Memories of a disorganized mind: I remember when I was a teen ager, mourning the fact that I always lost things.  My brain felt like the most jumbled disorganized place in the world.  My Dad tried to get to the bottom of it…psychologically…I must somewhere in my subconscious be punishing myself by loosing things.  My mom took a more practical approach by having me listen to Stephen Covey.

(Note: To date, I spent at least 2 hours at my parents house upon preparing to leave, perusing through the house for socks and such.  Well, what got left?  A whole bag of dirty laundry, and a sweater of my son’s.  So forgetting things comes naturally and attempting organization a work in progress. )

Change: Slowly, I started learning some steps to organization.  As a young missionary for my church, we were given ‘blue planners’ which missionaries were to use to plan each half hour of their day.  Planning sessions were held with a fellow missionary team member once a week. These inventories and planning meetings began with a prayer and a companionship inventory, and continued with making calls to set up appointments and planning weekly service and teaching.

Well, planning now takes a big part of my life, mainly because my brain hasn’t much improved…I have an artist right sided brain.  If I give myself a general plan, my brain can think much more clearly, even though often I get things done later or in a different order then I planned; yet the plan still saves me from waking up each day feeling like I am in a fog and am a human pin ball that will bounce to any given place at any given impulse to my brain!  My friend Melissa from New Zealand, helped me to organize chores around certain days.  She probably talked to me about it for months before I stopped doing all my major cleaning, just on Mondays!  Also, I organized my homeschooling so I had some direction to make thinking easier each new day!  See Mama’s Homeschool’n and scroll down a little for organizing charts…I often shuffle the days around but still the plan helps me to be far more effective.

Re-concerted efforts: Well, somewhere over the years since I have been home, I have forgotten about all the prayer I did as a missionary as we planned.  Has my life become any less important?  No!  So I want to thank Lindsay from Passionate Homemaking, for reminding me not to cruise right into planning, but to slow down, spend some time being grateful for all the blessings of the last week, and using prayer, pondering and scripture study to prepare your mind for the holy spirit’s promptings.  See this post:  Taking a Weekly Planning and Prayer Retreat.

I love her post because it reminds me that the Lord will guide me in the simplest of things….what to eat… even what to wear, where to go, who to call or visit, etc.  Thanks to Lindsay, also I will be making thank you notes, and gratitude, a bigger part of my weekly life. Also thanks to my sister Eirene who gives old fashioned little love cards with thank you’s for the simplest things in life.

The Holy Ghost to help me: I am making goals to plan each Sunday in such a worshipful manner.  But I also would like to pay tribute to the Holy Spirit who guides me when I fly by the seat of my pants, and also helps me when my plan needs to revert to plan B, when my plan isn’t His plan.  (Such as making dinners for someone and bagging my normal routine.)  I was given the Gift of the Holy Ghost at my baptism by an ordained (or John 15:16) and worthy priesthood leader, my own father, (who was given the same priesthood as had Jesus’ disciples, as has every worthy male in His Restored gospel to bless their families) and this Gift of the Holy Ghost is my most precious and helpful gift I can use each day if I am worthy of it.  I am currently working on Remembering Christ through the week at my most hardest points, as I have found at those crucial moments I am forgetting Him.

(Each Sunday I re-covenant to remember Him during sacrament meeting by listening to the prayer over the bread and water and partaking of the sacrament with a repentful heart. The prayer promises we can receive the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost for guidance, comfort, peace and protection, if we fulfill our promise to always remember Christ. )  About Baptism and Gift of the Holy Ghost, see Preach My Gospel; down load chapter The Gospel of Jesus Christ, pgs 63-65; About Jesus’ original ordination and authorization to preach, and baptize, and how that power was lost, and restored in our modern time, see Preach my Gospel, dowload chapter 1, The Message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and see pages 32-35)

I believe by more concerted planning, that this gift of the Holy Ghost I was given at baptism will be added upon, enhanced, and empowered!  :)

Progress: I have officially had two ‘worshipful’ ‘retreats’.  I loved feasting on those things to journal and be thankful for through the week.  I loved studying my scriptures before planning.  It added a spiritual dimension to my planning and even better, to my week.  I find that I have been doing the idea of this for a while, but in smaller chunks at once, and on different days.  I think it is ideal to get done at one time. When you dedicate a portion of time to prepare your mind for the spirit to guide your choices, there is an element of sacrifice that enhances all that you do during the week.

Further organization: Lindsay provides a wealth of planning sheets to help the unorganized unproficient such as myself.  These are all kept together in one notebook binder.  In times past, I made myself a binder, inspired by Candy from “Keeping the Home” and her amazing “Home management binder.”  Candy recently did a fabulous post, a peek into her binder.  You can also easily locate this post from a side Menu called “Home Management Binders, click on her “Mine“ and also see about 20 other sample management binders from different people which she links to so you can help yourself design just the right fit.  Lindsay’s notebook can be linked from Candy’s blog. Lindsay did a video tour of hers as well as provided printable downloads of helpful master lists, and cute and free organization print outs.  See “Building a Home Planning Notebook. Lindsay suggests tackling one section of your notebook at a time!  This is ESSENTIAL if it is going to work for you.  It took me about 1/2 a year to finally master the simple morning routine of getting ready and having a worshipful daily breakfast devotional and clean up, and I consider this still one of my greatest accomplishments.  I am trying to establish a solid and consistent night routine that includes brushing teeth, (currently children only brush at morning) and includes family prayer and scriptures. (Currently my husband does individual prayers with the children and reads some scriptures while I am off taking a break or usually tidying.) Our nightly routine needs some sharpening and bettering. In organization, currently I am working on one section of my notebook, “Homeschooling”.

My Binder: Here is my binder. I found lovely pictures from old magazines I had from the Ensign (A family magazine geared for applying scriptures to challenges we face each day–a $10 investment well worth it for our family as we get a new magazine each month and we also obtain the children’s Friend.  Available for the teens is the New Era.)  Each month is chalk full of powerfully inspirational and applicable helps and lovely pictures for personal and family improvement. Click here for ordering information. I love this woman filling her lamp with oil for it reminds me to keep my priorities aligned each day. The pictures of my Savior remind me how much I need Him daily.

Temporary Hiatus: Unfortunately, currently I am not even using my binder…it needs re-vamping and I have reverted to older habits of keeping all sorts of different information in different places.  So soon, when I do not have too much on my plate, (such as moving and preparing for a baby) I will get it all in one notebook to make my life much easier and eliminate wasted time in searching.

Here is my hodge-podge teacher-style planning notebook. What a mess! Ha, ha, well it is working for me for now…and you have to do what works for you! However you work your planning, I want to emphasize how rewarding it is to check your planned agendas, or even to write things down AFTER accomplishing them…when I do this I feel so accomplished as a fruitful mother, it helps me realize how much I am actually doing (yes I will often put down seemingly simple tasks such as reading a story to the children)which helps me see I am doing wonderful things with family, home, etc! Recording even simple or ‘mundane’ accomplishments brings satisfaction as well as provides a memory hook that I can look to later and remember.

Encouragement: If you don’t take a chunk of time to plan, I do pray that you pray often and let the Lord guide you daily, for He still has a master plan for you! I am still at the stage where if the idea makes it to the paper I am on a roll, and wow! I usually do get it done when I do write it, but I believe just praying and trying to obey can really help you in your own life’s style and flavor, mission, happiness and fulfillment!

Yesterday I was so glum to step on the scale at my midwife appointment, and find out that I weighed the same as I did when I delivered Hazel, Milly and Rawl!  Kinda like the feeling I had when I weighed myself after having Hazel and found I weighed the same as I did when I delivered her!  Not even a loss of seven pounds!

I had a great time painting ceramics with my sisters and daughters for a girl’s birthday treat last night, but I was so sad when I got home.  This morning, even though I woke up from a lovely dream, the same sad feeling came back into my heart, discouragement, sadness, dis-like for my body, sad about the future and very fearful!

Then as I put on my aerobics video, the Lord implanted feelings from the Holy Spirit.  Why should I slacken my strength because of my enemy?  (Satan, see Nephi’s lament 2 Nephi 4:29)  Why should I do anything but love my body and all it is doing for me with all these changes?  Why not send anything but an inner hug and appreciation for every bit of me!  Why should I let these changes alter my focus on my kids and how much I love my children, and be steady for the complete challenge they will offer me today rather than a general feeling of dread and sadness?  Why should I forget that I have a baby from God growing within me?

And right then and there, I basically said “Get thee hence, Satan, (Moses 1:16) Get out of here you dirty rascal, you won’t get me with this because I have God to help me right through, to be my arm of safety, to give me love when it doesn’t come naturally and to give me hope instead of fear.

And P.S….Riley and I think midwives can measure bellies just fine to determine baby size, and the scales can be thrown out and distributed to the neighborhood dump~

And P.P.S.  If I could blame this on anything….it would be on my friend’s recently given to me bread recipe, nine grain, and my heaven with plenty of butter! ~

My Dad is a wonderful chap. I grew up hearing exciting tales that always interweaved imagination, usually some fantasy, some good old fashioned courage and morals and he couldn’t help a romance.

If you read my last post about The Little Red Hen, you will notice I studied a talk called Family Work. Well, it so happens that the preparation of reading it actually helped my life!

I was stumped as to what to do to my son who refused to do the chore I asked of him, so I had a quick chat with God, in my stumpifiied state, johnny on the spot.  Something I usually forget to do.  What do I do now?  Heavenly Father recalled this talk to my mind and how I had learned work was to be a vehicle to bring families together as they worked side by side.

I said, “Rawl do you want to lay down and rest for ten minutes to give you more energy, or do you want to put the silver ware away now while I tell you a story?”  (Heavenly Father’s brilliant sentence idea)

Now I always get scared telling a story  that nothing will come, I much rather read one…but my son gave me the premise and so that made it easier, he wanted a story about a fox and a dragon.  I remembered how I used to tell stories to Milly all the time surrounding her current struggle and just put in imaginative characters, and she loved them! (A wormy family with Sylvia the worm who was scared to move was my last one…overall they were boring premises, but being about butterflies or bunnies made all the difference)  I hadn’t told stories in about 2 years!

Well, I began and found it was almost like God was putting the ideas in my head…I concocted a brilliant story, it had a funny part, and discussed lying the current problem Rawl struggles with…the Dragon of course was decietful and because he was, George won the battle!  It included romance as George married Alica after going on several dates where in he saw she was not only pretty but so kind hearted….she stayed after they sang at a nursing home to visit with the guests!  The fox belonged to Alicia, and George found the fox in the pit of the dragon’s stomach where he was having a repose and gaining strength.  The fox got swallowed whole you see and met George there.  (Of course, this all came from childhood stories, everyone knows you must sleep in a dragon’s stomach to get extra strength.)

Stories just might fall out of your mouth too in an hour of need, try it, you know we are not in this alone!  But for me, this single positive experience where I ‘won’ and turned to God, and he saved my bacon and created sweetness too, I want it to be the beginning, just the beginning of a rich tradition of working side by side with my children.  In fact, parallel leadership instead of dictatorship  is my goal this week, wish me luck.  May I stay out of many power struggles!  Well, staying out of at least one will be a good start….