Get yourself ready for the back-to-school crunch

This time of year everyone is writing about getting the children ready to go back to school. I know this is an important topic, but we have left out the main person that has to get the children ready for the first day of school, YOU!

You are the one that has to get up and get the family moving. It is your responsibility to make sure they go to bed and get the rest they need. Your summer has been filled with a "happy-go-lucky" spirit. No one really had a bedtime or an alarm set for morning.

We teach best by our example. Not just a simple "do as I do," but an example that is set in love.

Most of our lives we have run around putting out fires just to stay on top of housework, bills, jobs and parenting. If you are a born-organized person, these things do not take a toll on you, but if you tend to get sidetracked then you know about putting out fires. A born-organized person just gets things done, and the people around them do not even know that it has been done. If you were raised by a born-organized person you have experienced this when you got your own place.

If you are this born-organized person, I am not putting you down. I am saying your children don't know that this is what is happening. So when you tell them to go clean the bathroom or their bedroom, they have no clue. Mainly because it was just easier for you to do it yourself than to show them that there actually is a routine to housecleaning. For the other 80 percent of us that are not born-organized, there is hope! We can learn to be organized. Taking the methods that a born-organized person does naturally and using them to help us gain control over our homes and lives give our children the tools to go out into the world on their own. Born-organized people can't even teach us sidetracked people what they do because they have never had to figure it out; they just do it.

I have watched the people who are born-organized, and I have noticed they tend to do the same thing in the same order every single morning. At first I thought that must be so boring. Then I realized that it was brilliant. The brilliance comes from having mundane things in life taken care of so you can have fun.

It is time for us to go to school and learn something that will help us enjoy life without the guilt we place on ourselves. I am going to call it FLYing School. We will start our first lesson with our before-bed routine. Without a before-bed routine; you are running around the house in the morning in a panic.