It's been a very long time since I was facing diapers on a regular basis, but facing deadlines is a daily occurence. I often struggle to keep it all together and keep my plates all spinning. I am always looking for new ways to keep my focus steady, so I was excited to check out the Lisa Tanner Writing course titled Balancing Diapers and Deadlines which is a combo course on time management and productivity.
The online course is divided into eight units of study. Each unit is divided into easy-to-study lessons that present infomation and offer hope for crazy-busy moms like you and me. Designed to help us get it all together, Balancing Diapers and Deadlines is broken down as follows:
- Welcome to Balancing Diapers and Deadlines introduces you to Lisa Tanner and presents an overview of the study
- Building Your Foundation with the Basics shows you how to help your family become part of your team and teaches the importance of a plan.
- Minimize Your Decisions helps establish a working routine for order, cleaning, and laundry. Whew!
- Minimize Your Decisions: The Annual Meal Plan is an absolute lifesaver. You'll learn how to cut the chaos of shopping as you eliminate the "what's for dinner?" questions.
- Sustainable Growth reminds you to focus on nurturing yourself to that you can nurture your family for the long term.
- Growing a Business with Your Kids Around teaches you how to incorporate family into your business world no matter their age or season. Family writing time, anyone? Yes, please.
- Boost Your Productivity shares great tips for taking every minute of every day captive.
- Closing Thoughts reminds you that it's okay to prioritize tasks and that some things just won't work out like you originally thought. Lisa shares how to turn failure into success and answers questions raised throughout the course.
The lessons are fairly short but they are packed FULL of great information and they include quite a few printables to help you take the steps necessary to actually implement the useful strategies shared. Lisa shares tried-and-true routines and systems so that you can accomplish more in your hours, days, weeks, months, and years. As a busy homeschooling mom of 8, she definitely has some great tricks up her sleeves and we can all benefit from what she's learned.
For example, I have thoroughly enjoyed using both the Annual Meal Planner and the Themed Dinner Planner. Years ago (before college and marriages), in what was my all-time best idea ever, each child was assigned a night of the week to prepare supper for the family. We would sit down and plan the menu a month at a time and make our grocery lists accordingly. As kids started college and the older daughters got married, we went back to our helter-skelter way of meal planning -- which actually meant no planning at all. That often left supper thrown together or late or pick-up-on-the-way-home. Ugh. My Senior and I were just discussing how much we enjoyed the variety when meals were planned ahead and how much easier life would be now if we had a schedule again. She even volunteered to cook a few nights a week -- and she was excited. Her actual words were "I have been following some cool cooking sites and I'd love a chance to try out the recipes I'm seeing." Seriously folks, you don't have to tell me but once.
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I was happy to pull out the Annual Meal Planner and cultivate a workable plan for the current family dynamics. The neat thing about this is that I was able to look at the big picture and include breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack option so that I don't have to hear the constant "what is there to eat in this house?" every day or ask "What sounds good for supper?" only to hear the response of "food". The idea of themed dinners makes it even easier to come up with variety without falling into a cooking rut. In less than an hour, I was able to make a plan for an entire year filled with things I know my family likes. Lisa offers her family meal plans and themed dinner ideas as example and that helped spark our creativity, as well.
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We made sure to make this ours and you will want to make it yours. You will notice the themes of Smorgasbord (i.e. leftovers) on Sundays, Crockpot/Instant Pot on Mondays (because it is our busiest day of the week filled with extracurricular activities and co-op classes), and Church on Wednesdays. We are fortunate to have Wednesday Night Supper at church each week, so there's no meal plan necessary then. We enjoying eating what is provided. It's a win-win blessing, that's for sure. Some of the best advice comes in the meal prep area. Lisa says there's no need to worry about elegant cuisine or to stress over finding weird ingredients for fancy dishes. She says, instead, we should pick some favorite standbys, and serve them joyfully. Isn't that the perfect reminder to love our families through gifts of time? Our Themed Dinner Plan is filled with dishes that I know my family enjoys and I made sure to include the good ole County Cooking recipes that offer comfort to us all.
Another part of these lessons that has been a huge blessing to me is utilizing the Child of the Day Schedule. Even though my kids don't all still live at home, it has offered me a way to make sure that I'm covering each of them in prayer. I assigned each child a day of the week (in age order) and added the sons-in-law to the calendar (in the order that they married my daughters). I spend a portion of each day praying for everyone, but I make sure to really address their specific needs/requests on their special days.
Lisa walks us through finding balance and she does it one baby step at a time. I like this because I'm not overwhelmed. I can read through a lesson, spend time in it as needed, move through it quickly if it doesn't apply to me in this season of life, and revisit it whenever I want. At the end of each lesson, there are Action Steps to take to help you move forward. We all know it's great to read about productivity and managing your world, but if we aren't actually doing anything we will see no change. Lisa really hits on everything important in this course -- from meals to sleep and learning to set boundaries. Hers is a well thought out plan of action that we can ALL benefit from in some way as we are gently reminded to do better by ourselves.
For example, I absolutely do not get enough sleep. I just don't sleep much at all. I average around four hours or less a night and I know that takes its toll on my body and on my mind. Lisa explains the necessity of sleep and the priority of taking care of ourselves so that we can take care of those we love. She shares ways to do better so that we can be better and she does so with a gentle spirit. She even gives you permission to pay for services that will help you mark items off of your To-Do List and remove stress from your day-to-day.
With over 30 engaging lessons in the course, you'll learn how to make every moment of every day count as you take your life back again. Lisa helps you establish a morning routine that works, get a handle on laundry, end your day well, and even improve your typing speed. She offers tons of suggestions on how to grow your business, homeschool more effectively, love your family, and establish routines that will benefit them all. She puts all of this together in one place for you and encourages accountability as you work toward a more peaceful home.
For more information about this time management course for busy moms that includes great productivity tips, please visit the following Social Media sites:
Balance and Productivity help bring peace. Isn't that what we all want?
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