Simply Convivial: Pep Talks for Homemakers & Homeschoolers

When You Need to Walk Away

Free module of my signature course: https://www.simplyconvivial.info/story/  When I feel like I want to walk away from life for a spell, what I actually need to walk away from is my own selfishness and idealistic dreams.

How to be happy as a mom

Free guide: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/happy  We tend to think of happiness as a mere feeling, something nice but unnecessary, something transient and superficial. However, happiness has always been a topic of deep interest to philosophers, and there is a long Christian tradition of both what happiness truly is and also how important it is.

How to be happy as a mom

Free guide: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/happy  We tend to think of happiness as a mere feeling, something nice but unnecessary, something transient and superficial. However, happiness has always been a topic of deep interest to philosophers, and there is a long Christian tradition of both what happiness truly is and also how important it is.

Got homeschool logistics?

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/homeschool-logistics We know we need curriculum and books and lists before the homeschool day begins, but what about logistics? Logistics is our strategy for how things will be done - as opposed to the curriculum question of what will be done. Our homeschool days are more about logistics than curriculum particulars, so let's address our logistics strategies head on before we finalize our homeschool plans. Join me for a free workshop series that will gi...

How can I enjoy laundry, the never-ending chore?

Free home routine guide: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/routines True confession: I’ve tried every configuration of laundry routine out there and never found one that made me stay on top of laundry. I can discover a good rhythm, but then something will change. It turns out that laundry is not evenly produced over time, so if by a “consistent” laundry routine we mean one where we do the same thing all the time and get the same results, it’s just never going to work.

Is your planner working or frustrating? 3 things to make your planner useful

Planners can easily be time-wasting rather than time-managing. How do we make sure our attempts at getting life together are going to be helpful and useful? I have three keys that will ensure they are. Take the "Get Organized" Quiz - https://www.simplyconvivial.com/quiz - it will tell you what you should work on next to make the most progress, quickly.

Productivity advice for women: fruit not widgets

Is life about getting more done? Are we too busy or are we too lazy? Perhaps we're careening between the two ditches. What's a mom to do? Think true things. Listen up.

The 3 Mindset Hacks Every Mom Needs

Free download: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/mindset Your mindset as a mom matters and it's within your power to change.

Why should I make my bed?!

Get organized quiz - https://www.simplyconvivial.com/quiz Your mom tells you to make your bed. The internet tells you to make your bed. The productivity gurus tell you to make your bed. But why???

Build community, accountability, and motivation for moms

Camaraderie-style accountability can help us spur one another on to any sort of good work: homemaking, homeschooling, holiness. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works – Hebrews 10:24 Camaraderie-based accountability doesn’t have to be official, with rules and agreed-upon terms. If rules float your boat, lay some out; remember, however, that our lives demand flexibility. Hold the rules loosely, as guidelines, not as whips. If rules scare you, you don’...

Create your own housework framework (3 steps)

Free guide to make your own housework system: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/2016/personalized-housecleaning-plan/ And our housework needs a framework just as much as anything else we do or use. We need to have an underlying structure that gives shape to our days and support to our sanity. Without a framework, we’re sloppy, floppy, and choppy. We do this and that, here and there, and never feel like we’re getting anywhere – because we’re not. So push pause. Take some time out o...

3 Ways to Make Hospitality a Habit

Be ready for hospitality with my free tidy house guide: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/ehap So, we know that our home is for hospitality, but it seems so hard – it’s extra, and we have no room for extra. We want to know how to be hospitable, but it doesn’t come naturally. The one thing that makes hospitality so difficult is that we are out of practice. It is easy to slip into selfish patterns: doing what needs to be done on our own agendas, taking a break, keeping to ourselves a...

How to juggle homeschooling and housework

Get a tidy house: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/ehap --free guide It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a homeschool mom in possession of a large family must be in want of a housekeeper. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Some families can actually swing it, but most of us are on our own when it comes to keeping up with both school and home. Of course we can bring the kids on board, and sometimes husbands can lend a hand, but there’s still a lot to do. Our homeschool year is o...

3 things to do when homemaking is hard

I often hear from women who say they were organized when they worked in an office, but they just can’t manage to be – or at least feel – organized at home. What makes it so hard to stay on top of basic tasks? Why is organization so hard to maintain? I think it’s due to both the open-ended and repetitive nature of the job. There are no bosses, no managers, no teachers. There are no paychecks, no grades, no due dates. The tasks, once done, need to be done again, so there’s never t...

How to classically homeschool multiple students

My book - The Convivial Homeschool: https://amzn.to/3rhFLBA We homeschool to avoid the factory model and give our children an effective learning environment rather than an efficient one. Thus, our home life and our various ages working alongside one another is actually a perk, not a problem. So what do you need to classically homeschool multiple kids? You need good books, time to read and talk about them, thoughtful and engaged brain work, encounters with the real world, and disci...

Building better habits at home

Why habits are hard workshop: https://youtu.be/dge2oieqJys I would stare and shake my head. My roommate in college made her bed - on the top bunk - every single morning. Over 100 miles away from her mom, she made her bed because *she* wanted to. I did not relate. I did not make my bed. The difference was in our habits - AND our habits formed our tastes and desires. Good home habits give peace of mind. “The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care you ...

Get Organized #5: Planning without wasting time or feeling like a failure

Organization is a SNAP Quiz: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/quiz Daily Card Workshop: https://youtu.be/XQ81AJz5_ZM Example planning pages: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/2021/planners-for-moms/ #1 - Look at your planner multiple times a day. #2 - Do something from your planner after you look at it; let it guide your choices. #3 - Keep your planner clear and simple. It’s so tempting to think that the only thing keeping us from being organized is the layout of the planner page...

Get Organized #4: Put your attitude in order

Take the Get Organized quiz: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/quiz

Get Organized #3: A planner that isn't clunky, that works - even when messy

Daily Card Workshop: https://youtu.be/XQ81AJz5_ZM Free Brain Dump Guide: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/braindump Youtube version: https://youtu.be/osTM2j8dCLw We have so many tasks, thoughts, ideas, and appointments we need to keep track of, but sometimes the more we try to get the perfect system in place, the harder it seems to be to stay on top of things. Let's do a working but messy planner and actually accomplish the most important things without getting distracted and ove...

Get Organized #2: Organizing Spaces Effectively

Get the free EHAP guide: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/ehap and discover how to keep your house mostly tidy most of the time, even with kids. We think of our spaces when we think of getting organized, but we try to make our spaces and lives into things they are not rather than try to make the spaces facilitate more life, more living - not more expression of personal style.  Watch the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RpRprsEUhLo Don't forget to listen to part 1 and subscribe...

Get Organized: Why organization never sticks

Watch the YouTube version with slides: https://youtu.be/0LutEE_zI14 Take the quiz: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/quiz Share this episode and get the workbook for the series for free! Tell us how and where you shared at [email protected] and we'll reply with the download link.

Create an island of sanity.

We must remember that the point of organizing is not so everything is neat and tidy and clear all the time. The point is that we are ready to do the right next thing; that we are maintaining an atmosphere of love and order in our home; and that our environment supports not only our work, but also the work of our children – the work of learning and growing and thriving. That work is messy. Enter: the island of sanity. To help maintain your calm equilibrium in the midst of the chao...

Dear homeschool mom who wants to give her 5yo a classical education

Education as a program, even classically, did not traditionally begin until the child was reasoning. Talk to a 9 or 10 year old child for a time and observe the difference between his thinking process and conversational ability and your 5 or 6 year old. When the oldest is 5 or 6, and he’s followed by younger siblings, he seems so smart, so capable. He is. But he is also still quite young. Whatever you do, don’t try to start Latin with your 5 or 6 year old. Rather, read fairy tales,...

Ten minutes is enough to make progress

Short circuit the boom and bust cycle by taking advantage of just ten minutes at a time. Don't overthink it.

All of your homeschool is character training

You don't need a curriculum for character.

How much time should homeschooling take?

Time budgets for moms

Time Budget Resources: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/time Just like Dave Ramsey has you use cash envelopes for your spending budgets, we can reserve envelopes of time for our various responsibilities across the week. Rather than scheduling 20 minutes for folding laundry, 10 minutes for sweeping, and so forth for every task we have on our list, we can look at our days and weeks as a whole and reserve chunks of time for types of tasks. Then when that chunk of time begins, we can a...

What to do when you don't have enough time

Time budgeting help: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/time Most of our overwhelm as moms comes from feeling like we don't have enough time to do all the things we need to do. We don't have enough time to do all the things, but we do have enough time to do what we must.  We have to be sure we're telling ourselves the truth and choose a right response rather than overwhelm.  When time is short, prioritize your family and your vocations without concern for appearances. Humbly serve ...

Homemaking is an occupation

Get started: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/stop-overwhelm Most of us began our lives as wives and mothers not only without any training or instruction in running a home, but also without any real examples in our own history and life to follow. We want to identify as a homemaker, but still feel uncomfortable doing so. We so desperately want to do a good job, and we jump in with both feet and suddenly find we’re drowning. Modern society conditioned us to think that the job of a h...

10 reasons NOT to homeschool

Homeschooling is hard. Here are 10 reasons why you may need to give up.

Finding more homeschool motivation

Get my new book! https://amzn.to/31nKs2A It’s one thing to start the school year strong, but quite another to keep at it after the weeks start blurring together. Motivation to homeschool ebbs away, and we can’t wait for some natural, overwhelming incoming tide to return. Instead of being tossed about on the waves of our emotions and hormones (which turn into tropical storms when they crash into the emotions and hormones of our children), we need to treat motivation like a garden a...

3 homeschool tips for moms

Get The Convivial Homeschool book: https://amzn.to/3reVoug When homeschool days go bad, we wonder if we are missing something or if there are better ways out there we’re missing. We want a lovely homeschool lifestyle, full of laughter and joy and definitely lots of learning – without tears. How’s a homeschool mom to make that happen? These techniques are how I work toward a better homeschool every day. Best Homeschool Technique #1 – Manage Expectations Best Homeschool Technique #...

How to be a better homeschool mom

See how your homeschool is doing with the REAL homeschool quiz: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/homeschool I don’t know about you, but I always start off the year thinking that this year will be more awesome than last because this year I’m committed to really being, well, awesome. This school year will be different because I will be different. So, a decade into homeschooling and having rounded the bend of my thirties, maybe that idealism and optimism is tempered a bit, but I stil...

3 ways to beat perfectionism

3 ways to handle perfectionism and get rid of perfectionist tendencies

Why can't the dishes wait until the morning? Is procrastination ever good?

SNAP into organization QUIZ: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/quiz I had put dinner on the table. Wasn’t that enough for one day? To get up and then face the collection of plates, cups, pans, utensils, pots – not to mention the counters themselves. Ugh. Soaking seemed to be the best solution. If the dishes wait, no harm is done. Really, I was being a better housekeeper for putting it all off until the morning. It would take me so much less time, I told myself, to wait until t...

Hey, slob. You might be a perfectionist.

Organization quiz: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/quiz Are you a perfectionist? Is the reason for your chaos actually perfectionism? Those who want all or nothing generally get nothing.  I used to think I was not a perfectionist, because nothing I did was perfect. I was a slob, so how could I be a perfectionist? If all-or-nothing perfectionism is our tendency, then we shouldn’t be surprised when we can’t get up off the couch. Why start when we know we won’t accomplish what we’d...

Your weekly dashboard - make a planner work for you!

Find out about our community: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/membership Hear from a number of women about personalizing and customizing a planner to make it work for your life and needs. Planners don't have to be one-size-fits-all and they don't have to be confining or busy work. Keeping a weekly dashboard - in any format - will help you keep your plates spinning when life is hectic and busy.

How to Get Started Planning: Planner Organization and Set-Up - 5 Simple Steps

Take the "get organized" quiz: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/quiz How to set up and organize any planner so that it works for you. Planner organization can seem complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. We can waste a lot of time setting up our planners. Here's the brass tacks of planner set-up: List current projects. Update your calendar so it's complete and correct, with the next 3 months visible. Have a set of lists for your week Have a list of your daily top 3 Have a sp...

Functional Planner: How to make any planner work

Work Your Plan: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/stop-overwhelm  A functional planner depends more on the user than the page templates and formats. You are the secret to your own functional planner, no matter what system you use.  Three Rules to a Working Planner:  It has a place for projects, notes, and a daily top three  You carry it around with you and look at it throughout the day  You update it every day, every week, and every quarter  It's not the pages, but the process that...

Stop Getting Distracted: Motivation for Moms

Stop getting distracted and find the motivation you need to get momentum, find focus, make progress. Moms need to know how to stop getting distracted, because it's too easy to lose track of what's important and what needs to be done. We don't want to waste our time. To stop wasting time, we need better time management skills. Those skills include the simple practice of writing things down. We wonder how to stay focused, but it's as simple as writing things down, as brain dumping,...

Unclutter your mind so you can think creatively

Download the free guide: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/braindump We all know the feeling. You can't focus, you can't think straight. You can't get a handle on life. The truth is that your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. Clear the clutter to free up your creative energy. Three steps: Spend 10-15 minutes everyday writing down the  1. thoughts that make you anxious,  2. the thoughts that repeat themselves,  3. the nagging questions and tasks When your mind is unclut...

How To Be More Productive When You're Feeling Unmotivated

Find my free brain dump guide here: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/braindump When you're feeling unmotivated, it's hard to get things done. We want to be more productive, but when we're feeling that lack of motivation we drag and dawdle.  This one practice is the golden key to overcoming a lack of motivation and kicking your productivity motor into gear. You might wonder how to be more productive when you're feeling unmotivated, and the answer often comes down to acting in the w...

Hacks for Busy Moms to Stop Stress & Regain Sanity

Get help ending overwhelm & stress: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/braindump My quick hack for busy moms will save your sanity when you have so much to juggle. When you're looking for hacks, you usually want a secret you're missing - and I have that for you today. Too often busy moms are go go go and get confused and overwhelmed about what's next. We risk missing life because we were so busy juggling details. My quick and unexpected hack today - a brain dump - is the key process...

Hot Tips for Menu Planning

Menu planning doesn't need to take a long time. These tips will get you to meal time peace.

3 tips for a better grocery shopping list

More tips here: https://www.simplyconvivial.com/2019/how-to-grocery-shop/ Improve your grocery shopping skill! These 3 grocery store tips will save you time and money and make grocery shopping simple.

You need to plan ALL the meals

Watch the "Save Time in the Kitchen" Workshop! https://www.simplyconvivial.info/pantry I know it seems overwhelming. I know even just planning dinner sometimes seems overwhelming. But, seriously, who wants to wake up and decide in the pre-coffee fog what to feed the troops for breakfast? It has to be decided ahead of time. Everyone talks about how much planning out dinners saves you from mental effort and decision fatigue, but that’s only 1/3 of the meals you feed people! Imagi...

Create a template for your menu plan (make dinner faster & simpler!)

Watch the "Save Time in the Kitchen" Workshop! https://www.simplyconvivial.info/pantry Does menu planning seem impossibly hard? It really can be.  So today let's talk about a simple way to make it easier. We will talk about building your own meal templates that will take the thinking out of menu planning.

What to do when you don't get your most important things done in a day

Do the Daily Card Challenge: https://www.simplyconvivial.info/daily-card/ What if you made a plan, you picked your real top three priorities for the day, and then you did none of them and you have no excuses. There is no good reason why you didn't do what you ought to do.  Are we just bad planners or are we just hopeless? No. Neither. How do we make progress without giving up and without making the same mistakes, again, figuring out the mistakes we made so that we can learn from ...

When you pick the wrong top 3 for your to-do list...

Free 5-Day Daily Card Challenge: https://www.simplyconvivial.info/daily-card/ So you've been using the daily card writing down your top three or what you think are your top three, but then other stuff comes up. Was your plan a waste of time? What do you do when your top three is not what you do in the day? So, so often when we get those top three items chosen and we write them down on our daily card, something else comes up and we don't do those things. Not because we were lazy or...

The best planner is the one you look at (why a daily card works)

Free 5-Day Daily Card Challenge: https://www.simplyconvivial.info/daily-card/ So I have one planner secret that will make all the difference, no matter what planner you use, even if that planner is just a post-it note, there is a secret that applies and makes that planner actually useful in your day-to-day life. You're ready.  You've got to look at your list and you've got to do what it says. I know ground breaking, planning secrets here. Stay tuned for more where that came from. ...