Note: This is an very recently updated, 2012 version of an article that was originally published years ago on a couple of different websites (not here).  If a homemaker puts the information found in this article into practice, she will find success with her personal time management and more happiness in homemaking due to doing her job well.  If you are a young homemaker and begin your amazing, God-created role in the home by applying what is taught in this article, you will be starting your home on a solid, made-to-last, quality foundation. 

More Time in a Day

By Mrs. Wayne Hunter

© Copyright 2004 – 2012, All Rights Reserved

Below are some tips on how to make more out of the time that you have.

Pray. Before you begin your day, pray to God.

Don’t be selfish. Your family and you deserve your very best, as well as a clean home and wholesome meals. You all deserve a homemaker who devotes herself to making sure that her family is completely taken care of.

Declutter, thoroughly clean and organize your home. Do this one room at a time. An excellent way to get started is to remember these two things:

• If it’s not useful or beautiful, throw it out! Have a garbage can and several garbage bags for the garbage, have a box or so for charity, and a box for collectibles, such as heirlooms, that can’t be thrown away but need to be stored. Go through everything, including drawers, closets, bookshelves, corners, cabinets and whatever else is in the room.
• Next comes the thorough cleaning. Wipe off, dust, polish, wash, scrub; do whatever it takes to get the room thoroughly clean. Don’t forget walls, ceilings and baseboards.

You will most likely find after the decluttering that you have a lot more room to put things, therefore, the organization of your items comes next. Find a space to neatly place everything. Don’t forget: one room at a time is the way to go with this. Trying to declutter, thoroughly clean and organize more than one room at a time can leave you frustrated, take a lot longer, and may be less thoroughly done than going one room at a time. Also, going one room at a time, you can see your results more quickly, thus leading to more motivation to go on to the next room. This is initially time-consuming, good old-fashioned hard work, but the benefits are great. You have a beautiful home, you save a lot of time by maintaining a clean home rather than shuffling a mess and clutter around, and it’s so much easier to maintain a home that is organized and clutter-free. Declutter, thoroughly clean, and organize your home at least twice a year. A suggestion on when to do this would be once in the summer and once in the winter.

Get up earlier and stay up later. This is the golden key to success for the round-the-clock homemaker! The famous Proverbs 31 wife and mother rose while it was yet night and let not her candle go out by night – meaning that she got up early and stayed up late. Don’t deprive yourself of a good night’s sleep, but there is much to be accomplished in these hours. If you have small children or even older ones, set a bedtime for them, and you go to bed a few hours later. While the children are in bed, you can get a whole lot of housework done. You might well be amazed at how much quicker you can get household jobs done when you are on your own time. (This is an especially good time to do jobs that cannot yet be handled by little hands. Your children should obviously be taught to do household chores as they are able during the day, which will eventually free up more of your time.)

Getting up earlier has the same benefits. Both getting up earlier and staying up later also provide the benefit of you having time for yourself. You can do a great deal of reflecting and thinking at these times. You could use some of the time to study. One great way to study while working is to purchase the Scourby Bible CDs. These are audio CDs of the King James Version of the Bible that are outstanding. The reader has such a pleasant voice and reads straight from the Bible; no commentary, nothing but The Pure Word of God; they are so touching. They are a great way to study and an absolutely uplifting way to enjoy your time.  For more information on them, you can visit their website at this link or call 1-800-237-0785.  Scourby readings used to be available with the Old and New Testamanents for sale individually, but this option doesn’t seem to exist anymore. For women looking for an audio version of The Tanakh, click here for purchase and other information about the JPS version. Click here for free book-by-book and chapter-by-chapter mp3 downloads of The Hebrew Bible in the Hebrew language, if you’d like.

By getting up earlier and staying up later, you can enjoy more time with your husband and children, as you won’t be anxious to get the housework done when they need your time and attention. You can tend to their needs instead of being overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done. You will have to figure out what gets done and what doesn’t at these opportune times, but one thing’s for sure: you’ll enjoy the fruits of your labors!

Make most of the food for the day in the early morning. This ensures that you will have healthy food for each meal. An example would be to make three loaves of bread in the early morning while everyone else is sleeping (one loaf per meal), put on a big pot of beans so that they’ll be ready by lunch, and you will have plenty left for supper that you can make chili with in a jiffy. Make homemade pudding so that it can set up well in the refrigerator for lunch and supper. You could also slice and cut fresh fruits and vegetables and put them on trays for the lunch and or supper, make a nice salad, etc. Stews, roasts, soups, and baked items are all good foods to make once for the whole day.  Click here to read more about this.

Make a menu. Each week plan a nutritious menu and then plan once-a-week grocery shopping by it. Having a menu can save you lots of money, as you will have a guide and the groceries on hand to make the meals you have planned, rather than shopping nightly (which can lead to picking up a lot of unnecessary and costly items) or picking up fast foods because you haven’t planned. Also, by planning a menu, you can see in writing your family’s eating habits and correct areas of concern by planning good, wholesome, nutritious, and well-balanced foods for your family.

Observe the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” ~ Exodus 20:8-11

This is the fourth of the Ten Commandments. Work the first six days of the week, then rest and enjoy a day off. Sabbath is a beautiful, beautiful day.

“If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.” ~ Isaiah 58:13-14

Eat not the bread of idleness. Don’t be lazy. Get your work done before you take time for pleasure. Wiling away hours in front of the television, speaking on the phone or in person, spending countless time in front of the computer for entertainment purposes, sitting around reading novels, and such all take a lot bigger chunk out of time than you might imagine. There is a time for taking the time to entertain yourself, but if your husband, children, or you are being neglected in some way, your laundry is out of control, dishes are piled up in the kitchen, or the house is a mess, etc. then it’s time to get busy taking care of things. Idleness will get you nowhere fast. By working hard, you save time and money–not to mention that you feel much better about your family and yourself. Make yourself keep that laundry taken care of and the house clean. It may not be easy at first, but once you get into the swing of it and receive the abundant blessings, it may easily become your way of life.

Give your children age appropriate chores and make sure that they do them. Even a toddler can pick up his own toys and put them in the toy box. There are “chore charts” available, and if you don’t know where to start, maybe you could check into them. You can’t expect a two-year-old to use an adult mop and broom, but he can fold washcloths for you and pick up around the house. There are several things that younger and older children can do to help out around the house, and in teaching them to do so, the child is shown that he is an important part of a functioning family, and you have a little extra help. Make sure that your children are shown exactly how to keep their rooms clean, and then make sure that they do it by having nightly checks about an hour before bed. If the room isn’t to specification, have them get it to specification while you’re in the room. But please do heed this warning about giving your children chores, and this is to not overburden them with adult-sized jobs; that they aren’t given dangerous or exhausting work that is beyond their developmental stage and capacity. Since children are smaller physically and haven’t the amount of years of doing the housework as you, they most often just can’t get the job done as quickly or efficiently as an adult. Give them a chore or two, enough time to do them well, teach them to appreciate the beauty of their work, and then give them plenty of time for play and education. This is especially true of an older girl child. It is very easy to overburden our preteen or teenage daughters when they get old enough to take over a lot of household chores and baby tending. They need to see that Momma works, too – not that she is a taskmaster who wants others to do everything while she relaxes. Work together, and work will become more meaningful and beautiful.

Take time every day to study something of interest to you that is helpful to your family. This is not idly wasting time. A good time to do this is in the morning or night when it’s quiet and after all of the housework is caught up or at nap time for the children. You can also study right alongside of your homeschooling children if you homeschool.

Clean while you go about your work. It’s a whole lot easier and less time-consuming to rinse out a pan that you just cooked in than to wait for hours to do it. It’s a whole lot easier and less time-consuming to mop or wipe up a mess when it happens than it is to leave it to get sticky; not to mention that doing this is a lot more hygienic.

Make a list of all your homemaking jobs and how often they are to be done, then make a schedule. Here’s an example of such a list:

• Daily: make beds, sweep all floors, wash dishes (as many times a day as needed), prepare three meals and one or two snacks, dust furniture, wash, fold and put away laundry (maybe several times a day, depending on sizes and ages of the members of your family), washing off the bathroom sink, tidying up, etc.
• Every Other Day: mopping, dusting, etc.
• Once a Week: thoroughly cleaning the bathroom (may need to be done twice a week, depending on family size), cleaning the furniture, washing and drying bedding (may need to be done more than once a week, depending on your preferences or if the need be), cleaning out and washing out the refrigerator, cleaning outside your home, etc.

Then make a schedule of not only your jobs, but of all the things that you need to get done during the day. Remember, it takes time to adjust to anything new. Don’t become disheartened, worried, or sad if you don’t get everything done the first few tries, but do keep at it and work things out to perfectly suit you and your family. Soon you won’t need charts or schedules or anything like that, and your house will be running much more smoothly. And a great reward for your efforts will be that, God willing, there will come a day when on many days you have everything done and have free time!