A Day In The Life Of The Frugal Girl (School Year Edition)
First, I wanted to say thank you for all of your input on yesterday's post! I'll probably post a summary of yesterday's comments at some point, but one thing that a lot of you requested was more about my day-to-day activities. Happily, a few weeks ago I jotted down what I did all day. So today, I present to you (in glaring detail) the activities of a grocery shopping day at our house.
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4:45-I hop out of bed, set up the ironing board, turn on the iron, and start to make the bed. Then it occurs to me that though I need to wash the sheets tomorrow, the weather isn't supposed to be very sunny, so I decide to strip the bed and wash the sheets today.
After I throw the sheets into the washer, I iron some work clothes (ideally I'd have them ironed ahead of time, but my life is not ideal!). I also have time to iron a few other items of clothing.
5:05-I pack the husband's lunch, and after he leaves for work, I clean up the small mess I made in the kitchen and do a quick check of my email, Twitter, and Facebook.
5:30-I take a shower, put my makeup on, and get dressed. I also straighten up our bedroom (as my mother is fond of saying, "Maintenance is key.").
6:00-I read my Bible, and my current book and pray.
6:35-I head to the computer to write today's blog post. I get distracted answering some emails first, though. I try to have at least a draft of a blog post done ahead of time, but today I'm starting from scratch. While I'm writing, Sonia and Zoe wake up in cranky moods and come downstairs. After multiple interruptions and several episodes of disciplinary intervention, they finally settle in upstairs to patiently wait.
7:35-I'm done at the computer (late this morning, due to a more time-consuming blog post! Normally I try to be done by 7:00), and I go tell the kids to get dressed. I have to dig in some drawers to find some winter clothes for several of them, as I've only switched seasons with one kid's clothes.
I make oatmeal for breakfast and while it's cooking, I braid Zoe and Sonia's hair. While we eat breakfast, we usually listen to a CD of classical music. This week, we're listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
I clean up breakfast and do dishes, and we're just about ready to start school.
8:30-I start to go outside to hang my sheets up to dry, and get distracted with a random decluttering project. But yay, it looks nice and clean there now!
9:00-I finally hang the sheets up and we start school. I send Lisey to practice the piano and after I get Sonia started on her work I remember I have to publish my Ragu review. I work on that while Sonia does her math.
9:15-I bounce back and forth between helping Lisey with a piano song and helping Sonia with her math. As happens so often, I begin to think how much easier life would be if there were two of me. I help Sonia with her handwriting, help a super-distressed Joshua with his math, and break up a fight between Sonia and Zoe.
9:30-I sit down to write what I've done so far today, because otherwise I'll forget!
9:45-I help Sonia write a journal and we make a new letter card. P is the new letter today. We review all her previous letter cards. I put a homeschool teacher's edition book outside to be picked up by a freecycler.
10:00-I throw a new load of laundry into the washer and check some of Lisey's schoolwork. In checking Joshua's math, I make the distressing discovery that halfway through his math lesson, he started doing the lesson from yesterday. I review catechism questions with all four kids and read a chapter of Little Town on the Prairie out loud to all of them.
10:30-I rummage around in the freezer for some sort of bread for lunch. Normally I'd make muffins or pancakes when we're this low on bread, but I have exactly 0 eggs. Bummer. I have a really empty fridge post-vacation. I publish a post for the Self Reliance Exchange blog that I contribute to, and get Lisey started on her science reading. After she reads it, I talk to her about what she read and help her think about what to type in her science journal (each day she writes down three things she's learned from her science reading).
11:00-I hang the second load of laundry out to dry, and then we have lunch (I found some bread in the freezer) because we all are starving (maybe we need to add some fat to our oatmeal!). We listen to Fall and Winter from Vivaldi's Four Seasons while we eat, and I make my grocery list from the menu I planned yesterday.
12:00-lunch is done and cleaned up, and I work on getting everyone ready to go grocery shopping. I sit down to get some checks ready to take to the bank and am interrupted by fight #5482 of the day between siblings. After administering some consequences for some rule-breaking (rules such as, "Don't shriek at your sister." In cases like these, I help the offending party to think of something kind to do to the offended sibling, such as giving their dessert to the offended sibling at the next meal.), I finally get the checks ready.
1:00-We leave to go grocery shopping. First stop: the gas station that offers $.05/gallon off on Thursday. Then it's on to Goodwill, where we found a couple of great things we've been needing ($5 Lands End boots for Lisey and two camis for me). Aldi is next, and then Weis. Finally, we stop at the bank to deposit some checks.
3:00-we arrive at home, unload the groceries, arrange them on the floor so I can take a picture for Saturday's post, and then I put them all away and fold up our reusable bags.
3:30-I take a break to check my email and to write down what we've been doing.
3:45-I finish checking more school work, put away a few more groceries, have the kids clean their rooms (they have to clean them after school before they can go out and play), help children get shoes on so they can play outside, and make some soup and cornbread for dinner, documenting the process in pictures (so I can share with you in the future!).
5:30-We eat dinner together.
6:15-We clean up dinner and do the dishes, and Lisey sweeps the dining room.
6:45-I fold some laundry, and supervise the kids as they get their pjs on and brush their teeth. Only Zoe needs much in the way of help at this point, which is nice.
7:00-We all gather in the living room for Family Worship. We read a small section of the Bible (we're reading Psalms right now), talk about it, and then one person prays (we each take a turn, even Zoe). Since we have small kids, we keep it short.
7:15-I read a story out loud to Sonia and Zoe and get them tucked into bed.
7:30-The two younger ones are in bed, and the older two head back to their rooms to read or play quietly until their respective bedtimes. This gives me a child-free hour each evening.
8:15-I start to get ready for bed and realize that my sheets are still hanging outside on the line. Nuts. I run outside, take the sheets down and put them on the bed.
8:30-Bedtime! This is a ridiculously early bedtime, I know, but the alarm goes off at 4:40 am, so we have to turn in at this time in order to get 8 hours of sleep.
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So, there you have it...a typical slice of my life. Not every day goes exactly like this, of course...some go better, and some don't go as well. Some days I'm more productive, and some days I just don't get as much done. Some days I stay home entirely, and other days I have to be out and about. Some days I don't do any paid work, and some days I do a lot of it.
Honestly, there are hardly ever two days that are the same in my life (who said being a stay at home mom was boring, anyways?), so I'll keep doing posts like these on a random basis. Perhaps my next one will chronicle a day in December.
P.S.-If you'd like to get a glimpse into a summer day at our house, check out my last post of this sort.
I really enjoy this posts--maybe it's just that I'm nosy! But it's really nice to see what another SAHM does with her day, especially since I hope to homeschool my daughter when she's older. It's good to see how the schedule works out. And you're right, no two days are ever the same!
Nifty post. It's interesting to see how others go about their day. I'd love to get up early, but my two-year old seems to think that whenever I am up, it's time for her to get up. I don't know how she knows...
Very interesting post! It's neat to see how other people spend their day.
Just out of curiosity (I'm not familiar with how homeschooling works), but is it common for homeschooled children to only do schoolwork for 2 hours a day? I see on your schedule that school started at 9 and stopped at 11. I think my elementry school day (back in the day!) went from 9-3. Just curious, please don't take this as any sort of criticism - clearly you are doing a great job raising your family!
Sounds very similar to my day :). I wake up at 5:30 MST and am usually needing to get in bed around 9:30, occasionally I make it to 10, but that's only with a cuppa coffee ;). Thanks for sharing your day. Nice to see we all do things like forget the sheets outside! LOL!
To the above poster: I'm not Frugal Girl, but yes 2 hours a day is very typical. We start school around 9:30 am and even with a break for snack we are done by 12pm. That's with teaching a 6th, 3rd and 2nd grader.
But that's only the "schooly" type stuff. Learning doesn't only take place from 9:30-12:00 ;). Life IS learning.
You're at a very similar stage of life as I am (lots of small children, homeschooling, etc.) so it's really helpful to see how you do it too. I don't get up as early as you do, but I am usually up before 6. That's the only way I get even half the stuff done that I need to!
Thanks for sharing your day with us. Whew, you do so much, so early!
I'm not so familiar with homeschooling, but is 2 1/2-3 hours of work pretty typical for most homeschooled kids? Are there times of the year when they're doing schoolwork in the afternoon, too? Like I said, I don't know much about it, but am always interested in hearing about it from homeschooling moms.
Thanks!
To answer some of the homeschooling questions (though I'm sure Kristen will want to answer, too), I was homeschooled in elementary school and we only had school for a few hours everyday. That was possible because the student/teacher ratio was much smaller, I didn't have to wait for other kids to finish their work before moving on, and, well, that's just how quickly I got my work done. There also wasn't any bureaucratic stuff to deal with like there is in public schools--no forms, no waiting for the announcements, no dealing with the interruptions of other students. It was great.
Wow. You accomplish so much during the day, it sounds like it's just go, go, go!
Thanks for sharing!
Sounds like your husband doesnt help much.
So, I'm not the Frugal Girl either... but, Homeschooling can take anywhere from 1 hour to 5 depending on the age of the child, the curriculum, sickness, whatever may come up..
I'm sure that Kristen's husband is a huge help... if he wasn't a "help" she wouldn't be home with their children and life would look much different!
Rob: Ouch! Sounds to me like he helps a lot... by bringing home a paycheck so that Kristin can stay home and school the children.
Augh, how stupid! I can't believe I misspelled your name, Kristen. (I know someone else with the "-in" ending. 😉 )
@Elizabeth B
Yeah, my husband and I get up at 5:30 for his work and go to bed at 9. People think that is early. I am glad someone else out there goes to bed super early.
Oh, and I wanted to answer the homeschooling question. I was homeschooled my entire life, went to college at age 16, got my degree in mechanical engineering and physics, and then spent another year getting my masters in mechanical engineering. I graduated in the top 10% and 5% of my classes. I say all that to say, we only spend the first part of the day studying as well.
I found that spending just the morning on schoolwork, during my childhood, was plenty of time to learn what I needed to learn. I actually talked to a retired principle from Silver Spring, MD (near Washington DC) the other day and he was talking about during the 60s when the baby boom hit the schools they had to go to half day school. He said half the kids came in the morning and half at afternoon. He was telling me that they never reported the results because parents didn't like them, but he said they found that kids learned just as much or even more sometimes in the half day system. They didn't get as bored as easily.
Anyhow, we normally did extracurricular things in the afternoon. We had a Writing club once a week on Thursday afternoons, we had gym on Mondays, different field trips, and various sports or science clubs during the week as well. We kept pretty busy and learned a lot. Plus, I think that shopping and cooking with my mother has made me much better at both of those things now that I am grown. Also, grocery shopping was a lesson in real world math. There are all sorts of things you can learn when you aren't being taught to the test.
My parents are both college professors, one in English and one in math. They used to teach in the high school public school system, but they didn't like teaching to the testing systems and so they moved to college level.
After reading this post I have another suggestion: a day in the weekend of Mr. Frugal Girl. (I expect weekday is "get up, go to work, work, come home from work, spend time with wife, eat dinner, pray, do kid bedtime stuff, kidfree hour, bed."
Out of curiosity: how do you plan to fix Zoe's waking up problem?
I laughed out loud at the first line of this post: wake up at 4:45. What popped into my head was a parody based on my schedule: "woke up at the crack of 9am." For me, no two days are ever the same, but waking up at 4:45 is one thing that NEVER happens. We stay up quite late in our childless home.
Thanks for the peek into your life- very interesting.
@Rob Rob, I thought about including more about what my husband does, but then I decided that this was a day in the life of the Frugal Girl, not a day in the life of the husband of the frugal girl. lol
My husband helps me clean up dinner, he leads family worship, he plays with the kids, and I mentioned that he often tucks Sonia into bed. And like someone else said, he rises at 4:30 to go to work to provide for our family so that I can stay home with our children.
Wow, you are so organized! I've been trying to get more productive and back in the swing of things. My husband left us 3 months ago to go and live with a coworker, so things have been pretty bad at chez Frugal Liz. I have found that having a plan for the day makes things go a lot easier. Do you play board games with your kids? My 8 year old LOVES monopoly. I got her a scrabble game as well, but I think it was too advanced for her. We read Laura Ingalls Wilder too. My favorite is, "On the Banks of Plum Creek."
Good job, Kristen. Sounds like a great day. I too homeschool my four kids. They are in 12th, 10th, 8th, and 4th grades. Now that the kids are older, our school day takes quite a bit longer. On top of that, my older kids stay up much later than they used to. That has been a real challenge for my husband and me. Finding alone time is much harder, but we also realize that our time with our kids at home is very limited. Ah.... seasons of life. You can read my "day in the life" entry on my blog here: http://enjoyingtheview-karelin.blogspot.com/2009/10/its-thursday.html. I really enjoy your blog. It inspires me. Aloha! *;)
@WilliamB Her issue is that she can't figure out how to get her pjs back on after a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom. I think part of the problem is that she's not entirely awake (one night I came upstairs and found that she had tried to take her shirt off by pulling it down over her shoulders, and so it was stuck around her waist! Why she was taking her shirt off in the first place is something of a mystery.), but some of it is just that I need to make her practice more.
So, I'm trying really hard not to help her put her clothes back on during the day (it is easier and faster for me to do it, so it's tempting to do it myself!) and we also bought her some pjs that are easier to put on.
Nightgown?
I get less sleep than you and still don't get half as much done during the day! When I first started reading your blog I would joke about being you when I grow up, now that I've seen a day in the life of - no way!! I'm exhausted and all I had to do was read about what you do.
If only you could teach others how to get 90 minutes in every 30 minute window!
Hey Frugal Girl!
I loved this post - always so interesting to see what others do with their day! An idea to mix it up next time you write a post like this? I read a blog post once, where the blogger had written what they did with their day - followed by what they WISHED they had done with their day! (Link below). I thought it was a great concept - no one can live the 'perfect day' but it is interesting to see how close of otherwise we sometimes get!
http://myinnerfrenchgirl.blogspot.com/2009/08/marjorie-andree-or-my-nights-are-more.html
Pouring some cream over the oatmeal will keep your bellies full longer and is also super yummy =) I'm not sure how frugal it is though.
Wow. Just reading your post made me tired. I don't know how you do it.
Wonderful post Kristen! So many people don't really understand what home schooling entails, and you have given an honest glimpse into the life of a homeschooling Mom. Being a full time homemaker and child raiser is a hard enough and exhausting job. Adding homeschooling to the mix, well, parents that go this route should really pat themselves on the back. Spending quality time with children and being involved in every aspect of their
growing up years, is so much more fruitful and rewarding than just chauferring one's kids to one event or another. Knowing exactly what your childeren are being taught and how they are learning is so important. When I homeschooled my son, homeschooling was pretty much unheard of an a bit "taboo". But the results were so worth any critism! Kudos to you and your husband Kristen for putting family, morals and values first even if it means making sacrifices along the way. If people in America would change their thinking and materialistic ways, our country would be so much better off!
I loved reading your post. You are a busy girl! I don't think I'm very useful if I wake up before 8am! 🙂 I love that you too forget to bring in the laundry too! 🙂
I'm a teacher so I have to admit that if I were a stay at home mom I'd still send my kids to school. But on the other hand its so sweet to read how you teach your children yourself- terrific individualized instruction. Obviously you're doing a great job!
I loved reading about how you lovingly take care of your family each day and manage to find time for everything. Wow- I waste so much time!
Wow, you are so disciplined and get so much done. I dither and flurry around the house trying to keep it in order and I'm always trying to think of ways to save money or make money so we can pay our home loan off in five years (on 1 income), and I feel like I dont achieve anything....especially 'me time'. Well done you!
I am in awe of you and SO MANY other homeschooling families. Many of my cousins were homeschooled and are continuing that tradtion with their own kids. I always dreamed of homeschooling but know that I just couldn't do it. I need that break from being a mom. My oldest has Asperger's Syndrome and his little sister is more than a handful!! We still throw around the idea of homeschooling during the middle school years for many reasons. Social pressure being a big one. I figure I'd have each one at home by themselves for those 3 years so that might work. I have another year to decide...
Wow! You are the epitomy of the Proverbs 31 wife! I appreciate this blog so much, because my husband and I have been struggling financially for several years, and finding it hard to make ends meet. We have been looking for ways to save on our grocery bill, heat bills, ect., and have cut way back on eating out. We've also recently fallen in love with Aldi! Do you know or could you post about possible ways to earn extra income for stay at home mom's like me? If you could, it would be very helpful. Thank you!
Loved reading about your day. I homeschool two boys....but I'm old and achy and do not get all that you get done. Even so....our days are full and happy. Homeschooling is a wonderful way to live a life. It sounds like you are enjoying your job as teacher, trainer, mentor, mother and wife. There is nothing more important in this world that you could be doing!! You are an inspiration and encouragement to many. Blessings, Anne
Thanks so much- your blog is so helpful and inspiring, and I loved reading this post. On the other hand I have to confess it made me feel a bit inadequate...or lazy...or guilty? (e.g., I never iron or hang laundry and yet ask so much more of my husband). I'm leaning toward homeschooling our two kids, but can't figure out if your post made me feel more or less capable... homeschooling moms seem like superwomen. In any case, THANK YOU for your honesty and humble service to your family and the Lord!
I know this was posted a while back but I have to respond to this comment. Charis, (or anyone else who may think they can't replicate Kristen's life) please don't let anyone else's experience with homeschooling discourage you from doing it or at least giving it a try! There is no *right* way to do it. I am so far from 'supermom' or 'superwife' status (in my house, my husband does a LOT of the basic cleaning while I tend to focus on the kids and their learning) and I wasn't sure if I could handle homeschooling either, but now into my third year I am more confident than ever, and we don't follow any curriculum or 'sit and learn' at any specific times. My 13 year old daughter does her learning online, my second daughter goes to public school and my son is completely unschooled. This works for us. It might not work for you. Kristen's life wouldn't work for me, but I can read her posts, get ideas and leave what doesn't work.
My son has Asperger's and the fights with the school for support (in order to try and to force him to fit their agendas) are now a thing of the past and he is free to be himself. I couldn't have asked for a bigger blessing! He learns what he wants and he is doing great!!
Give it a try if you really want to know if homeschooling will work for your family. You won't know otherwise. At the end of the day, if you decide to send them back, you will still all have learned something, which is exactly what successful homeschoolers know... learning is learning and life is full of opportunities to learn things that are not always taught in school.
You iron your husband's clothes, make his lunch and he needs one hour of children free time each night? Im not sure what to think about this except Im very sorry for you. You are with children all day every day and he needs an hour of kid-free time at home? Please wake up.
Oh, you shouldn't feel sorry for me! I have a very happy life. 🙂
Regarding the hour I set aside to spend with my husband, please don't think that's just for him. *I* like spending time with him too, and I appreciate having some kid-free time to spend together. I highly recommend it!
I commend you on gracefully answering the negative responses.
YOU rock!
Why do you put makeup on if you're not going anywhere special?Wouldn't it be more frugal (and much nicer to your skin) if you took that routine out?
Well, I don't put on my (minimal) makeup or get dressed just for special occasions...part of it is just for me! And also, even if I don't go anywhere, my husband still sees me and that matters to me.
I think that by using this logic, I could schlep around the house with messy hair, no makeup, and old ratty clothes. It's true that I could do that, and it would save me money, but I wouldn't feel good if I did that.
But to each their own-I'd never tell someone that they have to put on makeup.