The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler

Sometimes planning really is wasting time, but if we learn good planning habits, we can use that time effectively.

Mystie – There’s a spread of abilities and also needs. How do the expectations that we have as moms going into that situation affect how we do it, what we do, and our sanity as we do it. So, how would you say that your expectations have maybe changed or when you go into a school year. Celeste – Since I’ve always had little kids while I’m schooling, usually a toddler and a baby, pretty much every y...

If there’s one thing that derails our attitudes, it’s feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about what we should actually be doing. There are so many options, so many opportunities. We simply must say no at times, but how can we know when we should say no and when we need to be stretched by saying yes? The answer lies in our vocations. Vocation literally means calling. It is much more than a job, alth...

Mystie – There’s a spread of abilities and also needs. How do the expectations that we have as moms going into that situation affect how we do it, what we do, and our sanity as we do it. So, how would you say that your expectations have maybe changed or when you go into a school year. Celeste – Since I’ve always had little kids while I’m schooling, usually a toddler and a baby, pretty much every y...

Anxiety and worry are attitudes we need to rid ourselves of. Peace and joy (among others) are the fruits of the Holy Spirit, the attitudes of Christ we are to put on. God’s peace, by the Holy Spirit, guards our hearts, changes our attitudes, when we pray with thanksgiving.

Whatever plans we make, we're asking for trouble if we expect our kids to quickly comply when we're always springing new plans on them.

Meditation is rather hip right now, but the kind of meditation I am speaking of is not emptying our minds, but rather filling them. The Psalms speak of meditation, and in the New Testament we are exhorted to meditate on what is good and true and upright and beautiful. Think on these things. We are thus commanded with good reason: it is good for us. It is good for our attitudes. It is how we keep a...

Season 9: Real Life Homeschooling Tips This episode is an excerpt from a video workshop Mystie recorded with Amy Roberts in 2016. You can register for the entire replay, with bonus support material, by clicking the button below. Amy Roberts is the mother of 10, who has children from 20 to 2 years old. She and her husband have homeschooled from the beginning and shares what she’s learned and how sh...

What we think matters. While it’s still awkward and uncomfortable, we accept the story God is telling in our lives and tell it to ourselves. We can take the reins and “take every thought captive.” We can change our thoughts. And by changing our thoughts, we can change the story we see ourselves acting.

Is planning even possible for a large homeschooling family? Amy Roberts from Raising Arrows tells us how to make it work.

A potent attitude poison is unrealistic expectations. When we make a to-do list full of our own pet projects when our time is actually taken up with our children and their needs, we're going to be grumpy and feel our children are getting in the way. Instead, we need to put them on our to-do lists and make sure we meet their needs before we add more in.

So much has to be done in a homeschool day and the homeschool management struggle is real. How do you keep track of the daily work in your homeschool and manage to juggle the work?  If you have multiple children and multiple subjects to teach (and that’s pretty much all of us) then we have a lot to keep track of and a lot to make happen. So, I thought that we’d talk about different methods and str...

So, I like to say that all organization projects should begin with a brain dump . So, I thought that the best place to start would be to talk briefly about what a brain dump is and then we can start talking about tips and hacks and troubleshooting and what works for us and that sort of thing. A brain dump is basically sitting down with a pen and paper and just writing down everything that’s in you...

I’ve created a few iterations of a chore board over the last year and a half. First it was a poster board frame, and I wrote directly on the hard plastic frame. That worked well, because I could tuck it away quickly and easily when I didn’t want our schedule, consequences, and school assignments on display. Then, my 3-year-old used it as a slide (which means he was climbing up it). The frame and p...

Ok, I just can’t get enough, and I hope you can’t, either. There’s more than one way to menu plan, and your personality will predict which one is most likely to work for you.

Keeping track of what each student is supposed to be doing, and making sure they are doing it is one of the struggles of homeschooling moms everywhere. Here’s how we’re managing it with a free online (and mobile) app called Trello. Some people use spiral notebooks for a daily list; we use Trello for weekly lists. Here are the details and even some video tutorials to get you started!

A decluttered kitchen is one of the first projects to undertake when minimizing and simplifying your home life. If you’ve ever wondered how to organize your life , you’ve probably thought of your cluttered kitchen. A decluttered kitchen helps with an organized, prepared life. So let’s take a look at the steps to achieving the goal of a decluttered kitchen.

You know I love lists. And I also love books. So what could be better than a list of books? How about a list of my books? I won’t try to convince you that you need to catalog your books, because you probably don’t. But having a catalog of the books on my own shelves is something inherently appealing to me, and it might be to you, too.

I know it seems overwhelming. I know even just planning dinner sometimes seems overwhelming. But, seriously, who wants to wake up and decide in the pre-coffee fog what to feed the troops for breakfast? It has to be decided ahead of time.

We homeschool without a schoolroom. Like many homeschoolers, the kitchen table is where much of our work happens. We use our kitchen table, we use our dining room table, we use our couch, and we make due with the space we have. I could write up a great-sounding post about why we don’t have a school room on principle. Something about school blending in with real life and not being contained in a se...

I think taking the kids with me on my grocery excursions is a valuable thing to do. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t exhausting. But, my kids are homeschooled, and they do need to get out just as much as I do. Plus, they are homeschooled, so they think going to the grocery store is a grand day out. Plus, I am a homeschooler, so I think it counts as a field trip and “real life learning.”

The real trick about having a tidy or organized house is for everything to have a home. Things without homes are clutter. Things with homes can be put away, leaving space for life to happen. Mid-day, the house might look chaotic, but by evening, if everything has a place to go, it can look decently in order again.

Ack! No milk! Off to the grocery store! Was there something else you needed? There was, wasn’t there? What was it? Oh, look, this is on sale. That isn’t, but I think I need some. Might as well wander down this aisle to shortcut to the other side. Oops – walked straight past the pasta, and we definitely need some of that. How many grocery store trips feel like a random grab-bag and confused wanderi...

Mystie: That’s fun. So this season, season 8 of the Simply Convivial podcast is going to be about organizing homeschool stuff. So I thought we’d just have a brief conversation about how stuff gets organized in our homes. I think it’s easy when you say “organized” to start thinking of the magazines or the Pinterest where organized means everything looks really pretty and looking pretty is nice espe...

We’ve done grocery shopping a couple of different ways and I think you’re right it really does depend do you have a baby, do you have older kids going with you, you know, that kind of thing. For awhile we used to, at the bulk store that we have, you can put in online orders so you can just get online, choose every single thing you want, and place the order, and you do have to be prepared because y...