Our Daily Schedule

Small and Simple Things

(Lucy Mack Smith reading the bible to Joseph and Hyrum)

By David Koch

This week I am caring for my brother’s 3 wonderful children.  Though it is delightful to have them here playing and bonding with their cousins, it has reminded me of how I cherish our routines, schedule and stewardship assignments given to each child.  As I have missed the order of our home over the past few days, I thought it would be a good time to respond to my dear friend, Mayela, about some details of our daily schedule.  I’ve included a brief outline and some notes about different times of the day.  If there’s a certain part of the day you are interested in knowing about how we do things, leave a comment and I’ll find time to elaborate on that section.

Let me just preface this by saying… this is the default schedule that I always strive to achieve.  If anyone ever comes over, we throw it out the window because it never works the same.  It is there to create joy and sometimes it’s most joyful to be flexible and try again the next day.  Having no schedule in place though, leads to mob rule, mom in jammies and crisis mode, kids with bed head and overall bewilderment wondering where did the day go?  I started the schedule for this post at 6:30 because that’s when I begin with the children.  I like to take the approach to mothering and running the home the same as if I were a CEO of a fortune 500.  So I feel like I need to be “Ready For Work” by 6:30.  So before 6:30, I like to have done my exercise, my spiritual routine, be showered and dressed to the shoes (flylady) and tidy up my room (flylady morning routine checklist).  Sometimes I don’t get everything in and some days I race to the table without my make up on yet.  But the day goes much better when I’m completely prepared and can then focus on Brigham, the kids, the home, the meals and squeeze in my own education, hobbies, passions in the cracks here and there.