Hi everyone, have you ever wondered how I do it all? How I homeschool, work from home, and keep up with daily life? Well, I think the last time I posted about our daily schedule was about 4 years ago, so I thought maybe it was time for an update! Ya think? LOL!

 

myworkathome_homeschool_schedule

 

While each day can bring on a chaos of its own, we do have a basic routine that we try to stick to. Obviously things don’t always run smoothly around here, and some days are crazier than others. But I like to at least have a basic guideline to get me through the day.

As most of you already know, we homeschool. For me that’s like my full time job, and I do my best to focus solely on school during those hours. I also work from home on my blog, creating YouTube content, and I create homeschool curriculum as well as free printables.  Those all take up quite a bit of time, so without some planning I’d never be able to get those things done! I try to view that as a part-time job and have to plan work time into my day as well. Then we have our family commitments like church, sports, household chores, etc.

One thing that has helped tremendously was using a traditional daily planner. I’m using my 2016 Weekly Planner right now because it helps me keep track of regular household chores, our family commitments, things to do/buy, reminders, and my blog, etc.

I still use my iPhone as well because it physically beeps to remind me that I need to be somewhere, or do something. But I realized that I still really like to see things all laid out in front of me and I find that once things get put in my phone they disappear from my brain. So having them written out has really helped me literally “SEE” what I have to do each day and week.

That said, here’s what my ideal schedule looks like.

 

dailyschedule_mom

Need help building a schedule that works? Click here to download my schedule printable:

WEEK DAYS:

Here is our schedule in a little more detail….basically…provided nothing unexpected happens…like life.

  • 8:00 am –  Devotion/shower/get dressed
  • 8:30 am – Breakfast & Kitchen clean up
  • 9:00 am – SCHOOL STARTS! We usually break for lunch around noon-ish, then finish our group studies like history, geography, art, etc. after lunch.
  • 3:00 pm – SCHOOL ENDS! (Well you know, technically it ends…realistically my kids are subject to my constant pop quizzes all day long.) At the end of each day I re-fill workboxes while the kiddos clean up their areas and make sure the school room is all nice and pretty like it was when we started.
  • 3:30 pm – Chore time: Everyone does what they can from their chore chart assignments or whatever I ask them to do. We all take turns doing daily chores like folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher, taking out trash, etc.
  • 4:00 pm – I usually work a little bit, check email, blog, etc. The kids get some free time.
  • 4:30-6:30 pm – Dinner Prep, Eat, and kitchen clean up. Some nights we have hockey or swimming, so we work our dinner around those.
  • 6:00pmDad enters & asks “So, what did you do all day?” I say “Not much, just lounged around and ate bon-bons.”  Dad quizzes kids to make sure I’m kidding.
  • 7:00 pm – I usually try to exercise or go on a walk during the calm between dinner and bedtime. I find that it helps my mental state tremendously to get out and get some fresh air! When it’s too cold, I hit our elliptical trainer, however I usually get bored on it. Sad smile
  • 7:30 pm – Bedtime Prep (Clean up rooms, put away laundry, take baths, brush teeth)
  • 8:00 pm – 10 Minute Tidy & Bed Time! – This is where I set a timer and everyone runs around like maniacs cleaning up anything can they find so mom doesn’t blow a gasket at the mess we’ve created in just one day. Oh, and since our laundry room is upstairs now, I toss in a load of laundry, then swap it to the dryer when ready. Then yes, I let it sit overnight until we do chores the following day. Crazy I know, but that’s just how we’re rolling this year. A little bit wrinkly Winking smile
  • 9:00 pm: Free time for mom and dad….sit down for first time today and sigh…blog…make cool printables to share…check emails etc. and praise God we made it through another homeschool day without burning down the house!

Hopefully after seeing our daily schedule you’ll be gracious with me. If you’ve emailed me during the day, you probably won’t hear back until the evening! Please be patient with me, I really do try to get back to everyone by the end of the day, but there are a lot of you and one of me ;o)

New! I hired my mom as a virtual assistant to help me out with some of the easier to answer emails, and to sift out the spam too. She’s also taken over shipping out orders as well. So if you email to get your links reset you’ll most likely hear back from her! Thanks mom! I couldn’t do it without you!

 

WEEKENDS:

As you can see we don’t have a lot of time during the week for much else besides school and sports. So here are a few things we do on the weekends:

  1. Grocery Shopping: As much as I hate shopping on weekends, often this is the only time I can make it to the store. Sometimes I’ll go on Friday’s when the kids are at options, however a lot of the time I take advantage of that time to run other errands and work.
  2. Household Cleaning: On the weekends we all take one chore and clean the whole house. I assign tasks based on requests from the kids, or who I think will do the best job at a certain item. Things we assign out include dusting, vacuuming, toilets, sinks/mirrors, window sills and door knobs, sweep/mop kitchen, and kitchen counters/appliances. Since we all work together we can usually clean our whole house in about 2 hours, then we have the rest of the weekend to chill out and have fun! I’ve also had to relax a little bit in this area. Since we homeschool, our house just gets lived in. It’s all about being flexible when you have four children and homeschool!
  3. Sports: Right now we have hockey games every weekend, and sometimes we have tournaments that prevent #1 & #2 from happening consistently. So we’re just trying to work through it. As you can see from our daily schedule the house is kept mostly tidy all week long, so on the weekends we don’t get to deep clean it’s not too bad.
  4. Free Time: As crazy as our week can get, I like to try and get done with cleaning first, so that everyone can just hang out and relax on the weekends. That’s when we schedule play dates, have family game nights, etc. And that’s usually when I have time to sew, quilt, and read too! Everyone needs a little downtime. While it’s difficult to do during school time, a little break here and there can do a world of good!
  5. Work: I usually try to squeeze in some work time on the weekends. I try to take one of the days off, then make sure to get whatever I need to do for my blog each week finished on the weekends. That can include catching up on emails, writing new blog posts, and working behind the scenes on things like writing books and creating printables and curriculum.

 

 

Here are some more tools that I use to help keep me organized:

Hope this helps answer some of your questions about our daily schedule!

23 Comments

    1. LOL! That can change daily depending on the amount of emails, comments, and questions I get. I also have to set aside some time to create new content as well and again that really happens whenever I have a chance to get to it each day!

      erica
  1. Hey Erica,
    When do you grade all of their schoolwork? I end up FORGETTING to do this….like.all.the.time. Dinner prep, baby, etc…and I just forget. We have 8 kiddos to manage. 😐

    Renae Richard
    1. Hi! I grade their work as they hand it in whenever I’m in between teaching/helping them. That’s one thing I am diligent to stay on top of because if I don’t hand back their work daily they might be making the same mistake over and over until I get their work back to them. So I grade daily. Sometimes it’s at the end of the day, but I do hand it back daily and they have to fix/correct any mistakes the same day as well.

      erica
  2. ….when do you spend time with your husband? When, what is date night/time? What is he in charge of around the house?

    I want time to do my own business, take care of the house, spend time with the kids, sleep (which usually what gets skimped on, and I’m getting too old for that!), AND spend quality time alone with my husband whom I want to be our home’s co-manager.

    I’m working on creating a schedule for our family of 6, and I’m trying to find an example of what that looks like: where the co-managers also spend time alone together.

    I wanted to give a little background, so you know I wasn’t meaning anything other than literally asking: ….when do you spend time with your husband? When, what is date night/time? What is he in charge of around the house?

    Misty
    1. Hi! We don’t have any formal schedule for spending time together. Especially with COVID we don’t really go out and do date nights or anything like that. We mostly hang out alone together in the evenings once kids are in bed, we also take daily walks together and sometimes we let the kids come, sometimes we just do mom and dad walks. We like to watch movies or just hang out and talk, but it’s nothing formal. We also do a lot of family stuff, so game night, movie night, walks, paddle board etc. So while we don’t have a specific schedule I still feel like we get to spend a lot of time together.
      We also both work from home right now, so the main thing is to make sure we’re “leaving” work and spending time with family. When you work from home it’s so easy to just work all of the time. So we do make a concerted effort to be done working around dinner time and focus on family and our marriage then.

      erica
  3. Thank you for this blog. I have 2 teenagers and an eight year old. I have the challenge since we are required in our state to have 6.5 hrs a day. Last year it was four hours. It’s easy for my older ones, but my youngest gets done with his work faster. What YouTube channels would you suggest or activities? We are working on art or cooking. Thank you.

    Christina Dreyer

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.