The New Daily

I want to cultivate a sense of rhythm in our family. I have been reading about the concept in this book, this book and this book. I have been seeing how powerful a force for good it can be on this blog, this blog, and this blog (among countless others.) The basic premise is that by simplifying and streamlining life you create predictable patterns that children (and adults) can anchor themselves to.  This provide some grounding and foundation for a joyful creative life to spring from. In practice it's simple. On Mondays we bake our bread, on Tuesday we visit friends, on Wednesday we see the speech therapist, and on Saturday Daddy makes pancakes! It also aligns the chores I do and the meals I serve each day. Mondays are "New Menu Monday", followed by "Taco Tuesdays", and "What's-On-Hand Pasta Wednesdays". 


I am really looking forward to a predictably clean and organized life. Monday the kids and I strip the beds and wash our lines. On Tuesdays I vacuum. On Wednesday I'll clean the bathrooms. It'll be a great system if I can stick with it because it takes a lot of the stress and guess work out of the week, while still giving us room to be flexible and infuse our days with variety. If I only have one big cleaning task a day, I can do it in the morning or afternoon depending on what other things crop up. It also guarantees my house will always maintain a base standard of cleanliness. Without this consistency everything tends to be a jumbled mess, and a mad-dash from one place to the next. Having an idea about what we will do, where we will go, and what we will eat helps us relax about the particulars live more in the moment.

I had tried a variation of this back when Georgia was a baby. I put a grease board in my kitchen with all my weekly tasks listed with their corresponding day. A month into the routine, it was ingrained in my brain and the grease board became a place to run a grocery list and weekly menu. Somehow, though I fell out of the practice and it feels like I'v been living in a cyclone ever since. It's time to take back our rhythmic life. Smoochy has been urging me to get organized for years. I finally mapped it all out two weekends ago on a long car drive and have been trying to implement ever since. Last week I allowed myself to get frantic when I got off schedule. Then I decided that defeated the whole purpose of trying to find calm and balance. So, I've been more forgiving of myself and remembered that it's a process, and will take some time to work the bugs out. 


Yesterday was Monday... which I have booked as a serious work day around the house. Between doing all the baking for the week (bread and granola) and washing and replacing all the bed linens I was busy. Let's just say my dogs were barking by the end of it all. But, getting all that accomplished felt pretty good and has enabled me to relax and enjoy today... our play-date day. Plus, the kids were amazingly involved with all the cooking and linen laundering. I tried not to dictate their participation, so they came and went as their interest waxed and wained. However, more often than not they enjoyed the chance to work along with me. The rest of the time Normy and Georgia played like maniacs, largely leaving me free to do what I needed to do. Hello, unstructured creative play! 5 and 3 are awesome ages! 

"New Menu" Monday featured a delicious chilled carrot ginger soup with garlic and lime. Well, I liked it. No one else did. However, since I I had a hunch it wouldn't go over well I made desert... which I NEVER do. We had a gingerbread cake topped with fresh strawberries. They forgave me for the soup and didn't even realize that desert was 100% whole wheat and had very little sugar in it. He he he he! 

Well, Lola liked her dinner anyway.

Liked it a lot!

Normy preferred cake

So did Georgia, but who can blame them? 

I feel like we're off and running with something great. I'm going to try to spend the week blogging about the development of our little rhythms and routines. Mostly as a way for me to have a reference to see what worked and what didn't. I'm excited.