I'm still riding that decluttering / simplifying wave, a month on as I see how much of a difference it's made so far - a house that's easy to tidy after the kids have been through it, a peaceful environment, my phone a tool that I handle when needed rather than finding myself glued to it: simplifying has been the breath of fresh air I needed!
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This isn't in my house, but just goes to show, we don't have to
own all the toys - they get to use them elsewhere too! |
So, having tackled the house and the tech, I'm now on to our time. Our activities, that busy schedule.
It always makes me laugh when people say, oh your kids are home educated, aren't they missing out on friends? My goodness, nothing could be further from the truth! If anything, it's a challenge fitting in all the activities where they see their friends, along with playdates and walks together and on and on... you get the picture. They are busy.
And busy as such isn't a bad thing, because being busy is the nature of children: if I don't busy them, they'll busy themselves. The key, as I see it, is finding balance between those two things.
When I say activities, I don't necessarily mean organised and paid for activities like swimming lessons for example; some of them are simple playdates, or meet-ups in groups to go for walks. A mix of these is a good thing, but where we live, we are spoiled for choice; so many home educators around means there are way more activities available than we have time for. Again, it's a matter of sitting down and intentionally making choices - similar to what I did with our stuff, and with my phone.
The questions are:
- Does this support us in how we want to live our values?
- Does this add value to our lives?
- Is there something else that's already achieving this in our lives?
It's a great luxury that we don't have to ask "Can we afford it?" at the moment - because of my work, we are now able to afford more than the bare basics of life. After years of turning every penny, that feels so incredibly freeing!
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| Lego Club Creations |
So, with the above questions in mind, I look at a typical week in our diary, and I find...
- Karate
- Co-Operative
- Group walks
- Gymnastics
- Swimming
- Piano lessons
- Playdates
- Ice skating
- Lego Club
Those are just the regular activities - I'm not including one-off, quarterly or random activities that we do such as going to the zoo, visiting museums and special places and so on!
Does this serve our purpose?
Now, filtering that through the value lenses - why do we do all these things? I have to say, the answer for many of them is simply because they're available. I want to offer my kids a rich variety of experiences, of course, and if something's available at a time when we don't have anything else on - then why not? None of the things we do are a waste of time, after all.
But this is exactly the
overcommitted mindset I'm working to change. For my home, there's lots of things I
could buy that would look nice, or be useful - but I've started asking the question,
is this actually adding value to our lives? Does the beauty of the decor, or the usefulness of an item, actually outweigh the drawbacks of owning it (such as maintaining it, cleaning it, storing it...)? Over the past month I've got rid of lots of items where the answer was no. These items did offer some benefits, otherwise I wouldn't have had them in my house, but these benefits did not outweigh the cost of having them in my home - the effort required to maintain, store, clean, or simply look at them cluttering up the place!
Similarly, with my phone I went through
a very considered process of evaluating my use of it: every app I had served some sort of a purpose, otherwise it wouldn't be there; but does the time I spend on it add value to the way I want to live my life? Or is it
time I lose and can never get back? How will I feel about my use of time at the end of my life, looking back - will those apps have added to my sense of having accomplished a life well lived?
Now I'm applying the same ideas to our activities. None of them are a total waste of time, otherwise we wouldn't be doing them; but where is the line of benefit vs. cost? And also, how much time at home should I be protecting?
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- Simply reading to them, at home
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Our time is a finite resource. By rushing here and there, we miss out on the less obvious things children need - quiet time, boredom, free play. So perhaps I should schedule 'protected times' in the diary.
Here's how I'm going through our activities.
- Do the kids love it?
If the answer is no, or not a lot, it can go. Goodbye, Karate and Lego Club, goodbye outdoor meetups in the winter. Gymnastics, you get to stay. - Are we already accomplishing this elsewhere?
The kids love their swimming lessons, but their grandparents take them swimming every week. If they didn't have swimming lessons, they'd still be in the pool once a week. So I'm tempted to take that out; although there will be protests! - Is this part of our core purpose?
Co-operative, for example, is all day every other week; local Christian home educating families. This is most aligned with our values, the relationships we want to deepen and nourish, and the community we are part of. No question about it. The same goes for the group walks that the local Christian home ed community puts on - they are important. However, as the kids hate being out in the winter (and I don't blame them), these will be more of a spring /summer activity.
The thing is, all those organised activities are worthy, but for me it's too easy to fill up the empty spaces in the diary just because they're empty. But that time isn't empty. As I said above, kids will be busy - but I need to protect their time so they can use their creativity to come up with ways to play, to explore, and so on. Yesterday I stayed home with them all morning, and while the house was a mess afterwards, they had a wonderful time playing: from Duplos, to cars, to role play, to piano. A rich time.
And ultimately, that is what I want them to have: a rich life, rich not only in experiences but in interior resources. I don't want them to depend on outside input to fill up their time - it's in boredom, in finding things to do and learn, that true creativity and depth is built.
As with my home and my phone, it's no good trying to be rigid and getting rid of everything. But we are becoming ever more intentional and discerning in curating our activities so that the finite amount of time we have is as well spent as can be: putting first our values, family, relationships and community.
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