The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler

We recite mottos during our Morning Time. I think the first place I encountered the idea was when listening to ACCS teacher training audio (back before there were CiRCE conferences or podcasts). The elementary classes of Logos School, at least back in the old days, had mottos they recited daily that then the teacher could call to mind when they were relevant. As a family, we already had a few litt...

We are often encouraged to set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. It sounds great, and those goals do have a place. But when much of our lives is about developing people (ourselves and our children), we can’t put ourselves or others into such neat little boxes. We must treat people as people instead of as projects. So for many of our hopes for the future, we’d do...

In the first episode of The Scholé Sisters Podcast we talk about how levity – lightheartedness, humor, cheerfulness – is a burnout prevention method. When we sink into seriousness, into get-it-all-done mode, into self-importance, we’re bound to be pulled down, lose our joy, and want to give up. To prevent burnout and also to recover from it, we need to shed our anxieties and pride – and we do that...

What does being productive even mean? It’s not simply getting more done, but getting the right things done, done well, and done cheerfully.

You’ve met her. Maybe you’ve been her. Maybe you are her. Some homeschool moms might scare you. Some homeschool moms scare their children. But I think we’ve all experienced another kind of scary homeschool mom: the one who scares herself. Are you scary? Who do you scare?

Rather than grandiose goals for a new year, we should be focusing on small habits that we can build upon. These new year habits continue giving, because they become automatic. So we can gain their benefit without expending much energy to do so. A habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary.

Sometimes it’s weather, sometimes it’s illness, sometimes it’s simply fatigue. If you’ve been homeschooling for awhile, you’re probably familiar with the feeling: homeschool morning blah . It’s normal; it’s natural; it’s bound to happen. But it’s also one of a homeschool mom’s most insidious enemies. No, I’m not exaggerating.

I’ve written before about making my bed and why it is a goal worth pursuing, two and a half years ago, actually, and while I make my bed occasionally (which is a great improvement upon never, by principle), it is hardly a habit.

Is happiness an emotion reserved for those who have an easy life? Right now I have a child who thinks happiness is a life without math fact drill pages. And, he’s onto something that misery is dragging one’s feet and taking three hours to do what should take one three minutes. However, cause and effect might be different than his perception.

Keystone habits, according to Charles Duhigg, are habits that give “small wins [that] fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.” Incremental change is the best approach, and keystone habits are the increments that have the biggest impact.

It was about 5 years ago now that I deleted my old blog and started over from scratch, choosing the name Convivial Home for my new effort. A real estate agent promptly offered me a large sum for that domain, so I sold it and switched my name to Simply Convivial. I did not want to let go of the word convivial – though perhaps it is a more unusual word than I realized. Convivial has been a stake-in-...

So much goal setting advice out there focuses on achieving certain outcomes. We’re supposed to set our eyes on a particular result we want to reach and work until we get there. Maybe – maybe – this works with projects, but very little of our lives at home are project-based. Most of our time is spent in the day-in, day-out routines that build our home and family.

Some homeschool moms – maybe those with school-teacher backgrounds – have elaborate homeschool lesson plans – full sheets of papers full of ideas, notes, references, activities, and objectives. Many homeschool moms have no lesson plans at all. I have never been in that first category, but more often find myself in the latter. Even though I love planning, lesson plans seemed more like a waste of ti...

Over at Simply Convivial I’m in the thick of a series about using Evernote for homeschooling , and I thought I’d make a companion post here at Simplified Organization about household records and plans with Evernote.

What, out of everything in the plan, is essential to make our homeschool day count? Because more often than not, at least at my house, the entire plan doesn’t get checked off. So what does need to happen, without fail? Here’s my version.

Q: "When you scan things to Evernote, is this time consuming? Do you scan it to a PDF file and attach the file? I’d be very curious as to what this process looks like for you. I tried with a manual the other day and it seemed to take forever, and I had to try several different ways to get it to work." A: It’s fast and easy, I promise!

It’s one thing to buy the books and supples, to make a plan, to create a chart and quite another to actually pull it off in a typical day. Days never go exactly as imagined, but it’s worth the time to imagine it even so – and the more you practice imagining it and planning for contingencies before the heat of the moment, the better you’ll become and rolling with the punches of a real-life homescho...

So, there’s no doubt that I love Evernote. I’ve been writing a long series about homeschooling with Evernote , I include tips and strategies for using Evernote for home management in Paperless Home Organization , and Evernote is simply my external brain. Everyone should have an external brain of one sort or another, and Evernote is mine.

Does the word schedule make you break out in hives? Do you picture yourself harried and deflated at the end of a day on a schedule? Maybe for you, like me, that’s a vivid memory, not a theoretical picture. There’s a lot of visceral reaction against schedules in the homeschool world, and I totally get why. I mean, can I schedule diaper blowouts and my doorbell ringing and the toddler pulling an ope...

I know. Menu planning is a pain. I am all about the tips and tricks to minimize the time and brain-power we pour into menu planning. It’s something we need to do, something we need to become consistent with, but it doesn’t have to drain us or take an entire Saturday morning.

What I really, really wanted was a system so perfect that I wouldn’t have to expend any effort at all, I could just hum along doing whatever I wanted and everything would just work out. Turns out life doesn’t work that way.

I’ve written before about the benefits of writing a daily to do list on an index card, but for several months I’ve experimented with using Evernote for my task list instead of a daily index card – just to see how going all digital would work out for me. I have gone back to writing out a short daily to-do note, but I learned a lot from my little experiment. Using Evernote for a daily to-do list and...

I love new year goals and resolutions, but they can lead to discouragement unnecessarily. Sometimes we conclude that because we can never reach and maintain our ideal, then it is the ideal bringing us down. We’re tempted to stop trying to clean the house, organize the toys, lose the weight, balance the budget, or train the children because we never reach our desired (usually unrealistic) goal, or...

There is so much to keep track of at home. Not only does everyone want to eat three times a day, but the house also has a fast trajectory down Entropy Lane. There are apps for home routines. But will we really check yet another app consistently and regularly? Do we need one more place to keep information? Whenever feasible and efficient, I think it’s best to consolidate into using as few apps as p...

What sort of elderly person will I be? Of course a large part of the situation will depend on circumstances and what my particular physical or mental ailments will end up being. But what of the different temperaments? Will I be a sweet old lady, grateful and encouraging up to her dying day? Or will I be a fault-finding, cranky old lady? When whatever my infirmities will be come upon me — no matter...