Clean Sweep – Cleaning the bedrooms!
I hope you are excited and ready to plunge into some cleaning of our hearts and homes! Many of you are busy mothers like I am with little ones, so I’m not going to heap multiple challenges for each day. Slow and steady wins the race. 🙂
“The woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.” – J.R. Miller, Secrets of a Happy Home Life
So many times doing housework is monotonous and mundane. We wonder why we have to scrub the floor yet again, and didn’t we just sweep the floor two hours ago? When we look at the big picture, keeping care of a home can be overwhelming when you add on children and school (whether it is public, private, or homeschooling!). I have been known to look around me and throw my hands up in dismay at the tasks that are before me, as there are just so many. But we are called to do it – called and set apart to be keepers at home (Titus 2)
When I tackle the bigger projects and get the rooms organized and cleaned, it’s easier to then set up a system and basically maintenance the house from there. So that’s what we are going to do the first three weeks – get our house cleaned and organized and then the last week we’re going to tackle schedules and chore charts.
I hope you had time to set up a morning routine yesterday. I find that when I consistently get up and get busy, my whole day goes so much better. I’m disciplined from the start, and motivated to tackle the projects before me.
I made a simple morning routine (we will talk more about routine the last week).
Morning Routine
1. Make Bed
2. Get dressed from head to toe (hair fixed and shoes on)
3. Fit2B exercise and jump on mini trampoline for 5 minutes
4. Breakfast
5. Devotions with children
6. Start children on school/check emails/blog
Before we get our chore charts or daily routines scheduled, try to set a morning routine for yourself with even just 1 or 2 things that you will consistently do! I’ll keep reminding you about that this month. 🙂
Now for our daily challenges!
Temporal Challenge
It’s time to attack a child’s bedroom! Pick whichever child’s bedroom needs it the most, and work on cleaning that room. If your children are old enough to help have them assist you, (they are the ones that made the mess! ;)) Pull out stuff from under the beds, clean the closet and straighten any bookshelves or dressers. Have a box that is for purging along with you, and toss anything you want to donate/garage sale and promptly bring it to your garage/basement before your child dumps it out and it’s scattered again (I speak from experience!). If your child’s room is clean already, just do a quick purge and pull out the things you want to get rid of. Finally, if you don’t have children and are following this, pick another room (like a study or sewing room) to purge and clean. We’re going to take two days on children’s rooms (I have a boy’s and girl’s room to clean and purge. 🙂
Spiritual Challenge
As we focus our cleaning efforts on our children’s rooms today, it’s a good time to think about being patient with our children. I struggle with being patient (I don’t know of a mom that doesn’t!). Some things that help me when I feel like being impatient with my children are:
1. To remind myself how much I love them.
2. Take a deep breath. This might sound silly, but it truly does help me to stop and take a deep breath before I respond if I feel overwhelmed and impatient. It gives me a second to compose myself and grab a bit of patience. 🙂
3. Pray throughout the day for patience. You don’t have to stop and go in your room and kneel down at your bed to pray. I can’t tell you how many prayers I have breathed up to God while doing dishes. Prayers as simple as “Oh Lord, please help me endure the next hour, I’m so tired.” This really does help me.
4. Send everyone to their rooms with books for quiet time. Yes, I have done this when I really need some time to compose myself and gather strength for the rest of the day. It’s normally in the afternoon when I just need the house quiet. We don’t do this everyday but I’m implementing this more and more for my five year old while my 3 and 1 year old nap.
5. Memorize scriptures on being patient, and put them up around your house. A good one to remember is James 1: 19-20.
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”
Stop and consider what “pushes your buttons” as a mom and how you can respond to your children in a patient manner instead of giving into frustrations. Pray about ways you can change your attitude. Make an effort today to be the mom who responds with a kind and loving tone of voice!
I really like how you add spiritual “cleaning” to this challenge. It really is inspiring. I think I can definitely stand to pray for patience and deep breaths when dealing with my child.
And, the feeling that “I just swept this floor and now I have to do it again”.
Thank you for the encouragement.
Kate
I like the spiritual challenge as well. It seems more “worthwhile” to do in some way. We recently started a “Shepherding a Child’s Heart” study at our church and mom’s heart needs some shepherding as well. So praying over that in my own room cleaning will be a big help toward correcting their “character flaws”….
Read about Fit2B and looked into it, I’d like to join. Are you an affiliate? I’d like to sign up under you if you are…thanks!