huge and I did save on my budget, sometimes I just didn’t have the time to devote to the planning, prepping and preparing.

Through the years, I have found that freezing a meal or two back when cooking regularly proves to be a huge help when you’re sick, when your parents are sick or just when you have the blahs and don’t want to cook or go through the drive-thru either.

  •  Prepare simple meals, include breakfasts.  One of my main go to breakfasts since breakfast is a real important meal to me is what I call a McDonald-like McMuffin, but only healthier because it’s home-made.

I scramble the eggs with whatever I want in them, usually onions and set it aside.  Then I toast the muffins.  After everything is cooled off, I build my muffin with scrambled eggs, add some cheese and cooked Canadian bacon and freeze it.  I use the bag the muffin came in to freeze them.

I make them over the weekend and usually have them in the freezer.  It takes about 2-3 minutes to warm it up (yep completely frozen) in the microwave and so there is no fuss in the morning for breakfast.

You can even bake your eggs ahead of time if you don’t want scrambled eggs.  Look at this recipe;

Homemade Egg McMuffins at the Baker Chick.

You can see one of my freezer packages in the picture above that I took to my parents.

  • Focus on crowd pleasers.  Because my teen boys are big eaters, I find that focusing on casseroles, lasagnas and spaghetti combinations can accommodate even picky eaters.  But too, having one or two meals like that in your freezer can feed another large family and is a crowd pleaser when you need it for an emergency meal.

Though I decided to cook chicken pot pie for my parents too, which is one of their favorite recipes of mine and I cooked more meals for a week, knowing that I had meals in my freezer to jump start my cooking process allowed me to serve my parents when they needed it.

Homeschool Organization & Hospitable

I have been loving reading about Freeze it Forward on Once a Month meals because everybody needs help at some time or the other and it just feels good when you can help out.

An organized homeschooler always has time to be hospitable and you don’t have to do over the top meal planning that might be more stressful than helpful.

Check out some more tips!

Menu Planning – A Lifesaver!

Homeschool Organization : Are you Collecting Cookbooks OR Recipes?

Day 10 1/2: Grocery Shopping, Cooking & Laundry. Oh My! + Free Printables {31 Day Boot Camp For New Homeschoolers on My Blog}

Hugs and love ya,

2012Tinasignature Day 8. Creating a Unit Study Lesson Plan. 10 Days of Diving Into Unit Studies by Creating a Unit Study Together.

4 CommentsFiled Under: Home, Meal Plan, Organization Tagged With: mealplanning

Homeschool Organization : Are you Collecting Cookbooks OR Recipes?

January 22, 2014 | 8 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Homeschool Organization Are you Collecting Cookbooks or Recipes

A few years back I wrote an article about organized menu planning for my new bees, but when it comes to meal planning I think anybody can benefit from the tips.

Applying here that small, but significant tip that I shared too in my recent post Homeschool Organization–Where do you begin? when I emphasized the baby step to organization which is to “identify with precision” the need or problem defines the troubled spot real clear.

Here is my answer: When I am meal planning, I am not collecting cook books, but recipes.  And let’s take it one step further to make it even more clear what our needs are if we are struggling to put supper on the table and that is to collect recipes our family will eat.

In the picture below is what my recipe book looked liked back then.  I now call it my main recipe book.

Homeschool Organization Recipes and Meal Planning

I basically took the time to go through most of the cookbooks I had and recipes I had collected online and put them in a 5 inch binder.  I divided it by these sections; main entree, breakfasts, sides, breads, condiments, desserts and beverages.

Recipe Books Left over after homeschool organization purge

The picture above are the cookbooks that I had left to go through at the time.  I do not have any of them now because I finished that project.  I only kept two cookbooks that were of sentimental value.

Unless we are clear about what our goal is for anything that we are trying to organize, then no clear cut plan will ever emerge.

Are we collecting cook books or recipes? There is a big difference.  One we can bring clutter in our kitchen if we collect cook books and the other collecting recipes is clearly defined because that is what we are really wanting to achieve.

Too, with Pinterest now, it is easier to store recipes online.   Still though we want to spend LESS time flipping through cook books and online on Pinterest when it comes to menu planning.

The only way to do this is to take time to print them, organize them and have them handy.  Make a specialized cook book for your family.

I know there are tons of online grocery shopping and menu planning tools, but they never work for me when I about to menu plan or cook.  I like having it all down printed in front of me to flip through or look at while I am cooking.  That is just me, you may do better with something online.  I need to touch and see my recipes in my binder.

But do you know what is the sweetest investment when taking hours and hours to make a specialized recipe binder cookbook? It is filling the binder with recipes that MY family will actually eat.  Avoiding time wasters by flipping through useless pages in a cook book and avoiding spending hours and hours on Pinterest to find something different only to make the same old usual dinner is priceless to me.

Can you see that menu planning becomes a cinch?  Your recipe book should be filled with more recipes that your family eats and enjoys instead of recipes that have not been “field tested” by your family.  More on that in a minute.

Can you menu plan for 365 days and not repeat a meal?  That was my mind-set when I started filling my book and I can do that now.  Of course, I don’t do that because some foods my family really loves and wants to have them a couple times a month.  The point is that your recipe book is not filled with recipes that your family will not eat and you have a variety to choose from when boredom sets in.

So don’t go through willy-nilly sticking all the recipes in your book.  It took me almost 3 years to get the first book done because I would test out a new recipe on my family before it was a “keeper” for my binder.  Choose selectively even if it means having less recipes in your book.  When I started I promise I couldn’t think of more than about 7 -10 meals that I cooked and that my family actually would eat.  I knew I cooked more, but I had to get them all down.  I knew that if my crew gobbled the meal down, it was a keeper.  If they just kind of liked it, but knew it could taste better by adding this or that ingredient, I revised the recipe to suit my family.  The point is it takes time to test each new recipe that you put in your binder.  The basic rule of thumb is to fill your binder with more tried and true recipes than recipes for testing.

My recipe binders have now hit one of my must-haves for homeschooling because when I am tired, I can still menu plan for 30 days because I know my family will not only eat but enjoy just about all the recipes I have stored now.

Homeschool Organization Divide Your Cookbook by Sections for YOU

Today, I have 3 binders (first picture above) because it is the way I prefer to menu plan and organize.  The big binder or 5 inch binder is my main book basically for all my recipes except crockpot meals and I also took out the breakfast section.

In homeschooling we need to relentlessly use our crockpots year round and I now want those recipes to be kept separate so I can find them easier.  So that is my second binder.  And then the meal we prefer to eat together as a family is breakfast, so I collect recipes that are unique and fast and keep that binder easy to retrieve.  Too, though it is called my Breakfast and Lunch binder because it has home lunch ideas in it also because I don’t want lunch at home to become boring so I keep those ideas handy there.

Heads Up: Don’t make too many binders though you may think it is easier to organize this way.  Organization is about keeping things streamlined and you can make this project too complicated by over organizing.  I really only have 2 binders, my main and crockpot binder, that I reach for when planning.   The last binder filled with breakfast and lunch ideas is just that – an idea book if I get bogged down.  Breakfast and lunch are not areas I need help on everyday like my main meal which is supper.

Homeschool Organization - Specialized Recipe Binder for Your Family Now

It’s just about time to update my binders again.  Since we will be moving and because I can’t take the binders with me, it will be the perfect time to update them when we get settled again.

Look at these easy steps I did in case you want to start one now.

  • 1. Go through each cook book slowly or online recipes and decide what your family will “try” (field test) and what they will eat.  Don’t do this in a hurry as you probably, like me, paid good money for your cook books and want to get the full use out of them.
  • 2. Then decide whether to tear out the pages or unbind them in your books.   Keep in mind that organization for homeschooling is not waiting for the perfect looking page.  In other words don’t say I will re-type a recipe.  You can do that later if you want to because right now you may get side-tracked if you try to do that.

And if you do that, instead of completing a specialized cook book for your family, you may create road blocks by waiting to set up a perfect page.   I know, I know, it grinds me also because I like it all matching and pretty pages, but the truth of it is you have time to come back to make those pages pretty after you declutter.

  • 3. Each torn out page or printed page from Pinterest needs to go into a page protector.   Page protectors are good for messes in the kitchen too since your recipe is protected.  Go ahead and put the recipe in the sections you created whether you are know or don’t know if your family will like the recipe.

It is much easier to take the recipe out of the page protector and throw it away than it is to have a big pile of pages laying out, adding to clutter and not usable.

  • 4.   Field test on your family by cooking the recipes you were unsure of and then I put notes on my recipes when I cooked the ones I was testing.  Mark up the recipe, place a check on it or something so you will know if you tweaked it a bit,  will keep it or toss in the garbage if there was no salvaging it.  Basically, mark the ones you have cooked already so you have some record.
  • 5. Throw away all cook books and their clutter.  It feels pretty good at this point.

Did I mention you actually look forward to cooking and you have something treasured that was made just for you and your family?

I have created something unique for my family and you can too! Take from this what you can use and I hope it breathes some help into your cooking routine.

I can’t wait to make another set of binders when I move.  And this time, I may have to create some brand spanking new pretty divider pages for our recipe binders and new covers too.   What do you think? Want to do this now or with me again when I land?

Hugs and love ya,

2012Tinasignature Day 10. Celebrating THE Day! 10 days of Planning A Homeschool High School Graduation

8 CommentsFiled Under: Home, Organization Tagged With: homeschoolorganization, menu planning

Must-Haves for the Organized Homeschooler: What to Keep & What to Skip

September 26, 2013 | 4 Comments
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.

Must-haves for the organized homeschooler are not the same must-haves for other stay at home families.

Think about that for a minute because priorities become real clear. The point is we share living and learning spaces and what we skip and what we keep are different.

By sharing must-haves for the organized homeschooler, I want to ease organization for you.

Must-Haves for the Organized Homeschooler: What to Keep & What to Skip

I do not want you to create a must-have list of things which don’t work.

Organized Homeschooler

We stop agonizing over organizing and what becomes a hobby for some folks (oh yes, I could so go there but I try to keep myself reined in) and the realities of the things that actually need to be organized becomes two very different things.

When You Homeschool and Agonize  Organize

There is a difference in the ways we approach an idea, task or project IF we want to accomplish organizing that fits our homeschool lifestyle.

Our homeschool lifestyle cannot be dismissed as some small undertaking so it requires  a measure of finesse that a lot of books, blogs and websites on general organizing just don’t understand. We are not sending our kids off somewhere, but we are living and learning in shared spaces.

Look at my list below because we don’t have to give up organization and don’t want to; we just learn how to do it differently.

5 Must-Haves for the Organized Homeschooler: What to KEEP

Homeschool Keeper 1. Menu Planning.

Menu planning for 30 days has grit, it’s the only way I menu plan.

It’s not easy if you normally menu plan for 7 days. However, I encourage you to menu plan for 30 days because you do not have to plan again so quickly.

You get a whole lot more return for your time when you menu plan longer. Taking an extra 15 minutes or so in the beginning of the month gives back more time in the month than it takes up.

For example, I turned this into a year long project. Take one year and plan something for every day of the year for recipes that your family like.

This plan will keep giving back for year after year because you’ve created 365 meals and the best part is that you have meals already created.

I color coded every 7 days so that you can see one glance at a time. I plan for 30 days, but shop weekly. So seeing the whole week at one time speeds up the process for myself.

Grab this editable recipe form on my page DIY Easy Home Management Binder.

Homeschool Keeper 2. Chores Assigned to Each Family Member.

I could not do what I do or even school for the day if my kids did not help. Teaching them requires time, but the payoffs are huge.

Ideally, I would love to tell you that I trained them so that now they do all my grocery shopping, but really they have learned some valuable life skills that I can’t check off in my planner.

Update: Yes, they did ALL my grocery shopping and half of the cooking as they grew older. Now, with so much available on-line they still help put groceries away.

Grab this editable chore chart too over on my page DIY Easy Home Management Binder.

Homeschool Keeper 3. A homeschool planner like my 7 Step DIY Homeschool Planner.

Do I need to tell how my heart goes pitter patter when I prepare the 7 Step DIY Homeschool Planner each year?

There is NOT another like homeschool planner like it because YOU organize it each year for your EXACT needs this year.

Using my printables with tons of options at every step, you create a UNIQUE one of a kind planner.

If you’re not a paper/pen gal, you still want some way to easily track your school work.

Homeschool Keeper 4. Command center. Even if it’s simple or temporary.

It’s one thing to have plans in mind, but communicating to the rest of the family is how to effectively carry out plans.

This area can include all upcoming activities for the family and even a Home Management Binder.

Many plans or routines fail and can be traced back to lack of communication.

A physical place at the house where everybody can see what is planned is useful in keeping my family up to date.

Also, I use and love Cozi, which is a free family calendar app.

Each week the calendar is sent o everybody’s email or phone. I love this now that I have teens because we could be going a lot of different directions during the day. Not just that, but the boys can see what is coming up too and learn to plan.

However, one place in the house where all family members pass by for the day was more effective.

Reminders from apps can be out of sight and out of mind; a command center in the house is a way that all family members can stay organized and be mindful.

Homeschool Keeper 5. Place to organize the overflowing amount of books, supplies, and crafts which come with the full time job of homeschooling.

Though I highly recommend having a homeschool room, I know that is not possible with everyone.

In addition, I was told I would never use a dedicated school room. That was not right either. Look at my tips Dedicated Homeschool Room or Dining Room Homeschooler.

Twenty years later and I’m here to tell you I used it very often. So much advice I’ve learned depends on families circumstances at the time.

When I started all of my kids were preschool. I needed pint sized furniture and I needed ways to train them to a habit and to get them ready to learn and focus.

On the other hand I have also had many years of my homeschooling where I couldn’t have a school room. I loved our homeschooling years just as well.

However large or however small area you have, I recommend that you have a place to corral all the clutter so that your home remains a place for relaxing family evenings.

5 Must-Haves for the Organized Homeschooler: What to SKIP

What to Skip 1. Reading organization books from those who don’t live our homeschool lifestyle.

Skip organization books that do not include homeschool parents as an author. I’m not saying you can’t glean some tips.

But if you are struggling in this area, then a book written for an audience that does not have the same demands we have  on our time could end up discouraging you instead of inspiring you.

What to Skip 2. Extensive record keeping.

I’m not saying to throw caution to the wind, but record keeping for the right reasons is key to being organized.

For example, fear of the homeschool law changing is not a good motivator and we’ve brought undue stress to our organized day.

Trying to keep all records to provide proof when your state law does not require record keeping is undue stress. It’s one thing to keep it for you, but another if you need to meet the law.

However, record keeping becomes important in the middle and high school years.

Look at my videos How to Successfully Begin Homeschooling Middle and High School (facebook or here for YouTube) and How to Stay on Top of Record Keeping – Seriously!

Also, I have some detailed tips here Homeschool High School The Must Cover Subjects Part 1 and Homeschool High School The Must Cover Subjects Part 2.

What to Skip 3. Stressful Schedules.

I’m an organized person, but that still didn’t help me to find a balance until several years of homeschooling.

Some years, I was able to schedule hour by hour because it suited our pace.

However, most years, a flexible schedule was needed to accommodate slower learners, my toddler, and preschooler.

Your youngest learner is your TRUE scheduler.

Skip a stressful homeschool schedule in favor of a peaceful schedule.

What to Skip 4. Perfectly picked up house.

Having a perfectly picked up and clean to my standards mindset was the hardest for me to let go.

Learning to let go of that mindset helped me to stay organized although it didn’t feel that way in the beginning.

Accepting a kid cleaned house was not only key to my sanity, but now that my sons have all graduated it trained them for valuable life skills.

Being an organized homeschooler means knowing when to delegate which is not always easy. However, a good enough picked up house while being clean allowed us to move on with our school day.

What to Skip 5. Overflowing amount of clothes.

Lastly, when my kids were young, I realized the more clothes they had, the more they seemed to plow through them.

This always equaled to not only more laundry, but tiny mounds of messes everywhere.

So I realized less is more; I reduced my kids’ wear to less than half.

As you school longer, you realize that you don’t need as many dress clothes for activities outside the house. Unless, your kid are attending a five day co-op which is more like private mini school your kids need just a few sets of dress clothes each.

Having less helped me to organize more and gave me freedom to do the things we love the most.

Must-Haves for the Organized Homeschooler: What to Keep & What to Skip

Not giving up your homeschool freedom begins by knowing what to keep and what to skip as an organized homeschooler.

What are you must-haves and what have you skipped to be organized?

  • Homeschool Organization – 12 Unconventional Ideas for Storage
  • Homeschool Organization – Why You’re Still Drowning in Clutter
  • Homeschool Organization Motivation – 11 Gadgets To Get You Going
  • 100 BEST Ideas to Organize Your Homeschool Area – Storage, Spaces, and Learning Places
  • Top 10 Tips for Maximizing Space in (Really) Tiny Homeschool Spaces
  • Homeschool Organization – Preschool/Kindergarten Free Morning Routine Flip Cards

This is also a blog hop. This blog hop is organized by iHomeschool Network, a collaboration of outstanding homeschool bloggers who connect with each other and with family-friendly companies in mutual beneficial projects.

Hugs and love ya,

Must Haves for the Organized Homeschooler

4 CommentsFiled Under: Home, Homeschool Space, Homeschool Tools, Storage, & Accessories, Organization Tagged With: homeschool challenges, homeschool lifestyle, homeschoolchallenges, homeschoolmultiplechildren planning forms, homeschoolorganization, homeschoolplanner, homeschoolstorage, organization, organizedhomeschool, schedules

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