Two months down!
If you incorporated our January and February ‘Do It’ Lists into your routine, you should be reaping the benefits of peace and joy in your home and home school by now. As we near the end of month #2, we hope many of these tasks are becoming routines that flow into your daily schedule on auto-pilot.
Remember: the goal is not perfection. (Jesus has dibs on that one.) We are striving to manage home and hearth well, so that we are freed up to love on those in our world and serve our Lord more effectively.
As February draws to a close, we are ready to release our March ‘Do It!’ List. We devoted the January ‘Do It’ blog to unpacking the daily tasks, used February to look deeper into the weekly tasks, and now in March, let’s explore those once-per-month jobs.
Here are the Top Ten things we want you to know about our monthly ‘Do Its’:
- Some of the items repeat every month, while others cycle in seasonally or annually.
- As with the daily and weekly to tasks, we leave extra lines for you to write in those jobs unique to your life and your family.
- Because these items require a tad bit more time than those on the daily or weekly lists, we recommend you look at your monthly calendar and schedule a time to make these happen: a weekday afternoon, a Saturday morning, or an evening when the rest of the family might be out of the house.
- You might want to enlist the help of the rest of the family for months that include “clean out the garage” or other tasks that are laborious or time-consuming.
- Do not feel guilty about assigning tasks from all three lists—daily, weekly, or monthly—to your children. In fact, I believe you should feel guilty if you do not delegate chores to your children. Raising them up to be responsible adults means they can not only read and write, but can operate the washing machine and the vacuum cleaner. (I would often say while raising our family, “My children may not arrive and call me blessed, but there are some daughters-in-law out there that are going to love me!” And today I’m confident that both my wonderful daughters-in-love appreciate husbands who know how to help with household chores.)
- Clean Out Fridge: I’m certain this really should be on the weekly ‘Do It’ List, but my desire to keep it real motivated me to place it here. We may intend to do it weekly, but let’s face it: this somehow spirals to a monthly task at best. Cleaning out the fridge for me means emptying each shelf, doing a full-scale “mold patrol,” discarding anything that looks more like a specimen than dinner, wiping down the shelves and adding everything back in an orderly manner. Ditto for the drawers and doors. If you have teenage boys, leftovers probably don’t last long enough for fuzz to start appearing.
- Vacuum Car: This is a good one to delegate to one of your children. In addition to saving you time, assigning this task comes with the added benefit of making them more mindful of keeping the trash out of the car, bringing reusable cups inside, and maybe not tracking mud onto the mats.
- Freezer Inventory: Have you ever bought a roast and then forgotten it’s stored back there on the top shelf of the freezer? Or have you ever been looking for said roast and discovered a casserole you made six weeks ago and forgot about? It’s like finding buried treasure! Yay – dinner tomorrow is in the freezer! Consider keeping an inventory of what’s in there posted on the freezer door. This will help in meal planning, will save you time, and ensure you save money by using what’s in the freezer before it expires. Foodsafety.gov publishes a handy list to determine appropriate storage times for the freezer and the refrigerator.
- Donation Drop-Off: As you organize a drawer or closet or clean out a bookshelf or bin, you will naturally find items that need to be given away (or set aside for an annual garage sale). Either way, they need to be corralled and contained in a holding place until ready to be moved. I’ve found it helpful to keep a shopping bag in my laundry room for accumulating these “give aways.” Once per month, they can be dropped off at your local Salvation Army or Goodwill. Be sure to get a receipt for tax purposes! (If you choose to save items for a garage sale, your monthly drop-off might be a move to the attic or basement instead.)
- Seasonal and Annual Items: Here’s an overall view of the items unique to each month. Each will appear on its respective monthly ‘Do It’ list. We post this here to give you a good overview and provide an opportunity for you to do some shifting. Perhaps you prefer to wash your windows in August and dust your baseboards in February. We know that being the independent-thinking home educator you are, you will make this work for you!
|
Month |
Monthly Chore |
|
January |
Accumulate tax data |
|
February |
Cull books and magazines |
|
March |
Prune bushes and trees |
|
April |
Full closet purge |
|
May |
Clean out garage |
|
June |
Wash windows |
|
July |
Organize all bookshelves |
|
August |
Kitchen / Pantry Shelves |
|
September |
Clean baseboards |
|
October |
Full Closet Purge |
|
November |
Linen Inventory |
|
December |
Christmas -INGS! (Shopping, Wrapping, Baking, Decorating, Mailing, etc.) |
We pray that your Mary Heart + your Martha Home are working in sync to bring you and your family the blessings of peace and joy!
On that same subject, if you are attending any of the conventions where our sponsor will be exhibiting this summer, please be sure to catch our workshop, Mary Heart + Martha Home = Peace and Joy … and be sure to stop by our booth to say hello and let us know if you are using the ‘Do It’ List!
Download your printable March ‘Do It’ List
with or without pre-printed daily, weekly and monthly tasks:
