A-ha!
Posted by Rachel Balducci in Family on Thursday, September 23, 2010 4:59 PM
Sometimes you just need to re-invent the wheel.
I’ve had two of those lightbulb moments recently, beautiful split-seconds when I’ve realized that we’ve been going at a particular household task from the wrong angle and then figuring out—voila!—what we can do to help.
The answer often tends to be quite simple, and why didn’t I think of this earlier? But I didn’t think of it earlier, I thought of it just now and either way, I’m just glad we’re onto something.
Two examples: for as long as forever, I have tried to have a weekly chore chart. It failed miserably. I found myself always assigning the same jobs to the same boys because Boy A hated doing Chore C and it was easier to assign him Chore D in order to avoid the wails and gnashes. Or Boy D couldn’t really do Chore A so he always wound up doing Chore, um, what was that chore again?
So out of the blue, I realized: DAILY CHORES. Just like that—something you’ve probably been doing forever and now I am too. It’s perfect (for us!).
And then today I came across something that gave me a similar A-ha moment with another area that I’d like to get in better control: budgeting. A monthly budget seems epic, but what about a weekly budget? I think I might be onto something. I’ll let you know…
A friend recently switched up her approach to laundry and moved everyone’s dressers into the laundry room (yes, it’s a nice big one). This has revolutionized her laundry system and has allowed her to side-step the daunting task (for her) of putting laundry away. This has been perfect for their family.
In matters of household magic, it’s all about system analysis. What is working? What isn’t? Do we want to fix the things that are broke? If so, let’s try. Sometimes the results are unconventional, but often they afford us the ease and simplicity we are after.
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