My Best Advice for Anyone Overwhelmed with Their Home

If you and I were to go out for coffee and you told me that you were overwhelmed at home and had no idea where to even start, I would tell you exactly what I'm about to tell you in this video. I'll walk you through a simple five-week plan that will have you feeling more peaceful and purposeful at home. So join me as I get some things done here at my home and I share a new family favorite dinner while I'll share how to turn your home around in only five weeks. If we haven't met yet, I'm Emily and here on this channel I encourage women to embrace homemaking by simplifying and just relying on the truth that is found in God's word. So if you like how putting these ideas that I'm going to share into action, I have a free resource for you called the Simple Homemakers Checklist that you can sign up for at the end of this video. But let's go ahead and jump into the very first thing that I would tell you to do if you are feeling overwhelmed at home and just don't know where to start. So in the first week, my challenge would be for you to clean up your kitchen every night after dinner. One of the best things in life is waking up to a clean kitchen in the mornings and that may seem just like an exaggeration, but it literally changed my life and the only way to do that is by going to bed with a clean kitchen. So before I started this habit, I would leave the kitchen a mess after dinner and then the next morning I would have to dig through the sink of dirty dishes to try and find a mug that I could wash out for my coffee and it was just so frustrating doing that morning after morning. So I made it my goal to wash the dishes every single night after dinner and then I no longer had that problem in the morning and really cleaning up after dinner doesn't have to take that long. You can actually probably clean up in less than 20 minutes, especially if you have the kids helping out or if your husband helps out and it really just doesn't have to take that long. So that is where I would tell you to start. That single habit will make the biggest impact in your home because then your mornings are going to be easier. They're going to be lighter. It's just going to be a fresh start for your day. Week two, you're going to build on the challenge of week one. So you're cleaning up your kitchen still every single night, but in the second week you're going to make it your ambition to have a simple morning routine every single morning and this doesn't mean that you have to make it super complicated or you have to wake up at five o'clock in the morning, especially if you're already sleeping until like eight or nine every morning. I'm not asking you to get up super early. The main thing here is to just start small and start doable. So pick a reasonable time to wake up in the morning and you know for me that time has changed over the different seasons and over the different years. Currently I wake up at six but it has taken me years to get to that point. When I was sleeping in until eight o'clock in the morning I simply challenged myself to get up at 7 45 so 15 minutes earlier and then as that got easier I started waking up at 7 30 and then just continued adding on until now I'm at getting up at six o'clock in the morning. So my point is to pick a get up time for you that you know you can do and that you know you will stick to. Then from there choose three productive things that you will do each morning. So I started with these three things. I read my bible, I got a shower and got dressed and then I started a load of laundry and I just decided that I wasn't going to make it complicated but I would just stick to those three things every single day and when you do those three things instead of you know getting on your phone and scrolling or staying in your pajamas for half the morning you are going to be more motivated to do other productive things. It's really just it's a domino effect because you do one productive thing which leads to another which leads to another. I also call this the rule of when a ball in motion will stay in motion and if you start moving you're going to keep moving. So doing those just picking three things every single morning that you're going to do after you wake up is just a really important thing and so that is my challenge for week two. Now let's move on to week three and this one is really simple but it's to have a plan for dinner 24 hours in advance or at least by the morning of for dinner. So don't wait until five o'clock basically to come up with what you're going to make for dinner. I used to do that and it never failed that I either didn't have all the ingredients or I didn't have meat that had been thawed and so it was frozen meat and I didn't have time to defrost it at five o'clock when we wanted to eat at 5 30. So now what I do is I glance at my planner the night before and I see what I have written down for tomorrow night's dinner and I make sure that the meat is pulled from the freezer and put in a dish in the fridge to thaw overnight and I also just check the pantry make sure I have ingredients for what I want to make and just doing that preparing in advance for dinner saves so much time it saves so much stress it and it also saves money because when you don't know what you're going to make for dinner and then you wait until the last minute that's when you order pizza or go through the fast food drive-through. So here on my channel I have a video where I walk through some simple meal planning tips. I also have my current morning routine so these things that I'm talking about you can go and watch them on other videos here on my channel. I also want to mention that I do have a course called The Motivated Homemaker Blueprint and in there I share lots of simple homemaking strategies along with just the biblical mindset shift that you can make for just finding more peace and purpose at home and so if you would like to join me in that course be sure to check out the link below. Let's move on to week number four. So this is the week that you're going to build on to the other weeks by adding in laundry and so I talked a little about this in week two with your morning routine but this week you're going to make it your goal to stay on top of the laundry every single day. You're going to complete the entire cycle from washing to drying to folding and then to putting the clothes away and a lot of times the laundry will get stuck in one of those steps and that's when you end up with wet clothes in the washing machine that never got to the dryer or piles of clean laundry that are just sitting in baskets in the living room that never got folded or put away. So this week make it your goal to do at least one complete load of laundry every day and stay on top of the laundry so it doesn't get out of hand and out of control. All right week number five is the most important part of managing your home and that is your mindset. So you can have all these cleaning routines and you can have the meal planning that those are all important but you will quickly fizzle out if you don't remember why you're doing all of these things. Why do you make the meals or clean the floors or do the laundry over and over again? The answer is it's not to check things off of your list. Those ordinary mundane tasks are for the people that you love. You are literally creating a home for your family to live in and to grow in and to flourish and you're doing those things to serve your family but you're also doing them to serve the Lord. Colossians 3 24 reminds us that it is the Lord Christ we are serving and we should be doing those things with our whole hearts. So when I remember this verse and just remember that I'm doing this to serve the Lord, I'm doing these things to serve my family, my have-to's become get-to's. So instead of washing the dishes just to do them, I get to wash the dishes because I have a family to feed. I have money to buy groceries. I have hot water and soap to wash the dishes. Those are all little reasons why I get to do the dishes not just have to do the dishes. On this particular day I was making a new family favorite meal for dinner. This is one that my husband found online and he sent it to me to try it out. We tried it and everybody loved it so I was making it for the second time here in this video but they are garlic parmesan cheeseburger bombs is what they're called and I wouldn't say that they are the healthiest but they're pretty delicious. So you cook up a pound of ground beef and then add a bunch of different seasonings to it and then also some shredded cheddar cheese and then you add them to biscuits. So I used canned biscuits. Usually I make my own biscuits from scratch but I wasn't sure how those would turn out with these so maybe I will try those next time but for now I just used some canned biscuits and you flatten them out and then put a little cheese in them and then add the ground beef and cheese mixture as well and then you roll them up and just like pinch them up and then add a butter parmesan and garlic topping and bake them. So it's pretty simple but I and I tried to get as much video of it as I could but I didn't get a ton of clips at the end so it's kind of quick but you'll see as it all comes together. I also decided to make some homemade french fries to go with it so I cut up some potatoes and then fried them in some beef tallow and so we had the fries on the side as well as some slices of oranges and so it was pretty simple. I like to keep my meals pretty simple on the sides if I'm doing a complicated recipe which this it's not hard to make but it is there's a lot of steps to making the burger bombs so that was dinner and it was delicious. If you follow through on all of these things that I've mentioned in this video you will see a huge difference in your home and you'll start to feel much more peace in your heart and if you're watching this and you're thinking I want this I need more guidance to stay consistent and to change my mindset about homemaking I want you to know that that is why I created the Motivated Homemaker Blueprint. So inside the course I walk you through routines and motivation and biblical mindset and simple systems that help you finally feel confident in your role at home. So if you are ready for a real transformation I would love to support you there. These small habits will create big changes in your home. So thank you for joining me today and I will see you next time.