Sabbath Schedule- Planning 6 Weeks at a Time
A few weeks back we talked about different ways you can schedule your time as a homemaker. One way to manage your household is the sabbath method of scheduling. It is based off if the Biblical creation story of the world being created in six days and God rested on the seventh.
HomeMaking
Taking care of household affairs as women can be time consuming. There are so many things to do it can be easy to forget or miss an important detail. That is why I have come to love scheduling with sabbath method of 6 weeks on and 1 week off. On a weekly basis this looks like planning out 6 days and resting on the seventh. Long term this looks like planning out events, menus, homeschool, chores in six week increments and using the seventh as a rest and reset week. In my household this works in 2 ways; planning our week on Saturday and planning out six weeks during my rest week.
Weekly
Sunday is the typical rest day of many, but since my husband is a pastor Sundays are our busy days so Saturdays have become our rest day. On Saturday I spend time planning out our next week. This isn't too unusual but my planning day is also my rest day. I don't make any meals, do any laundry or any item housework. I just focus on planning on week. This includes writing all outside activities in my planner, menu planning for the week, cleaning projects and double checking plans with my husband.
This is what planning day looks like for me. I sit down with my master planner, my goggle calendar, all our homeschooling books, and my kids homeschool notebooks. I start with writing down any outside activity in my master planner. Next I move to our homeschool lessons. Each child has their assignments written in the master notebook, short hand. Meaning I typically write math lesson 4, AAR lesson 3, Bible, Reading, Science lesson 31, for my reference and come back to this later. Then I move into our menu plan for the week. On my rest week I write an ideas list of all meals for the next 6-12 weeks. When it comes time to menu plan, I pull out that this and plan our meals for the week. Moving back to homeschool, I take out our daughters assignment notebook and write in more details her lesson plans so she can start working independently on her schoolwork. That is the basics of how I plan our week on my rest day.
Long Term
Now this is the fun part of sabbath scheduling, scheduling your time in increments of 6 weeks. My seventh week is my rest week. The 7th week is when I tackle big projects, take a break from homeschooling and plan for the upcoming six weeks. I look at my calendar for what is coming up the next 6 weeks, make a list of everything that needs to be accomplished and get to work.
Each task gets added to a week over the 6 week span. These tasks can be bulk baking or cooking, deep cleaning, home improvement, decluttering, books I want to read or anything else. Seeing the big picture of the next 6 weeks and what needs to be accomplished has lessened my guilt about not finishing everything. If I look at my next 6 weeks and see that we have 2 soccer games every weekend, then I know that I will need to have quick meals and snacks ready to go. Therefore, I can set aside time during my off week to prep and prepare those meals. This has been a HUGE help to me. It allows me to plan our long term but in segments that are more manageable and flexible.
Planning out 6 weeks has allowed me to get those extra things done. I can look at our next 6 weeks and see which week I have some free time. Planning this way has allowed me to tackle those house chores that would otherwise go unattended to for months or even years. Tasks like cleaning the vents, decluttering all storage boxes, painting bedrooms', deep cleaning the fridge and cabinet etc.
Hospitality
Hospitality is very important to our family. Over the years we have shown hospitality in many ways from hosting game days to providing food for friends. As a married women with 4 kids hospitality looks a bit different then it did 12 years ago. Last minute hang outs, late night conversations and spur of the moment dinners was the norm when we first got married, now not so much.
Romans 12:13 Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Hospitality is now planned out in advance. We believe that every Christian should show hospitality in their homes. There are seasons where that might look like having people over weekly and other times that might look like once every month. Our current goal is having meals with people 4 times in 6 weeks.
In order to show hospitality I need to plan our available days and meals on my 6 week schedule. I reach out to folks with availability dates and get those scheduled over the upcoming 6 weeks. This allows our family to prioritize having people over and showing hospitality. I have noticed that 6 weeks seems to be a good time frame for other people as well. Its not short notice, but also not so far in advance. I will normally ask 2 families earlier in the 6 weeks and then 2 more for later on in the 6 weeks.
Every family has a different schedule that works for them. I encourage you to try our sabbath scheduling for your Homemaking and see if it makes a difference. I'd love to know if you've every heard if sabbath scheduling before. Let me know in the comments.
