Category Archives: homemaking

The pressure to be the perfect mother

July 28, 2014homemaking, homeschooling, parenting, personal developmentAvivah

>>You know, parenting is so all consuming and I never feel I’m doing as well as I’d like. But I look at you and so many times, you’ve got it nailed down. Even if you don’t show us your every mistake, I think you are doing an awesome job, and I really appreciate that this specialist bothered to acknowledge it, because you know what, almost all of us want to hear it at least now and then after we’ve poured heart and soul into something for so long.<<

I often feel like I’m not doing as well as I would like – thoughts like this sneak in pretty regularly!

I don’t have it all nailed down, far from it.

I see a lot of people online who seem to be doing a lot more with their kids than I do with mine. Parents who are more focused and goal directed, parents who provide their kids with T21 with more cognitive/physical support, parents who offer their homeschooled kids more active support in following their passions, parents who do more of everything, parents who have more of everything.

But my kids weren’t sent to those parents; they were sent to me. Perfectly imperfect me.

My message on this blog isn’t that I’m awesome and I’ve got it all figured out, because I haven’t.

If there’s a message I want to share, it’s that you can be lacking and inadequate, you can fall short and doubt yourself often – and your family can still be pretty darn wonderful.

When my oldest daughter was diagnosed with an eating disorder, I felt I had totally failed. It was as if all the good things I had done for years had never happened. I stopped writing about parenting, I stopped doing parenting consultations and I stopped trusting myself as a parent.

My husband spent four months in the US with her as she went through treatment, and one of the first things he told me when he came back was, “None of what you did all these years was wasted, it’s all still there inside of her. She’s an incredible girl and a lot of the credit for that is thanks to what you gave her.”

I didn’t see it at the time, but he was right. She had a big bump on her life path, but the person she was, the relationship we had – it was just temporarily obscured. It wasn’t gone. When the sun came out again, everything was better and brighter than before the dark clouds of life covered it all up.

So your family can turn out great with the efforts you worry aren’t enough.

And you, right now, as you are – you’re wonderful. The perfectly imperfect mother who never does all she wants to do. That’s a hard one to believe, isn’t it?

We have to learn to recognize what we do, validate ourselves, pat our own backs. Sometimes we get a little bonus when someone from the outside appreciates what we do, and that’s really nice. But we have to live with ourselves every day and that means we have to consciously reprogram the thoughts in our mind that can grind us down and make us feel we’re not enough, we’re never enough, and we’re never going to be much better than we are right now no matter how hard we try. All of that is a lie.

Countering this lie isn’t a one time lesson. I can’t write about this in the past tense as something I’ve worked on and surmounted, because this is a constant daily effort – to appreciate myself as I am when I’m having an adequate day, or especially when I’m having a much less than adequate day, not only on the days when I can check off every item on a long and detailed to-do list. To value myself as a human be-ing, not a human do-ing.

It’s about progress, not perfection.

It’s about learning to love ourselves, learning to nurture ourselves and appreciate ourselves as we are right now – just the way we love and nurture our children.

Avivah

How to keep toys from taking over!

July 14, 2014frugal strategies, homemaking, homeschooling, parentingunico blocksAvivah

>>Can you post a picture of the toy storage unit you put back together? Still wondering how you keep all the games, toys and supplies organized and accessible in a limited space.<<

The most helpful thing I’ve found for keeping toys organized in a limited space is getting rid of what you don’t really get a lot of use or benefit from.

A while back I went through all of our toys. Most of what we brought with us to Israel was board games and learning manipulatives but it’s amazing how easy it is to accumulate stuff! I began to take note of which toys my children played with most, and no surprise, I once again saw the 80/20 rule in effect.

In this case that rule means that 20 percent of toys will be played with 80 percent of the time, and 80 percent of toys will be played with just 20 percent of the time. And that means, that your space is mostly taken up with toys your kids rarely use! If you can figure out what is getting the most use and significantly scale down the rest, you’re on your way to an organized play space!

I took note of what toys they used the most, and began a big giveaway pile of all the rest. This cut down on the storage space needed quite a bit! I strongly recommend that everyone go through this process; not only does it help you keep your house cleaner, but more importantly, it helps the kids get more enjoyment from what they have. It allows them to focus without the distraction of toys they don’t use cluttering up space. Most of our learning manipulatives fall into the category of being used 20 percent of the time, but these are worth keeping around for when we do use them.

Here’s the cabinet that I use for toy storage – it has two internal shelves and two drawers.

We keep the games and puzzles on the shelves inside – the games to the right are smaller boxes and there’s another pile behind each of those.

This drawer is for Yirmiyahu’s toys.

The bottom drawer is where I now keep the printer and laminator, which were taking up prime space by being kept out all the time. I tend to use them heavily all at once and then not at all for long periods of time, so it makes more sense to take them out when I need them than to leave them out all the time.

By putting the printer and laminator in a drawer, it makes space on top for things that I want to keep visible and easy to access – learning manipulatives and several more toys.

For those who are wondering what kind of manipulatives are included, here you go!

Left to right – pattern blocks (2 boxes), base ten blocks, cuisenaire rods, assortment of mostly card games, flash cards, tangrams (2 boxes); bottom left – geoboard, 100 number tiles, word cards with plastic letters, dominoes, teddy bear counters.

We have several boxes of toys that we keep in the closet opposite this cabinet. (Bottom, l – r – Lincoln Logs, Legos; top l – r – Morphun blocks, toy animals; tall box is a ball and stick construction activity).

Below you can see the wagon of building blocks for young children, next to it a huge box of building blocks for somewhat bigger children (and next to that a couple of toys the kids found being given away).

Our boys love building toys – it’s what they use 80 percent of the time – and this is where I invest most of my storage space and money.

Last year someone gave us a starter set of Duplo blocks, Lincoln Logs and Mega Bloks, and this is what my boys would play with every single morning. The only problem was that there are three of them and there just wasn’t enough for them to play together so there was usually some kind of conflict. When I cleaned out all the toys that weren’t getting much use, I determined that if I had an opportunity, I would add on to these toys that already got so much use rather than get more kinds of toys.

Now, eight months after that decision, I’m amazed at how the opportunities to add to the toys that mattered most to them have all somehow come around!

A friend was clearing out her toys, and I bought a mega blocks wagon and blocks from her. That doubled our collection of these building blocks for young children.

Then, someone else was downsizing her toy collection and was selling Lincoln Logs, so naturally I bought that! And that doubled our Lincoln Log collection.

The other two toys I wanted to get more of were Duplo block and Legos – Duplo because we didn’t have that much, Lego because they were ready for the challenge of more detailed building but we had only a sprinkling that my kids found being given away. But both of these were really expensive and here in Israel, the price is double buying them in the US. Not happening.

In the winter my mom traveled to the US and asked what the kids would like. I told her if she wanted to get them Lego, they’d love it! She was able to find some great smaller sets on clearance at Walmart.; my in-laws also got them a mid sized set.

I also ordered a Duplo compatible block made in Canada that was half the price (Unico blocks, 250 blocks for $50), and my mom brought back a box of them. I was so happy with these that I wanted to get more, but they’re bulky and it’s not the kind of thing you can ask anyone but your mother to bring for you. 🙂

Then this spring a blog reader told me she was coming and would be able to bring things for us. I ordered two more boxes of Unico blocks (thank you, SH!) and this was the best money spent ever. They play with this all of the time, and there’s plenty for them to all play together even when friends come over.

Organizing things in this way has helped us maximize our space and keep clutter at bay. I hope you find some of these ideas helpful in your home!

Avivah

Creating a secret play space for our boys

June 10, 2014homemaking, parentingAvivah

I’ve been busy the last couple of days with home organizing!

I enjoy decluttering and finding more efficient ways to use the space we have. Every time we do this our home seems bigger and more enjoyable to live in; it’s like it keeps growing! I’m also more relaxed when things are in order.

After Pesach I got rid of an armchair that was part of a three piece sofa set and then rearranged all the living room furniture to accommodate that change. Then the glass insert of our kitchen table cracked just two months after replacing it. (I thought we were moving or I would have replaced the glass with plexiglass the first time.) I decided to take the table out rather than replace the insert again; we don’t eat at the kitchen anyway, and the nature of horizontal surfaces is that they become dumping grounds.

Those two changes made a huge difference. Our main living area feels much more open now, and with two large surfaces no longer available to be cluttered, it’s become that much easier to keep the main area clean. There have been times when I felt there was always something to clean but now I usually feel pretty relaxed most of the day that everything is either clean or can be pretty quickly cleaned up. Decluttering and getting rid of things that really don’t add to our lives is what I credit that to, along with having sane expectations of myself.

Early this week the boys discovered they could make a play area behind the storage boxes in the attic. They dragged in three mattresses, four sleeping bags, all of their pillows and in the past few days have spent hours in their secret hideout. Their activities gave me the incentive to reorganize the attic. I noticed the pieces of a small storage cabinet that we had taken apart last year when we did our massive rearranging of all five bedrooms; I decided to take it out and put it in the playroom to use as a toy cabinet. Ds6 and ds8 did all the work – I just passed them the screws. They had a great time and felt productive and proud to have done something real. Kids need accomplishments like these and it’s not hard to give them opportunities when you realize they may be little but they can be very competent.

I told them I wanted to do more organizing in the attic, and they were very eager to help me after we finished putting together the cabinet but I told them after two hours of working in the playroom, I was ready for a break! I told them we could work on the attic the next afternoon instead, and that’s what we did today.

We’re very fortunate to have a nice amount of space in our attic for storage; I appreciate this and know it’s a luxury that most apartments don’t have. Our storage area has unfinished cinderblock walls with a cement floor, and no lighting other than the cracks between the red clay roof shingles that lets in tiny bits of sunlight. I called an electrician tonight to ask him to come and put a light in since we already have the wiring for it, but it will take another couple of weeks until he’ll be available. The kids don’t mind, there’s enough light coming through during daylight hours to see once their eyes adjust.

I would love to drywall the walls and ceiling so that dust won’t be able to blow through those little spaces and of course white walls look nicer and create a feeling of spaciousness that dark cement walls don’t, but the area serve its purpose. Though hanging drywall is something we can do ourselves, here in Israel without a car and without stores that are set up for the do-it-yourselfer, everything becomes a bigger deal. So unless dh feels inspired to put some time in (time being something he doesn’t have lot of extra of), it’s going to stay as it is because paying someone else to do it isn’t in the plans right now!

We (me, ds6 and ds8) did a super thorough organizing job! We pulled everything out and reallotted the space completely. We moved all of the sukka schach under the eaves where it’s only about two feet high, a space that was totally unused beforehand, put the suitcases on top of that, then moved the clothing storage boxes as far back as possible in front of that. We moved a plastic shelving unit out of our laundry porch and put it on top of a work table that’s in a tucked away corner of the attic. (We reorganized our laundry room today, too!) Then we were able to put all the remaining storage items in one compact area by using the newly created vertical storage space. That made it possible to move everything away from the side of the storage area that’s high enough to walk around without bending ovber.

My boys worked hard today! Why were the boys so happy to work with me on this? Because I consulted them in advance and told them I wanted to reorganize the attic to create an official hideout for them! I asked them for their input and we made our organizing choices based on their feedback. They worked for a solid two hours, moving big things, pushing around heavy boxes, taking things we didn’t need anymore to the dumpster or to the give away pile, and sweeping up a huge amount of dust.

They designated the far side of the attic for their hideout, and when it was finished, they were able to spread out the sukka carpet, which is a durable non-cloth material that’s washable and doesn’t attract dust.

The new hideout from a distance – the interesting looking seat you see is their invention – they used the base of a fan and inserted an extra bicycle seat to make a place to sit

The area we officially designated for them is about 9′ x 4.5′, but there’s a good sized area leading to that which has now been almost totally cleared so that gives them much more space to play. (The open space is about double what you see here.) The entrance to this area is from the playroom so this works very well for them.

They were excited to invite their friends to come and play! Before they had a chance to call anyone, there was the sound of a buzzer and two friends at our front door wanted to know if they could play. They were very happy to come in and inaugurate the play area!

My husband came home and commented how nice it is that we so often have kids at our home, and this is something I also appreciate. I don’t have a fancy house, I don’t make awesome treats, I’m not a fun mom and I don’t have all the coolest toys. But my kids friends come pretty much every day and I’m glad they feel comfortable here.

The time I spend organizing is a good investment. It creates more time since after the initial investment, it takes less time to clean up and that means more time for other things. And most importantly, it helps me to enjoy and feel comfortable in my home, and I’m sure me being comfortable makes it more comfortable for others to spend time here as well.

Avivah

Getting our home ready to show

February 19, 2014homemaking, parenting, personal developmentAvivah

I’ve spent so much time organizing and fixing things in my house in the last two days! You know how this little thing breaks and that little thing and before you know it seems everywhere you look you have projects waiting for you and you have no desire to attend to any of it because it feels overwhelming? That’s how I was feeling but two days ago I decided to tackle some of them.

When we changed all the bedrooms around at the end of July, dd13 inherited what used to be our master bedroom suite, with its own bathroom and walk-in closet. We had used the closet as a home office and had a freestanding closet in the room for storage, but decided to get rid of the home office and restore the space to a walk-in closet. That project took some time but eventually was done, but the freestanding closet remained. It was annoying dd because she couldn’t organize her space the way she wanted but taking it apart and finding a place to store it was something I just didn’t feel like dealing with. A couple of days ago I decided to just do it.

It was a big project by this time because it meant organizing our attic storage area to accommodate the pieces of the closet, reorganizing the walk-in closet and of course moving around the furniture in that room. It took hours but was so worth it! The room is better organized and feels much more spacious and I’m really happy to have done this for dd13.

Then I worked with ds11 to clean up his room. He shares his room with Yirmiyahu, who’s an easy person to share with since he makes no mess. 🙂 He also shares with ds15 when he comes home for the weekends. His bed has a second bed that pulls out that ds15 uses, but the problem is that ds15 always has to leave very early in the morning to catch his bus back to his school. So he can’t put his bed back while his siblings are sleeping, and understandably, ds11 is resistant to having to clean up after ds15. So things end up getting left out too long and getting messy, and then ds11 feels overwhelmed when I remind him to straighten his room up. It can make a big difference to work with your kids when they feel like this – it really wasn’t so much work but having me work with him for a half hour shifted ds11’s feeling about it all and after a while he told me he didn’t need my help anymore, he could finish it all himself. That room now looks great – not a thing anywhere in sight except blankets on the bed and in the crib.

This morning I called a real estate agent to talk about selling our apartment. She feels based on our timeline – we want to move by the beginning of September – that we need to move fast to get our home listed. So she’s coming tomorrow to take pictures. I wasn’t expecting this to happen so quickly. Obviously it’s important that everything looks really neat and It was especially good that I had done so much work the day before or I would have been really stressed at all that I needed to do today to get things in order!

I still had plenty to do today! I had started the playroom yesterday but of course there was still more to do because that’s how playrooms are 🙂 and I finished it up today. What I’ve been doing is more like Pesach cleaning and organizing for the move as I clean, not just straightening up so it’s quite a bit of work. At this level there’s a lot of effort spent on things you don’t see. Now that room is spotless, with just an easy chair and carpet in addition to the wall closet along the length of the room. Ds7 commented in suprise that now it’s so empty that his voice echoes when he talks! (It’s true!)

Then I moved onto the younger boys’ room. Though I clean it daily, since their bunk bed broke a couple of weeks ago it just never looks tidy. They have their beds lined up three across now, and it doesn’t leave much space to get around. They like it but I don’t; it makes it much harder to clean. Dh was home today so I asked him to make fixing this a priority and he did. It took a good chunk of time since the initial little thing that was broken became a big thing that was broken since we didn’t take care of it as soon as it broke. That’s how it always is, you don’t gain time by pushing things off because in the end it takes so much longer than it would have taken if you had just done it right away . Amazing what a huge difference fixing the bunkbed made! I did the same cleaning I always do but now the room looks spacious and neat again.

I also did things like scrubbing walls, plastering holes and bleaching my bathtub. In case you’re wondering why it was necessary to bleach the tub – which I’ve never had to do until today in over 20 years – a few days ago ds6 and ds7 were playing in the tub and wanted to scrub some items and used steel wool (which I didn’t see they were using – I didn’t think I had even had any left!). They played for a really long time, leaving the tub filled with water all that day, which I didn’t mind. But when I finally emptied the tub, the tiny shreds of steel wool had left tiny rust specks on the bottom of the tub.

Of course after all of this work in different rooms, I didn’t put in the usual time in the living room and kitchen so it was a little discouraging to have worked so long all day and then those rooms still needed more attention to be camera ready. But I’m hoping to get up early in the morning to get those things taken care of, and wake the kids up early for breakfast so I can clean up the morning mess before the agent comes.

Our agent said she wants to bring the other 15 – 20 agents in the city for a meeting to look at our home so they’re familiar with it – I asked her to wait until next week for that. I really don’t like people coming into my personal space. Obviously an inherent part of selling your home is that you have to do that, but it’s hard for me. No matter how much cleaning and organization I do, my house doesn’t stay looking spotless more than about 25 seconds. I have too many people doing too many things around the clock, so it can’t. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that, and tell myself not to worry about what anyone else thinks. Once I feel okay with myself, I don’t give so much power to what others think of me.

I look forward to sharing with you that the sale process has gone quickly and smoothly!

Avivah

When to stay with something and when to move on

December 10, 2013homemaking, homeschooling, marriage, miscellaneous, personal developmentAvivah

It’s interesting how comments and questions on certain issues seem to often come as groups. This has happened recently with the topic of making a change – I was asked the same question by three different people in close succession: when is moving toward change positive and when is it running away from a problem. Interestingly, all three were in situations in which a change would be beneficial, which made me wonder if it’s the people who have a tendency to stay in difficult situations who phrase the question in this way.

The most recent person to ask me about this was my dd17 when she was home for Chanukah vacation. She’s living with an elderly woman which provides her with a place to live and a salary and she’s studying in an Israeli seminary – where she lives and where she studies are both difficult situations. She’s not happy but told me she’s not sure if she needs to stick this out. I told her, “If you’re a member of this family, your issue isn’t going to be running away from problems but staying in a non-suitable situation too long and trying to see the positives.”

Being positive and looking for the good in life is important, but you can’t let that keep you from acknowledging when a situation needs to be changed. I suggested that first step is for her to be honest about how she’s feeling, not to rationalize or justify staying where she is because she doesn’t know how it can work out financially to do something different – just to acknowledge to herself how she’s really feeling and be willing to say, ‘I’m not happy’. Then after getting in touch with that feeling – which doesn’t take too long once you clear away the mental clutter – to ask herself: “Is this situation supporting me and the life I want to have? If not, why not? What would be more supportive of my needs?”

So she did that and we talked quite a bit about what this means for her. This week she gave notice to the family of the woman she works for that she’ll be leaving in a month, is interviewing with another family as a possible place to stay, and contacted the principal of an American seminary here in Israel to see if a mid-year transfer is possible. I asked her how she felt and she said it all feels good.

It seems to me that most people get stuck on one side or another of this question when they have to ask themselves the question about if their current life situation serves them or not. Many people stay with situations that aren’t supportive for too long, not believing that anything better is out there, thinking that they don’t deserve for things to be good or blaming themselves for the way the situation is.

Others go to the other extreme, moving from place to place, job to job, relationship to relationship, always blaming others for their situations and searching for that elusive happiness in the next place. When a person is having a hard time in life because of who they are, they carry that with them wherever they go. Someone who hosts a lot of people checking out her community told me she can tell right away who is a good candidate and who isn’t by asking why they want to move. She said when people start complaining about everything that is wrong with where they’re currently living, she knows they’re going to miserable in her community, too.

So how can you tell when you objectively would be better off in a different life situation? When are you running away from something instead of putting in the effort and time to make things work, and when are you moving forward towards a better and more fulfilling life?

This is a really individual situation and sometimes for the same person, it can look very different in different situations. If you’re in an abusive situation, generally the faster you get out, the better. Aside from that, we have to remember that all beginnings are difficult and time takes time. Don’t give up on your current situation too soon – think about what specifically is missing for you, and what you can do to make it work for you. If you’ve put in time and effort and after a reasonable amount of time things aren’t improving, you probably are seeing the reality of the situation and it’s time to think about making a change. Don’t blame yourself for being where you are right now; it is what it is, you learned something from where you were and now you can move on.

Since we can’t be objective about ourselves, it’s very valuable to get feedback from someone outside of the situation who is willing to listen to you without projecting themselves onto the scenario. At times when I’ve grappled with choices of this sort and spoken to friends, it’s been interesting how obvious the answer to my question was to them! People outside the situation can often see things more clearly since they aren’t fixated on all the tiny details that our minds can get tangled up with.

If you’ve determined that change would be beneficial for you, have courage. Trust that life is meant to be good, that you are worthy of good and that you will overcome the initial challenges the new situation is going to present you with. Making a change like this is an act of self-value and self-love; we can’t have better things in our lives until we recognize that we deserve better in our lives.

If you’ve grappled with decisions of this sort, please share how you recognized when it was time to make a change or stick things out!

Avivah

Is cleaning help a necessity?

November 19, 2013homemaking, homeschoolingAvivah

>>So… 5 kids, oldest is almost 7 and youngest is 4 months. Trying very hard to homeschool. My resources are extremely limited, from finances to actual help from other people, included family. I spoke to a friend last Thursday who called me out of the blue to see how I was doing. She asked if I had cleaning help, I told her no, (I’ve had cleaning help on and off since my 3rd was 6 months old, depending on finances). Friday she sent me cleaning help as a gift for having my baby. I was so grateful that I was in tears when they came. I was sick most of last week and I know it’s from over-exertion and stress. I was so extremely thankful for the cleaning help, it’s truly what i needed to enter shabbos with a clear mind. This friend, also while doing something very generous for me, also made me feel quite guilty for not having cleaning help and the consequences it will have on my kids for not getting help(like having this stressed out mommy who is always trying to clean and do everything else, expecting the kids to help beyond what they’re capable of). I told her it’s not my thing to live so above my means and I can’t justify paying for it when I have debts and trying to budget for necessities (we do the best we can). She then told me that cleaning help is a necessity, that it should be up there with food and a home.

I know there is no right or wrong way, but choosing a way that works best for us. And I’m not asking you if I should or shouldn’t spend the money on cleaning help, that decision is up to me and my husband. But I was hoping you could give me some guidance.<<

I can relate to the many demands you’re feeling: a number of young children who are home all day, the responsibility of homeschooling, a husband who is away for work a lot and consequently not very available to help out and no extra money to ease the situation. This is exactly my situation for a long time.

As anyone who’s been reading for long enough knows, I think it’s really important that kids learn to help out. The house isn’t just the mother’s responsibility; everyone lives in it and everyone should be contributing something. That means teaching your kids to help out, and this itself is a job. My dd15 took over running the house while Yirmiyahu was in the NICU, and she told me then that when she was younger and I told her she needed to help with chores not because it was easier for me but because it was important for her she didn’t believe me at all. Then she tried to get the younger kids to help out, experienced firsthand spending a long time getting a younger child to do a job that would literally take her two minutes, and suddenly understood what I told her all those years before. In the short term it takes a lot of time and energy to teach your kids to help. It’s mostly in the long run that you see the payoff.

Having said that, even if your kids are helpful, we have to be realistic about how much to ask of them. With your kids the ages they are, you’re at the very beginning of the path of teaching them; they aren’t able to help significantly and you’re going to have a lot of mess. That means we have to have a reasonable expectation of what our home is going to look like. Dr. Sarah Chana Radcliffe once wrote (quoting by memory so this isn’t exact), “There are very few women who can balance ‘clean and shiny’ with ‘scream and whiny’!” and I agree with this. I like a really clean home. But I know that I can’t have that level of clean without being a lot more demanding of my family and myself. I can’t have my kids home all day and be a reasonably pleasant mother and also keep everything looking as if no one lives here. It’s just not going to happen unless I decide that a clean house is a top priority – which it isn’t. My kids and husband are my top priority.

It’s a problem – our culture paints pictures of what a home should look like that are simply not realistic for the vast majority of people, and then we stress out and feel inadequate because we can’t meet that picture. It’s like pictures of models that have been airbrushed and then women compare themselves to them- even the models don’t look like their pictures so why should anyone be trying to meet a standard that doesn’t exist in real life? Similarly, it’s unlikely that most people homeschooling five kids under the age of 7 have a sparkling house without cleaning help. Actually, when I spoke to a good friend about this several years ago, she provided a reality check and said told me she doesn’t know anyone who isn’t homeschooling who has that ‘magazine’ clean without cleaning help!

An older friend who is no longer alive and was herself the mother of ten children once said to me, “Avivah, a factory that is in operation is going to be a mess. When a factory is clean, it’s not in business.” I took my kids to the Herrs’ potato chip factory a couple of times and though it seems so much is automated that a mess can’t happen, we saw a couple of large spills of chips in different sections of the factory – even factories with all their machinery and automation and paid workers can’t make it look sterile and perfect all the time. Her point was that our homes are in use and constant messes are just par for the course, and this is not only tolerable but something beautiful – our kids are living here! We’re doing things with them! They feel safe enough to make messes!

One time I hosted a women’s event at my home and several women were commenting, “Your house is so spotless, it’s so quiet, how did you get your kids to sleep?” I laughed and told them, of course it’s neat, it’s the end of the day and I knew people were coming so we cleaned up and got everyone to bed earlier than usual! I assured them that two hours before that it looked quite different! Isn’t it strange how we know what we have to do to make our house look good and that sometimes we scramble to pull it off, but assume when we go to someone else’s house that she did it effortlessly and it always looks like that?

People are very different in their needs and how they deal with not having things the way they want them to be. I never had cleaning help and worked on having realistic expectations of myself and my kids, in addition to having systems in place to make things run as smoothly as possible (ie meal plans, chore charts, daily schedules). I have a good friend who is in a financially tight situation who said she considers cleaning help critical and is sorry she didn’t get this help years ago. For myself I have a really hard time putting cleaning help up there as a necessity along with food and a place to live but for some people that’s what they need. I have a strong value for staying out of debt and living within my means and it would be really hard for me to say, “I don’t have the money for this but I’m doing it anyway.” If it was enough of a value for me I’d have found a way, just as my friend did.

So to sum up – I agree with your friend that being tense and expecting too much of your kids isn’t healthy. Getting cleaning help is one way to address that. But it’s not the only way. Another is to let go of the tension and expectations. Streamline what really needs to be done for the house to look reasonable – 80% of the cleanliness of your home will come from 20% of your efforts, so identify what the 20% effort you need to make is and focus on that. For me it means clearing surfaces (this includes dishes) and and the floor – the little cluttery things build up and make everything look messy, so I try to keep that at bay. An example of this approach for me is that I sweep several times a day to keep the floor clear but I only mop once a week (I spot clean if there’s a messy spill) – the extra level of shine is nice for Shabbos but doesn’t dramatically affect the look of the house on a daily basis.

Take the same approach to determining how to spend your effort homeschooling – you can easily get overwhelmed by all the subjects you think you need to cover, projects or trips you need to do – but 80% of your results are going to come from 20% of your efforts. This is why I put my energies toward teaching the basics – the three Rs – and teaching my kids to become independent learners. When you have extra time, then you can start doing the things that take 80 percent of your energy and only give you 20% of your results.

Let go of unrealistic expectations and do what you need to do to show yourself the love and care you deserve. This may be getting cleaning help, it may be repaying debt…only you can know what’s right for you. And remember – it does get easier as the kids get older!

Avivah

Reflections on turning 40

November 18, 2013homemakingAvivah

A few months ago I was feeling discouraged thinking about my upcoming birthday, thinking how little I’ve done with my life. No fame, no fortune, nothing impressive in any area of life. Any accomplishments I had felt puny and unremarkable.

When I was 20 and thought about being busy raising kids for years to come, I’d tell myself that one day I’d be forty and my kids would be older and then it would be my chance. Now here I was about to turn forty, still busy raising kids and seemingly not any closer to whatever it meant to have my chance. I started thinking about how I wasn’t ever going to be any more than I was right then. I wanted something concrete that showed I was here, that my life mattered in this world, but when I looked at my life all I could see was who I wasn’t and things I hadn’t accomplished.

Then an interesting thing happened. I stopped thinking about it – fortunately I don’t usually get stuck in negativity for long – and the next time I was thinking about turning 40, things were different. Not much different on the outside. But very different on the inside. Life had settled down and I felt content; this was a particularly notable shift after we started homeschooling again at the start of the school year. I’m still not rich and famous, still not doing impressive things. But living in harmony with my values has made a big difference in me being able to disregard those outside voices that were dancing around in my head.

I’m grateful for my life and my family, and I know that even without the things that people in the outside world use to measure value – a value system that I was stressing about not measuring up to – my life has been a success because I’ve lived it in the way that was meaningful to me. I’ve been an imperfect wife, mother, daughter and friend, but my family and friends love me in spite of that…and I wouldn’t trade the privilege of living this life for anyone else’s.

Avivah

Recognize and value your needs – stop thinking everyone else matters more!

November 8, 2013homemaking, parenting, pregnancyAvivah

Today I got a call from a young mother, and as soon as I heard her voice, I realized she was working hard to keep herself together. I was in the middle of cooking for Shabbos so I asked my kids to keep an eye on the things on the stove and in the oven and told them I’d need some time and privacy to speak to her. Then we started to talk.

She started to cry within a few seconds. It all spilled out – she’s due to give birth in two days, her doula just cancelled on her which means she’ll have to go to the hospital on her own to give birth since her husband will need to stay home with their two year old. Her oven isn’t working and the repair man wasn’t going to be arriving until later in the day, leaving her without time to cook for Shabbos. And her city is having some problem with the water quality so everyone needs to boil all their water or buy it; her husband doesn’t want to spend the money on bottled water so she needed to boil a large quantity of water to last for all of Shabbos. She’s very pregnant and very stressed and very overwhelmed.

The first thing I said was that the most important thing is to preserve her physical and emotional strength so she can go into labor feeling good. That means simplify everything as much as possible. I gave her some practical suggestions of how to cook a simple one pot meal so the oven not working wouldn’t be an issue and so she wouldn’t spend so much effort cooking a variety of dishes she didn’t have energy to prepare. She was like, really, you can do that? Really.

Next, the doula. We talked about options for this; she has a backup doula and can meet her at the hospital. (She lives in a different city and wouldn’t be able to come to her home on Shabbos to support her in early labor.) She said her friends had offered to watch their toddler when she went into labor so her husband go with her, but she thought it would be too hard for her child and it would be best if her husband stayed with their little boy. There’s a lot we moms give up for our kids and often it’s necessary, but as much as I value doing what we can to give our kids a feeling of security, this wasn’t the right time for that to be the issue of overriding importance. A laboring mother’s needs take priority.

But of course it’s important for her son to be in a safe and loving environment where he’ll feel good. We discussed which people in her life her son felt most comfortable with, and she decided on one friend who has a child the same age he’s very friendly and said she’d call as soon as we finished talking to make those arrangements.

Next – the water situation. We women put so many demands on ourselves and surprise, surprise, everyone around us assumes that’s okay and they make demands as well. The problem is even people who care can’t read our insides to realize when we’re overstretching to do all that we’re already doing. Husbands, especially young husbands like hers, don’t understand what’s involved in being pregnant and taking care of a young child and doing all she was responsible for. We’ve got to tell them and to do that we have to recognize our needs and feel they’re valuable. I’m sure he had no idea that his request that she boil the water would cause his wife so much stress. I suggested she ask for his help – let him know that it’s too much for her (without drama and accusation) and ask him to please take care of it. Maybe once he has to do it himself he’ll understand the work involved and decide it’s worth spending the money. Or maybe he’ll boil it all himself. Either way it will get done.

In all of these cases, the real issue was that she was giving priority to what others wanted and needed from her more than she was recognizing and validating her needs. Don’t we all do this sometimes? Or maybe more than sometimes?!

What I offered her was recognition that her needs were legitimate and important, and then helped her find practical solutions to address them. Inside our own heads we can lose perspective and sometimes things are obvious to someone outside of the situation. Once we get clarity on what we really need, it’s a lot easier to find solutions that work.

Avivah

Planning your week based on your higher values

October 8, 2013homemaking, homeschooling, parenting, personal developmentAvivah

I’ve been thinking about different aspects of time and life management lately, precipitated by a discussion with a man who is starting his own business, in addition to a full time supervisory position at work. I asked him about how he’s finding time to start a new business when he comes home exhausted after a long day, and he pointed to the bulletin board in his office that was separated into four equal quarters. He was about to explain when I nodded and told him I understood.

I was really grateful for this reminder of a principle that is so important but I’ve let it slide out of my life. That’s the principle of organizing your life around what is known as the four quadrants. (This is some of Steven Covey’s teaching, who is one of the two most insightful and far reaching authors I have read.) I thought this was too complicated for a blog post but I briefly explained it to dd17 who has already started implementing it and has been finding it very helpful.

In short, every activity in life can be categorized in one of four quadrants. The first quadrant is for things that are urgent and important. The second quadrant is for things that are important and not urgent. The third quadrant is for things that are urgent and not important. And the fourth quadrant is for things that are not urgent and not important.

You have no choice but to spend time in Quadrant 1 (Q1 from now on). These are things that can’t be ignored, serious issues that leave you no choice but to deal with them. Crisis falls into this quadrant.

The second quadrant is super powerful but the most neglected. The more time you spend here, the less time you need to spend in Q1. This is the quadrant of planning, reflection, spiritual growth, personal renewal – eating well, exercise, meditating. The kind of things you never manage to find time to do because you’re too busy and one day you’ll get around to it.

The third and fourth quadrant are time wasters. Q3 is filled with things that seem important because they’re so urgent and that’s why it takes up so much of our time. Phones ringing, people knocking at the door or insisting they need something from us leave us feeling that this is a really important thing to do right now. But they aren’t.

Q4 is non important, non urgent activities – time wasting activities that people overuse with the stated purpose being to relax from their stressful lives. If it’s a meaningful relaxing activity that leaves you feeling recharged, it goes in Q2. If it’s mind numbing and excessive, you’re looking at Q4.

So the first thing you need to do is assess what roles you play in your life, what activities they involve, and determine where each of these items are on the quadrants. The first two quadrants are where you want to spend most of your time but most people are spending the majority of their time in Q1 and Q3, the urgency quadrants. We live in an urgency culture. We can get addicted to the feeling or urgency because it makes us feel important to be so busy. The problem is that urgency and importance aren’t the same, so all of this activity can leave a person feeling empty.

The goal is to move towards spending more time in Q2 – this is where quality of life comes from. Where does the time to do that come from? Q3 and Q4, the quadrants that will suck out all your life energy and leave you with nothing to show for it. The more time you spend in Q2, the smaller the number of burning items in Q1 will become. The man I mentioned at the beginning of the post told me when he first took this job, everything was urgent, rush, rush, rush. After a month of putting practices based on these principles into place, things were running in a much calmer way.

Categorizing your activities is individual – an activity that one person experiences in one way can be experienced totally differently by someone else.

I used some of my resting time the day after my accident to do some quadrant planning. I’d been thinking about it since last week and was planning to find a chunk of time to do some uninterrupted thinking so I took my opportunity when it presented itself! After some reflection and writing, I took out my planner and scheduled in the Q1 and Q2 activities for the week. This is the idea behind something I wrote about a long time ago, putting in the big rocks first. (You’ll have to look it up if you’re interested. :))

After you write down your important quality of life type activities for the week, then you schedule everything else around that. You can spend your days doing little things that need to be done all day long, and get to the end of a day feeling as if you have nothing to show for your efforts. When you prioritize your activities and execute around them, you can get lots of the smaller things done in between the big things and at the end of the day feel a sense of satisfaction that you’ve done things that really mattered to you.

Though I’ve just started doing this again, it’s been really good. Even when things happen to throw off my time schedule that would have previously left me extremely frustrated, I still had a clear idea of what was my priority for the day and that kept me focused even when everything else about my day changed. I made time for some deep thinking, time to write out some of my values and priorities, time to spend with my mom, time to speak to a relative in the US who I rarely talk to (great aunt). I got all my homeschooling paperwork written up. I went through 2000 digital photos on my camera and chose out about 10% to print out; I haven’t printed out photos in over two years though our family enjoys being able to look at albums to remember our experiences. Now I can delete everything from my camera. (Getting rid of clutter is a Q2 activity.)

My house wasn’t clean at the end of the day, since physically I’m more limited than usual right now. I like when things look neat, but I was still able to feel a sense of accomplishment because the things that really mattered to me (and these will be different for each person) things it’s so easy to be too busy for – were done.

This is an incredibly powerful way to live life if done consistently. I hope I haven’t made it seem to obvious in my effort to simplify a lot of material. Please let me know if this sounds helpful to you!

Avivah

Living Inspired class series – beginning soon in Karmiel

July 8, 2013aliyah, homemakingAvivah

After an eight month hiatus, I’ve finally made time in my life to begin giving Torah classes locally again, and am excited about the opportunity to share thoughts with others that have been helpful for me! I had some ambivalence regarding some aspects of teaching that had to be overcome in order to give classes again. These included logistics of time and location, deciding on the subject matter and making time for class preparation. As with so many things, it required being honest about my needs and limitations, but once I did was able to find solutions to all of the concerns.

I find that sharing with others helps keep me in a state of mind that is spiritually and emotionally upwardly mobile, and I credit getting through the last year of crises as well as I did to applying ideas I shared in classes in the past. There’s a real power in consistently keeping connected to higher thoughts that help you uncover and stay in touch with your higher self, and preparing classes to share with others pushes me to keep my spiritual growth a priority. Details of the Living Inspired class series are below.

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Preparing for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur begins with the preparations for the Nine Days (beginning this week), and in our workshops we will explore the unique spiritual power of this time period. We will develop practical applications to maximize personal growth, so that we go into the holidays with a clear sense of purpose and connection to the spirit and potential of these days! Start the new year off right by getting into the right mindset now!

Life today is one filled with pressures that obscure what our purpose is. What should we be doing? How can we do what we’re meant to do? How can we find meaning in day to day living, or grow through times of challenge? We will begin discussing these topics now, and after the holidays will continue to systematically cover topics that include developing personal direction, uncovering your inner light, identifying pitfalls that keep you from accessing your potential, developing inner calm and confidence, happiness, transcending challenges and more! All of these classes are based on the timeless wisdom of the Torah, which is filled with directions for living a life of meaning every day.

The classes will be given in English, and are geared towards women of all ages and all religious backgrounds. There will be no cost for the classes, which are being sponsored as a merit for complete healing for Yonatan Simcha ben Leah Rivka.

The Living Inspired series will be held on Wednesdays evenings and the first class will be Wednesday July 10 at my home. (Email me privately for the address if you need it.) The first class will be “Beating the Heat! – The Unique Spiritual Opportunity of the Nine Days”. We will begin on time so that we can finish on time and people can get home before it gets too late! There will be time for discussion after the class for those who are able to stay longer.

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I’m not a person who enjoys dealing technology at all, but if I can find someone more savvy than me to help work out the logistics, I’m willing to record the classes to post here if there is interest. If this is something that you know something about and would like to assist with, please contact me! If technology isn’t your thing but you’re interested in hearing the classes, let me know so I can gauge if there’s enough interest to make the effort.

Avivah

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