WHEN THERE ARE ONLY 24 HOURS IN A DAY

I made a decision as last summer came to a close that I was going to scale back on my ongoing commitments, to say no to good things in the upcoming school year. That school year is wrapping up now and I've been thinking about how it went.

One of the things I struggled with was that I had some sort of commitment four nights and two mornings a week, leaving only one day completely free of ongoing commitments, a day which was often filled with some sort of event. That didn't change. Church attendance, our homeschool group, Skyble, and family Bible study weren't things any of us were willing to give up. 

However, the weekly chauffeuring of one kid to a church commitment changed in such a way that I now get a couple quiet hours while everyone else is out of the house or in bed. I'm an extrovert, no doubt about it, but I'm also in a season of life where I appreciate times of silence and solitude. Having a little bit of time to myself one night a week has been really nice!

We also reached the end of the Bible study we'd been doing as a family and, after taking a few weeks off, have started up again in a way that spreads the work load more evenly among all the Ws. We're only one week in, but I already feel a burden (one I was glad to bear, but which was a burden nonetheless) lifted with our new approach. 

The other thing that had me feeling overwhelmed were the irregular commitments, things that were monthly, quarterly, or whatever. I liked every single one of the things on my plate, but the combination of several weekly commitments and several less frequent ones was just too much. Some of those things remain the same as before, but others were different.

The first change was to the monthly open houses we'd been hosting for 18 months. We took last summer off, then loosened up our plan. We stopped committing to a monthly open house, shooting for every month or two instead, and opened ourselves up to the option of hosting them on our usual Fridays or on Saturdays, which we'd never done before. We also chose to skip an open house some months so that we could invite specific people over instead. That's worked out to having open houses on three Fridays, one Saturday, and on Christmas, having specific people over two different months, and skipping guests completely for two months.

The next thing I did concerned hosting a monthly moms' night for our local homeschool group, a task I'd taken over a couple years ago when the gal who had been doing it needed to step down.  It's one of my favorite nights of every month, but in my evaluation of which good things I could say no to, I knew it needed to change. I announced to our group in the fall that I would only be hosting three moms' nights over the course of the school year and that we'd either skip the other months or someone else would have to host. Not all of them are able or interested, which is totally fine and part of the reason I'd been hosting, but enough gals opened their doors that we didn't miss a single moms' night all year. I'm so thankful!

I also shut down a site I'd run for people in our church for over eight years. I'd known the change was coming for quite a while and just decided one day that the time had come. It was no longer taking very much of my time, but letting it go completely was freeing.

Another small change I made was to limit the number of times I would fill in as a sub for childcare at church, choosing to only do it once per month on the months I was off rotation and not at all when I was on. I'm always willing to help and I enjoy being with the kids, but the option of working one weekend service and sitting in another doesn't work for us right now. Listening to the podcast or watching the video later doesn't isn't realistic for me either, so I end up missing the teaching time more than hearing it if I sub too frequently. Putting that boundary in place has helped me not commit to more than is practical.

The final major change was that I didn't volunteer to take on very many responsibilities with our homeschool group. That one was hard for me because we're just a low-key, parent-led group. Our family usually leads a handful of classes each year (just the little Ws, most of the time), which I enjoy and feel is important. That being said, I simply had to say no to some things and leading classes (or having the kids responsible for leading) ranked lower on our priority list than other commitments. We still participated and helped in other ways, but it was definitely a shift from our usual involvement. I'm not sure how much work we'll take on next year, but stepping back a bit was definitely the right choice for the year that's ending right now. 

We still had plenty of things going on over the last school year, but the "get to" things in life stopped feeling like "have to" things because I wasn't locking myself into unnecessary commitments. It was way better! 

Now I'm facing another summer of stepping back and reevaluating how my time is spent before real life starts back up again in the fall. I know some of the changes I made this last school year will continue and others will shift one way or another, but I think the biggest change is going to be in the nitty gritty of our daily life. My time management has tanked, absolutely tanked, when it comes to ordinary days! I need to manage my responsibilities in a way that models a good work ethic for the kids, allows plenty of time for rest and play, and gives us freedom to enjoy the flexibility that comes with homeschooling. I've got a whole summer to think, pray, and make lists as I figure out the best way to do that in this particular season of life. I'm looking forward to it, though, because I've just spent nine months reaping the rewards of the changes I pondered last summer.