This week, my daughter Mary, AKA The Cleaning Lady, and I are working on cleaning/organizing all the kitchen cupboards and the hall closets while she enjoys her homeschool Winter Break. Mary is the unusual child who actually enjoys the peace and order of a clean and orderly home and eagerly works hard to help me each week with routine cleaning.
Not every child or mom, as you know, enjoys cleaning and de-cluttering. In her book, The Complete Guide to Getting and Staying Organized, Karen Ehman talks about how her methods and gentle guidance tranformed her daughter, “the messy”, to appreciate orderliness and take responsibility for the up-keep of her room.
Regardless of your children’s gifts for orderliness, I believe it is critically important for moms to train ourselves and our children to organize and maintain our homes and bedrooms. Whether or not your home and your children’s rooms are in need of serious de-cluttering and organization, I hope you will join our Continuing Education For MomsSeminar with author and speaker Karen Ehman tomorrow night.
Karen, homeschool mom of 3, is also a speaker for Proverbs 31 Ministries, and has been a guest on the 700 Club. She has written four books that I know of which are: Homespun Gifts From the Heart, Homespun Memories for the Heart, A Life that Says Welcome, and her newest book, The Complete Guide to Getting and Staying Organized, which is our topic on Thursday night.
Here is the contact information:
Date: Thursday, February 21, 2008
Scheduled Start Time: 9:00 PM EST, 8:00 CST, 7:00 PM MST, 6:00 PST (Adjust for your time zone, please.)
Dial-in Number: 1-605-475-4150
Participant Access Code: 754074
If you have never participated in a phone seminar before, here is how it works:
1. You dial in the phone number below to the seminar. (You pay only for the phone call.)
2. Key in the seminar access code.
3. Introduce yourself, it you wish.
4. Bring a notebook to take notes, a cup of tea, and have your questions ready.
5.Don’t worry about background noise, we will mute that out.
Marilyn:
I so agree that it is vital for our young ones to learn the art of organizing our/their homes. Karen has written a book that I will definately check out. My sweet 13yrdd loves “things” and trys to keep them all!! *smile* My job is to teach her that she doesn’t “need” it all, teach her to journal her experiences and joys and be able to bless others with her over-abundance that sometimes happens!! Thanks for all your life-giving/encouraging information for all us Mamas!!
Kelly in chilly Indiana
This is such a great website. Thank you for all your hard work. I particularly liked your last post about what you wished you’d known! I’m trying to cook healthier for myself and my fiance. We usually eat lunch together, and I’m trying to homemake everything! It has been a fun adventure. My fiance always tries everything and gives suggestions on what would make the recipes better. We’ve started making our own creamed corn from scratch to put in a scrumptious recipe his grandmother used to make him. It actually tastes better in my opinion. We hope to eat healthy for our entire marriage (however long the LORD gives us), and since we are missionaries, we hope these traits will serve to benefit others. Thanks for all your help!
~Holly Boston
I love the fact that you incorporate God in all aspects of your newsletter. A lot of the ‘self-help’ forums and ‘health oriented’ newsgroups are all seemingly New Age in thought and function, so you are truly a breath of fresh air.
Having been brought up in the rural south, veggies were a staple. My mom wasn’t the best cook, but heaven help the kitchen table when my dad’s sisters took to cooking. My best memory is my auntie who had 10 kids of her own, and who, after giving birth to this 10, took in 12 more as foster children. To say her home was always hopping was an understatement. They gardened, raised livestock and did chores and no one ever went without. I remember seeing tray after tray of biscuits on the table and being the ‘odd one out’ (my parent’s only child) I was always added to the pile at this home. To see her give praise to God, to make sure all the kids were in church on Sunday and to see them all washed, pressed, well fed and fussed over was to see God at work. I miss her. What I don’t miss is the knowledge she passed on to me. I can, when I need to, cook for an army, I know how to stretch a pot of stew from the six I wanted to feed to the ten I have to feed. I have also had the privilege of asking God to help me stretch something just a little bit further….something she would have done as well.
Thank you for letting me know that people like my auntie are alive and well and not a thing of the past. Like her, I am sure when your time comes, He will tell you….’well done, good and faithful servant’.