Equipping young women professionals with young families to find fulfillment, contentment and joy as mothers and home makers without losing sight of who they are as women.

Volume 11, Issue 28: My Home Making Schedule Part I

I never thought I could post about home making as part of my inspiration messages until I realized that it's not something to be kept behind the scenes. Our lives are all-rounded, we have different parts of us that play different roles to the whole. For me, that includes home making. Home making is actually a central part of my life. As a self-professed organized neat freak, this is a part of me that forms part of my personal development journey. Yes, I continually improve as a home maker.

Home making is different things to different people at different stages of life. For me it's all about making my home comfortable and running smoothly. At this stage of my life with my kids at pre-teen and teen stages, home making for me involves cleaning, cooking, laundry, managing the house, staying on top of supplies and leading my kids, while doing an 8-5 job.

This post will focus on the cleaning schedules that I design and diligently follow to keep our home clean and organized. Although most of my home making routines are done daily, there are things that I have done just once a week and a few others just once a month. Let's start with my daily cleaning schedule in this post then carry on to my weekly and monthly cleaning schedules in the next posts.

• Daily Cleaning

My daily cleaning list includes the following:

Kitchen: Sweep and mop the floor, wipe cabinet doors and appliances, wipe the hood head, scrub countertops and sink, dry the sink and faucet.

Living and dining spaces: Sweep and mop the floor (everyday) dust living room seats and media cabinet (Mondays), wipe dining seats and island seats (Tuesdays), wipe lounge seats and brush lounge carpet (Wednesdays), wipe walls and doors (Thursdays).

Bathrooms and bedrooms: Mop flours and scrub shower walls and glass partitions on Mondays and Wednesdays, Clean toilets and sinks from Monday to Thursday.

Laundry: Wipe countertop and sink, wipe cabinet doors and washing machine on Mondays and Wednesdays.

In our daily cleaning, along with being responsible for cleaning dishes, my kids help with having the first go at resetting the kitchen, living and dining spaces after dinner. They scrub countertops and sink, sweep and mop the floor. I then follow right after to bring everything to perfection. I could spare them the few minutes of house work each evening after school, but I don't want to deny them the opportunity to develop life skills.

My kids are learning that life doesn't give you a break just because you have a test. As such, they are learning to balance showing up for an early family dinner and doing what is lined up for them after dinner while managing the demands of their studies to perform well at school. Stay tuned for my weekly cleaning schedule in the next post.

For His Glory,

Lillian Chebosi

Volume 11, Issue 27: My Weekly Lists

Picking up from last week's post about planning, we are now considering some of the lists we maintain to aid planning. We will use my weekly lists as an example of some of the lists that we find useful in managing how we do life on a weekly basis. In case you are just joining us now, I recommend that you first read last week's post then jump right back onto this one.

Related article: Planning Ahead

List #1. Meals for the week

In this list I jot down the meals we are going to have for the coming week, for each day of the week. For meals, my week starts on Friday as that's when we do our meal prep. The week ends on Thursday, then I start again. With this, I never have to deal with the mental fatigue of figuring out what we are going to have for dinner any given day, or find myself in a position where I want to make a meal that I don't have some ingredients for. This practice also ensures that we eat healthy and balanced meals.

List #2. Audiobooks I am listening to

I hardly ever do mundane things without an audiobook or a podcast playing in the background. This habit has got me listen to so many books. I listen to most books twice over, but a few books get a few repeats over time. I listen to an audiobook from 6 o'clock in the morning when I am working out after my walk until about 8am when I am done with morning house keeping and getting ready for work or for the day. I also listen to an audiobook or a podcast when on commute or when cooking or doing other home making tasks around the house.

List #3 Books I am reading

Other than audiobooks, I also try to read a book for about an hour every day. This is either a hard cover book or an ebook in my kindle library or on iBooks app on my iPad. I have enjoyed finding an audiobook for an ebook I have read or vice versa. It makes the absorption of the content so much better.

List #4. Outfits for the week

Don't you just hate standing in front of your wardrobe every morning wondering what to wear? I hate it when I start my week without a list of what to wear for each of the seven days of the week. Maintaining this list also helps me dress really well every day. It takes me just a few minutes to come up with the list while standing in front of my wardrobe at the end of each week.

List #5. Workouts for the week

I have now transitioned to working out from home since COVID. I went back to the gym when the restrictions for the first phase in my location were eased, but when the gym had to be closed for the second time I found the thought of switching back and forth destabilizing. By then, I had already set up a good library of workouts from YouTube on the TV. I don't like the time wastage that results from trying to pick a workout from my playlist each day or scroll through random videos on YouTube. I preselect my workouts for the week in advance.

List #6. Grocery list

If you are anything like me, you often come back home from the supermarket without one or two things you needed to buy. I have a standard grocery list for my weekly grocery shopping that I update whenever something comes up during the week. When I go to the grocery store at the end of the week, I refer to my list to make sure I get everything I need to get, as well as wade off impulse buying.

List #7. Homemaking list

I am a home maker at heart. I enjoy cleaning and organizing and making my home comfortable and running smoothly. Maintaining a house keeping list is very vital for me as it's helps set boundaries to my cleaning and organizing. Without a list and set duration for tasks, I could clean endlessly. I like to set a timer whenever I start on a task to keep me from going overboard. Since I have a full plate, I can only spare a couple of minutes each day for house keeping, but it makes all the difference. I have a daily house keeping list, a weekly list and a monthly list.

List #8. Extras for the week

And then there are extras. You can't keep a ship running well without extras, can you? These are the things I can't fit into my daily or weekly or monthly housekeeping lists but need to get done every now and then. One of the items on my extras list for this week is decluttering and tidying up my son's room. I require him to keep his room neat and tidy but there's only so much he can do. So every now and then I schedule time to spruce up his room, and my daughter's room. I also want to try and remove bedroom curtains for cleaning this weekend, so that's on my extras list too. I keep this list to no more than 3 items so I don't get overwhelmed. I also limit the time I spend on extras to no more than 2 hours each week so I don't overwork myself on my rest days.

For His Glory,

Lillian Chebosi

Volume 11, Issue 26: Planning Ahead

How do you plan for the upcoming week or day? When all is said and done, it's what we do each day and each week that gets us to attain our goals. I am hesitant to start any day without a plan, even when I am on vacation at home or away. I find that planning my week ahead of time saves me time and decision fatigue during the week.

Lately I find that even before getting out of bed in the morning, my mind churns out my immediate course of action for the first hour or so for what I already planned. I like how the human mind evolves. If you are a planner, your mind automatically takes you to the next level as you progress in your planning. Isn't that cool?

I have a hate relationship with paper. This is quite out of place because my line of work is all about papers - everything starts with physical documentation. To me, unorganized paper screams "mess!!!" So, for my personal organization, I do all my planning on my phone. In addition to using Google calendar for my work and personal life, I manage my life with a couple of lists on my phone.

How about you? What works for you? Some people hate lists. They find a way to keep everything in their mind and get things done that way. Are you one of those? How is it working for you? If you do lists, what kind of lists do you keep and how regularly do you update them? In the next post we will go over my weekly lists that help me keep different aspects of my life running efficiently.

For His Glory,

Lillian Chebosi

Volume 11, Issue 25: Deliberate practice

I was thinking about the piece I wrote last month on excellence (Excellence is Mundane) from Mark Batterson's "Win the Day" book. I thought about what makes renown athletes like Michael Phelps not slack in their training disciplines after attaining world champion status and breaking world records.

It is said that it takes only ten thousand hours to achieve expertise in anything, if you practice the right thing the right way. Earlier on in Mark's book he describes deliberate practice from Enders Ericsson's point of view. One piece of advice that Enders offers when it comes to deliberate practice is that: "There's no point at which performance maxes out and additional practice does not lead to further improvement."

In other words, Mark elaborates, "You never age out. Don't stop at ten thousand hours! Keep practicing till the day you die! That's what winning the day is all about." For me this means you never get to a point where you don't need to sharpen your skill anymore. Practicing and improving is what you do day in, day out. It's who you are. It's what your life is about. It's the story of your life.

Intrinsic motivation keeps high performers going. It is what sustains their deliberate practice. It matters not what level of performance they attain, they keep practicing and improving. How about that? These are the kind of things that inspire me. You don't arrive at peak performance or achievement. You keep going, you keep doing and improving at what you do until you can't do it anymore.

So, I was asking myself what I need to activate deliberate practice on, as well as what I have already activated deliberate practice on. What have you activated deliberate practice on? What do you need to activate deliberate practice on?

For His Glory,

Lillian Chebosi

Volume 11, Issue 24: A Little Every Day

When studying for exams, did you or do you wait until exam week to cram all your studying? Or do you prefer to do a little bit of studying almost every other day around the beginning of the semester so that when exams are around the corner you only have a little preparation to make?

When it comes to keeping your house, are you more inclined to doing a little bit of cleaning and organizing almost every other day? Or do you prefer to not do much in the day-to-day and focus on spring cleaning and deep cleaning every once in awhile or when you get to it?

Both methods get the job done, somehow. Is one of the methods better than the other or is that a matter of personal opinion? I don't know the answer to that. What I know is that if you are like me, inclined to doing a little bit every day, then you find piling all the work to when it must be done rather overwhelming and intimidating.

You would rather spend five to fifteen minutes each day, and thirty to sixty minutes each week cleaning and organizing spaces in your home, than spend several hours over the weekend restoring order to your home. You would rather wipe down your clean chimney for a few seconds every day than let dirt and grease pile on it that can only come out by deep cleaning.

If you are anything like me, you would rather study for exams long before the exam timetable is released. I keep drumming into my children each morning as I drop them to school to make each day count. My philosophy, which I keep reminding them every school morning is that "you don't prepare for exams during exam week, you prepare for exams from day one of school."

So, if you even slightly agree that a little every day is better and more efficient than piling all the work to the very last minute, why don't you give it a try? Try it in your work, in your house keeping, in your relationships, in your studies, in your finances, in your health and fitness practices.

I know people who do zero exercise during the week but compensate with hours of binge workout on the weekend. I little bit every day or every other day is more manageable, I would say. But when all is said and done, you can only go by what works for you. So don't think you have to switch to doing a little every day if you are doing just fine with piling your work to the end of the week or month or quarter or year. Each of us is different.

For His Glory,

Lillian Chebosi