Afterschooling, working, and managing your home

[LibrarianMom]

Dear fellow Afterschoolers,

 

This is more of a general forum question but since it is specific to afterschooling I thought I would post here. We currently after school our dd and plan to continue doing so. I do work full-time outside of the home, and my husband's job requires several evenings a week and every other Saturday. I'm finding it difficult to keep up on home maintenance (mostly the clutter), particularly if I want to do any afterschooling and spend productive time with my just turned three year old. Does anyone have any suggestions, resources, or routines they have tried?

 

LibrarianMom

[OceanBreeze]

I only work part time so I don't share your difficult schedule, but I have discovered some things that might help you.

 

We are selling our home so I had to make some changes and honestly, I love the new look so much, I'm never going back. :)

 

First, I got rid of stuff. Oh, so much stuff. Even if it had some value. Things up to $20 went directly to Good Will. Higher-priced items were sold on Craig's List. Things I wanted to keep, but would not be using went in totes and were put in the garage or closets or attic. I cleared drawers and cupboards. My cupboards now have room to spare, so that any clutter that accumulates is easily put away. The children filled totes with toys and we rotate. I've cleared all surfaces (save a select few items) and this makes dusting a snap. The floors are cleared, which makes vacuuming a snap. And in the bathrooms the counters are not used, rather the drawers hold everything in current use. Now, even though I have a 4 bed 3 bath house, it is so much easier to keep clean.

 

There is a psychological weight to all this stuff and when we free ourselves of it, we free our minds to think and learn. You come home to a clean house and can enjoy your child and your lesson.

 

Also, make it a routine before bed for the whole family to take 10 minutes to do a quick pickup. This helps a lot and is also fun. The kids really enjoy this.

 

Jenelle

 

As an afterthought, if going through stuff seems difficult at first, just go get a bunch of totes and fill them and stack them in your garage. Then, as you have time pull one out and go through it.

[magpiegirl]

I agree with this, although it is hard. I've also had some good suggestions from Flylady (http://www.flylady.net) although I don't use them all. She has you start small with your maintenance of your home, which helps me because I get overwhelmed. I've also been getting good ideas from the "once a month cooking" type of websites out there about how to cook multiple meals ahead of time and freeze them. My favorite cookbook is "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook" by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann. This book is AWESOME and I use my slow cooker at LEAST once a week. This saves so much time and stress between getting home from school and dinner time so that I can pay attention to other things.

 

The house gets pretty cluttery by the end of the week, but I try to keep up with the laundry and dishes as we go. Either Saturday or Sunday my DH and I spend a few hours cleaning and try to at the very least straighten and clean the kitchen, vaccuum and sanitize the bathrooms. My DS6.5 has certain jobs that he is required to do all the time (like picking up his own laundry, cleaning the litter box) but on weekends he has the opportunity to earn some money for extra jobs like folding all the laundry, picking up sticks in the yard, mopping the kitchen floor (with a child sized mop) and usually he does at least one of these things. He doesn't get much - 50 cents to a couple dollars depending on how much time is spent on it (and we require NO complaining in order to be paid - this is a big deal in our house because I'm not paying him to hear him complain about a job for an hour, lol!)

 

Another thing - routine is a good thing. At least for us it is. We try to limit outside activities during the school week, but it's hard since I am on three committees and we try to work out also. We have a rule about DS being in one sport at a time. Right now he is doing gymnastics at the rec center twice a week while DH and I work out (otherwise this would definatley never get done). Other times he does soccer. We try not to eat any later than 6:30 and immediately after that we start our bedtime routine, even though DS goes to bed at 8:30 (sometimes a bit earlier if he is tired). I aim for getting to the "reading" part of our bedtime routine no later than 7:45 and sometimes this is hard.

 

For afterschooling - most days during the school week I have DS read for 20 minutes (which he can do while I wash dishes or make dinner) and do his EPGY program (math) on the computer for 20 minutes. Sometimes this happens before school, sometimes after school. We also run through spelling words. I read aloud daily - try for 30 minutes at the very least. Most of the other extra stuff is reserved for weekends, like projects that take time or make a mess. I do try to plan for the projects so that we have our supplies on hand by the time the weekend comes.

 

Hang in there - part of what I had to do is sort of lower my expectations for myself too, lol! You can't do everything!

 

Melisa

[magpiegirl]

I just thought of this as my DS came and asked me to get down his toy aircraft carrier. I've put most of the toys in boxes by category and have them stored in closets and labeled. DS knows what is there and all he has to do is ask for something and I'll get it down - but ONLY after he picks up the last box of something that he had. In order to get the aircraft carrier down, I asked him to go pick up his box of dress up clothes from yesterday. It doesn't keep his room totally clean, but it does help a lot and there aren't usually overflows into the rest of the house :) This is a little more difficult for a three-year-old, though. I do think that having toys out of sight also makes them more fun when you suprise them sometime by getting down something that they have forgotten about. This is something I learned from my mom who had an in-home day care for years and she followed it religiously. Her daycare area was always clutter-free at the end of the day.

 

Melisa

[purplecow7]

I work outside the home and I have 4 children 3grade ds, 1 grade dd and g/b twins who are in Jk. We do Tae kwon Do as a family and the children play soccer. The oldest does violin in school and dd takes piano.

 

I have no idea how I "DO IT" - I take one day at a time and deal with the scheduling nightmares as they come. My oldest is on travel soccer - that means two practices a week and games on Sunday. DD is on house soccer, so that is only one practice a week (we are still waiting for the day - thus schedule is pending for spring). And then games on Saturday. g/b twins do soccer on Sunday night -so we will divide and conquor the soccer schedule for Sunday games. TKD is one night a week, plus saturdays but sometimes we have to go twice a during the week. Oh and yes my oldest is in GT so he has a ton of homework.

 

Ok back to how I do it. - my house - it is a mess and the papers pile up and the toys drive my crazy.

 

On a series note: I do laundry every morning before school/work. I have a family closet in the basement all my children clothes. This cuts down on the put away time and also allows me to keep track of all the clothes as my children seem to keep growing. LOL The kids just go down to the basement for their clothes - it works for us. I have them on shelves and each type of item is in those $1 store dish pans. I figure if my children have more pants then can fit in a dish pan they have too many.

 

I also schedule when I do cleaning - thus my house is clean but not all at once. Like I clean the upstairs bathrooms on Monday night or tuesday morning. I vacuum on Thursday and downstairs bathroom. On Sunday night the goal is to have all laundry put away (towels and dh and my laundry in our rooms). What I did was sit down and figure what I needed to do and then assign a day to it.

 

Paper into the house - I still need a system, but I try to have one area were it all goes and then on Saturday morning I try to go threw it. This is my worst area.

 

Right now I am re-doing my dd art. She is my writer and my artist. I just can not keep track of it all - so we are trying to give her a big art box for all her pens/markers and notebooks.

 

For me once I get a system I find that life changes and I have to re-look at it. I guess my advice is to pick one area and work on that and add to it.

 

But in the end I always try to remember that my children will never remember if the bathrooms were cleaned but what they will remember is the fun we had in the kitchen doing Science projects.

[Caroline]

A messy house and an exceptional husband. I only started working in August, so we are still adjusting. The biggest thing I do is deal with all pieces of paper immeadiately. That really has been helpful to me.

[saw]

hire my au pair. I thought this would be a good solution to the lack of afterschool care and my unpredictable hours, and maybe have someone help with schooling. Well, the girl's English is so bad that when I answered that yes she needed to pick the kids up from school yesterday afternoon, she was certain I said not to pick them up. So my kids were stranded. A friend helped out and arranged to bring the kids home between 4:30 and 5:00. So I made sure our au pair knew to be home then. Well, you've guessed it -- she was out. My friend spotted her as they were driving over to the house. Her excuse is that she need to go to the (far away) store to buy pasta (which we had) for dinner.

 

So, I'm not finding this afterschooling working mom thing to be working right now! Argh.

 

And yes, she will be with us only as long as it takes me to find a sitter to replace her.

[BabyBre]

I second and third FlyLady! She's helped save my marriage!

 

I don't implement ALL of her regimented suggestions, but the ones that have stuck have been life savers and are simply routine.

 

www.flylady.net

[Guest wendyroseville]

I work full-time in the corporate world and my husband is a musician/music teacher with a sporadic schedule. We have a dd(7).

 

1. We've had a cleaning woman come to our house every other week since we've been married. Even though it is an expense to do this, I've found that it really helps us keep sane. I'd rather cut back on other expenses (eating out, entertainment, etc.) in order to keep our cleaning lady.

 

2. When I cook, I cook twice as much as we need and then throw half in the freezer for another night. I do the same when I use my crockpot.

 

3. My husband and I split the cooking responsibilities: During the work week, my husband cooks dinner two nights and I cook two nights. That gives me time with our daughter to do afterschooling.

 

4. We usually do some afterschooling on the weekend as well as during the week.

 

-Wendy