To wrap up our Preparation Series let’s look at how to accomplish your goals and know your purpose.
God has given us each a purpose. Once you realize what yours is (at least generally) then you can find purpose in doing the day-to-day potty training, laundry, meal planning and taxi-driving for your kids. It is only then that you will accomplish your goals and know your purpose.
If you missed any posts in my series on preparation please take some time to catch up:
The Preparation SERIES
I’m Not Prepared! – Get Prepared.
Preparation Comes by Consistency
Preparation on Purpose + Resource List (you are here)
We feel sometimes that we are spinning our wheels and getting nowhere. We let all of those voices beat us down.
“You’ll never catch up.”
“You won’t ever change.”
“You are drowning and no one cares.”
Well, that’s not true, I care. Your family -does- care. Even if they don’t let you know it. There is a big difference in our brains from clutter to clear, from scrounging for food to a prepared dinner every night, from piles of unidentified laundry to clean put away laundry. Your family does care that you need to get control and you don’t have it yet. There is a difference and it does matter to them and to you. There is a purpose for your preparation.
Now, can we change it all at once? Once and for all? As soon as we decide we want to make a difference? I have to tell you the answer is no. But the answer is also, it DOES matter. There is a purpose to getting into routines, habits, right mindsets, consistency.
The reason we want to be prepared is multi-dimensional for each person and family but we do have some common ground. The goal of being prepared can simply be wrapped up in the word Sanity.
When you aren’t prepared you feel confusion, sadness, overwhelm and isolation with what seems like everyone else can do and handle but you can’t.
You CAN get control over your mom life.
You can manage your home with an excellency that will honor the Lord, give stability to your family and your mind that will enable you to go further. When you can have control over these daily things, it is then that we can reach beyond to our individual purpose.
If the arguments are no longer over who didn’t put their dish away, think of the freedom that will give your family. If you aren’t wiped out from the clutter in the rooms, the paperwork, the lack of schedule for your kids, then of the things you can do.
Think of what you can enjoy with them and do for them and allow for them in finding each of their own purposes.
So let’s recap this series of preparation….
It’s about mindset first.
You can’t tackle the problems until you prepare your mind first and begin to back out of those bad habits – Mentally.
Tackle tasks in Bits.
You aren’t going to be able to do huge tasks, projects, changes in your family all at once. Each day do a bit, if you can do the next step you will win.
Consistency in the cycles.
Every day, week, month, season, year are all made up of cycles. You must see the cycles for what they are, don’t be overwhelmed by them but simply grab a hold of them through being consistent. Do what’s needed every time, on time.
Look at your goals and make a plan.
Planning comes after you gear your mind up with the following. Determine your desires and goals for your family. You might even want to talk to them about what’s a high priority for your home. Then seek out ways to solve it, accomplish it, win it.
Now there have been some super helpful resources that I’ve found that DO work. I highly encourage you to see if these might be helpful for you. Please don’t stop, read through and bookmark links from my Get Prepared Resource List below.
GOALS
Where to Start?
How to Set SMART Goals – This shows you have to make meaningful goals that you can actually accomplish
The Young Wife’s Guide to Setting Goals in Your Home
ROUTINES
Flylady
This lady has changed so many women’s lives, families lives. If you don’t know where to start please start with her. Whenever I start to fall off and don’t know how to get back control it’s inevitable that someone recommends her to me.
FlyLady Kat
She’s a super sweetie! If you like Flylady but would like daily help, check out her videos. Your at home mentor. She actually has daily videos of what to do each day, if you want those. But her general Q&A live videos are great.
CLEANING & ORGANIZING
A Slob Comes Clean
Her podcasts helped me finally realize getting my home and life under control was not just tasks, it’s mental.
How Jen Does It
LOVE her! She’s very much humble and normal when it comes to how to get things done and she explains it! She has loads of ‘clean with me’ and ‘cleaning motivation’ videos. She even shows you how to cut up melons lickety split 🙂
Don’t laugh but…Timers
When you are cleaning or clearing things out, a timer will help you stay focused AND keep things manageable by keeping to the Bits
PLANNING & TO-DOS
For planning I highly recommend Flylady’s control journals
Do chore charts for your kids.
Keep the list of chores per day short (1 or 2 during the week, no more than 4 on Saturday and give them a break on Sundays). You have to PLAN for cleaning and kids involvement.
I use Any.do for making lists. This is also an app for Android, perhaps on iOS but I’m not sure. I have my today to-dos, house maintenance task, store lists, a list of things to talk to my husband about… so many things. I’m a list girl for sure.
I am going to make a post about Evernote for moms because it is JUST that cool. Evernote keeps my recipes, meal plans, health notes (what to do for fevers, etc.), all my blogging work and more. If it’s a note it’s almost certainly in my Evernote.
Now I know we as moms are always revising our steps and things change as our kids age. As time goes by you will find blog posts, magazine articles, talking to teachers and friends, and my favorite, books, that will tell you shortcuts and tricks to getting done all that needs to get done. And there are lots of methods to ensure you arrive at your specific goals. You’ll learn what works and you will tackle that mountain, beat that rolling boulder if you do this one thing along the way:
Stay consistent and it’ll be easier to BE consistent.
Thanks you all for following my series on preparation! I hope this series has helped you to be about to accomplish your goals and know your purpose. If not, I have a post coming soon on knowing your purpose as mom. I welcome all comments.