How to Homeschool: A Step-by-Step Guide with Kristi Clover

In a world where the “traditional” educational model has devolved to the point of abject danger and degeneracy, millions of families are seeking alternatives and homeschooling has reemerged as the gold-standard in education. In the latest episode of the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, host Yvette Hampton sat down with homeschooling expert, author, and speaker Kristi Clover to delve into the ins and outs of homeschooling. With valuable insights and practical tips, Kristi empowers parents to embark on this impactful journey. Let’s explore some key takeaways from this illuminating conversation.

For more on this topic, make sure you download our free Homeschool Survival Kit. This 70+ page eBook walks you through every step, from just getting started to graduating your last child with confidence.

“The first thing you need to do is establish your purpose. Figure out why you’re homeschooling, what your goals are, and what you’re trying to accomplish.”

Kristi Clover

Establishing Purpose and Motivation:

Kristi emphasizes the importance of knowing the “why” behind homeschooling. She guides parents to solidify their purpose as the foundation for their homeschooling journey. As she explains, “The first thing you need to do is establish your purpose. Figure out why you’re homeschooling, what your goals are, and what you’re trying to accomplish.” This clarity enables parents to navigate challenges with determination and resilience – even when you experience the inevitable setbacks associated with parenting and teaching your kids at home.

Embracing Flexibility and Personalized Learning:

One of the primary advantages of homeschooling is the ability to tailor education to each child’s unique needs and interests. Kristi emphasizes the importance of incorporating children’s passions into the curriculum, stating, “Find out what subjects and activities really inspire your children… Let them dig deep into those interests.” By doing so, parents tap into their children’s natural curiosity, encouraging enthusiasm for learning and empowering them to become experts in their chosen fields.

Creating a Customized Homeschool Experience:

Homeschooling need not follow a rigid, conventional model. Kristi encourages parents to design their own homeschool experience, emphasizing that it doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) replicate the public school system. She states, “You don’t have to re-create a mini public school in your home. You can really tailor it to your own family and your own goals.” This flexibility allows parents to develop a curriculum that aligns with their family’s values and creates an inspiring learning environment.

Prioritizing Discipleship:

For Kristi, homeschooling extends beyond academics. It is an opportunity for parents to disciple their children’s hearts and instill a Christian worldview. “Whoever spends the most time with the children is the one truly parenting and discipling them,” she asserts. Homeschooling allows parents to prioritize character development, Biblical values, and Christ-centered teaching while providing a high-quality education.

Seeking Support and Resources:

Homeschooling can be an enriching and rewarding journey, but it also comes with challenges. Kristi emphasizes the value of seeking support from the homeschool community and attending conventions to connect with like-minded individuals and gather valuable resources. She also recommends the Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) as a crucial resource for legal support.

Adapting Curriculum to Suit Learning Styles:

Another crucial aspect of homeschooling is tailoring the curriculum to meet the unique needs and learning styles of children. Kristi encourages parents to evaluate themselves as teachers and create a curriculum that aligns with their children’s learning preferences. She remarks, “As I observed my children, I paid attention to their tactile and visual learning preferences, and adapted our curriculum accordingly.” Kristi shares her experience of initially using a hands-on curriculum for her two close-aged children and then transitioning to more video-based learning materials as her family grew.

Organizing with the Crate System:

One of the key highlights of the podcast is Kristi’s discussion on the crate system, an effective method she uses to organize homeschool materials. Kristi explains how this system promotes independence and provides a manageable view of the week’s workload for students. She shares, “The crate system allows you to put homeschooling on autopilot. It helps you navigate emergencies or personal situations with ease.” Kristi has expanded on the crate system and other helpful tips for homeschool organization in her book, M.O.M. – Master Organizer of Mayhem.

Finding Success in Homeschooling:

While homeschooling can feel overwhelming at times, Kristi encourages parents to remember that it is a calling and a journey of faith. She compares homeschooling to a scene from an Indiana Jones movie, where taking a step of faith leads to finding solid ground. Kristi advises, “Keep your faith in Christ at the center of your homeschooling journey. There may be hard days and challenges, but it is all worth it in the end.”

More on this subject: How to Homeschool: My Original Roadmap

Conclusion:

In this series, Kristi Clover provides parents with a wealth of insights and guidance on how to embark on a successful homeschooling journey. By uncovering the “why” behind homeschooling, embracing flexibility, and prioritizing discipleship, parents can empower themselves to create a tailor-made educational experience for their children. With determination, resourcefulness, and a supportive network, homeschooling families can embrace the incredible opportunity to shape their children’s hearts and minds.

“Teaching children to love the Lord with their whole being is challenging, but my hope is that my actions and life will have a stronger impact on their learning than any curriculum.” Homeschooling is not just about academics—it’s about creating an atmosphere of love, care, and growth within the family.

Recommended Resources: 

Free Homeschool Survival Kit 

“How to Homeschool” the original document that my friend, Holly Learner gave me as a roadmap for homeschooling.

Homeschool Basics: How to Get Started, Keep Motivated, and Bring Out the Best in Your Kids, by Kristi Clover

M.O.M. – Master Organizer of Mayhem, by Kristi Clover

More from Kristi Clover on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast

Education: The Key to Saving Our Nation – Alex Newman on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast

Getting Started in Homeschooling – Israel Wayne on the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast 

🍿🍿🍿 Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for FREE today!

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ Are you in need of a fresh vision for your homeschool? Join us for 4 days of Homeschool Encouragement at the Homegrown Generation Family Expo. Use the coupon code PODCAST to save 25% on registration today! 

Discussion Questions:

1. In what ways can homeschooling provide flexibility and fewer restrictions, as compared to traditional schooling?

2. What are Kristi and Yvette’s primary goals for homeschooling and why are they important? How do they align with your goals?

3. How does Kristi approach the idea of children making their own choices regarding faith, and what is the role of the parent in this process?

4. What are some alternative teaching methods mentioned in the episode, and how can they be implemented in homeschooling?

5. What are some potential benefits and challenges of homeschooling, and how can parents address the challenges and maximize the benefits?

6. Have you ever tried organizing your homeschool materials using a crate system or any other system? What worked well for you and what challenges did you face?

7. How do you prioritize and choose curriculum materials for your homeschool? Do you follow a specific approach, such as Charlotte Mason or unit studies, or do you customize your curriculum based on your child’s needs?

8. What are some practical ways you incorporate character development into your homeschooling? Have you found any resources or methods particularly helpful in teaching character traits?

9. How do you handle the pressure to create a perfect homeschool image on social media platforms like Pinterest and Instagram? Have you ever felt overwhelmed or discouraged seeing other homeschooling families’ seemingly perfect setups?

10. Have you ever tried incorporating video-based learning materials, such as the ones recommended by the speaker? How has it impacted your teaching and your child’s learning experience?

11. How do you adapt your homeschooling approach as your family grows and the needs of your children change? Have you found any specific strategies or methods helpful in teaching different grade levels simultaneously?

12. How do you handle the challenges of teaching children who may have different learning styles or preferences? Do you customize their curriculum or adjust your teaching methods to accommodate their needs?

13. How do you find and evaluate homeschooling methods and curricula? Do you rely on recommendations from friends, online resources, or attending homeschooling conferences and seminars?

14. How do you balance the desire for academic achievement with the importance of character development in your homeschooling? How do you prioritize one over the other or find a balance between the two?

Read the full transcript:

Yvette Hampton:

Hey everyone. This is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am so glad you are with us this week. We have an incredible guest on and she’s been on with us before. She was part of the Homegrown Generation Family Expo that we did back in March. And we’ve had her on the podcast a few times. And so I’m so excited to have Kristi Clover back with us. We are going to talk this week about how to homeschool because so many people are asking that question, how do I homeschool? How do I do this thing? And so we are going to dig deep into this and I could think of no better person to do this than with Kristi Clover this week. I want to tell you kind of a little story about how this all came to be. So 13 years ago, my friend Holly Lerner, who is a good friend of mine, she kind of has been my homeschool mentor and mom mentor when I very first became a mom. And she’s been homeschooling for quite some time. And so she wrote this two page document for me on how to homeschool. It was literally titled how to Homeschool. And 13 years later, I still have this document. And I came across it the other day. I hadn’t seen it for quite some time and I thought, you know what? There are so many new people homeschooling. And though we talk about homeschooling all the time, I really wanted to do a how to episode. And so I was looking at that and thinking, oh, this would be great. We need to do an episode on this and kind of go off some of her points. And then I had Kristi Clover scheduled to come on today and we were going to talk about chores and how to teach our kids to do chores and teach them responsibility and all of that fun stuff. And so I went on her website to look at some things and the first thing that I clicked on, I don’t even know how I got to it, but the first thing I clicked on was Kristi’s how to homeschool. And I was huh, OK, perhaps this is what the Lord wants us to talk about today. So I called Kristi like 2 hours ago and I said, hey, what do you think about switching gears? Do you want to talk about how to homeschool? And she was like, sure, I’m up for anything. And so we’re talking about this because this is really, I feel like what the Lord put on our hearts to talk about today. And because we have so many new people homeschooling and they’re asking the question, they want to know what to do, how do they do this? So we are going to dig deep into this this week and I hope that you’re going to be encouraged. Kristi, tell our listeners for those who are not familiar with you introduce yourself and your family to us. Sure.

Kristi Clover:

Yeah. So I am a homeschool mom. I’m a veteran homeschool mom. We’ve been homeschooling for over two years now. We have graduated two of our five kids out of our home school. And we have a very unique experience when it comes to homeschooling from the standpoint of we had our kids in a private Christian preschool. We did public school. We pulled our kids out of public school to do homeschooling. So that’s kind of our home school background. Other than that, yeah, I have this whole online life where I love encouraging people. And that is the beauty of getting to do this online, is I feel like I can actually encourage so many families using these online platforms that are available to us. But I’ve written a few books. I have a free book called Sanity Savers for Moms, and that is available on my website for free. And then I also have a book, I’ll just plug it here called Mom Master Organizer of Mayhem. And that’s all about home organization, but with moms in mind because I want you to give yourself a lot of grace. And then I also have Homeschool Basics, which is why we’re talking today. It’s about how to get started, motivate your kids, and bring out the best in your kids.

Yvette Hampton:

Awesome. So many good resources. And we have done episodes with you on every one of those. So back in March, when we did the Homegrown Generation, we talked about sanity savers for Moms. So we’ll put a link to the Homegrown Generation Family Expo. So if you guys have not participated in that, it’s still available. You can still sign up for that. It’s $20. And you have access to the entire conference with Christie’s session as well as all the others, and access to the whole one that we did back in 2020. And that one had Heidi St. John and Kirk Cameron and a whole bunch of other people as well. So, yeah, you can sign up for that and hear that whole session. And then we did another one on your mom book and on Homeschool Basics. So we’ll put links to all those things in the show notes. But before we get into this, we are going to get into the logistics of how to homeschool because that’s why we’re here and that’s what we’re going to talk about this week. But before we do, I want to talk about just kind of setting the foundation for all of this because we can throw out all of the how to’s, right? We can give all the points. You start here, start here, do this next. Next. But really, when it all comes down to it, what really matters is what is your goal? What is your why? Why are you even homeschooling? And so we talk about this on the podcast all the time, but I want to talk through a couple of verses really quickly. And the first one is Ecclesiastes 1213. And this is probably my favorite verse in the whole Bible. If I could choose one that has to be my favorite, this is probably the one that I would choose. And it says, this the end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man, you guys, that’s it. That’s the whole duty of man is to fear God and keep his commandments. And it says the very first few words is the end of the matter. All has been heard. Like, that’s it.

Kristi Clover:

This is what you do.

Yvette Hampton:

Exactly. I mean, I feel like we could just be like and done. That’s how you home school, just fear God and keep his commandments. Right. That really is all that matters is that we fear God and keep his commandments, and then that we teach that to our kids. And as we’re teaching that, of course, they think of Deuteronomy 6:4-9. And this is kind of the homeschool-y verse that you hear a lot of people say, and I think it’s kind of gotten, I want to say almost swept under the rug because people were like, yeah, Deuteronomy six, that’s the thing. But I’m going to read it again, because again, I think it’s so important for where we are today and for what it is that we’re doing in homeschooling our kids. And this is what it says. It says here, o Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk aby the way and when you lie down and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. And you guys, that’s it. That’s really what matters, the end of the matter. All of this, all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, and then go and teach them to your kids, and teach them when you sit in your house, when you walk, by the way, when you lie down and when you rise. That’s what God’s commanded us to do. And so the very first thing when knowing how to homeschool is you got to know your why. And this is something that we as parents, we really have to take seriously, because this is the foundation of our parenting. This is the foundation of our homeschooling, and it is the most important thing. I know that was a long introduction to this how to homeschool. And people are like, just get to the nitty gritty. Give me my list. And they’ve got their pen and hopefully their Schoolhouse Rocked podcast notes. But Kristi, you speak all over the country on this specific topic and I want you to kind of dig in with us. What is kind of going off of what we started talking about? What is the first thing that parents need to focus on?

Kristi Clover:

Well, I do think, as you said, that understanding the why behind your homeschooling is so vital because that’s what’s going to help you during those hard days. And you’re like, what am I doing? You’re like that’s, right? So I always encourage people to write down your why and keep it posted somewhere so you can go back and look at it helps to have scripture. I love looking at those different scripture references you mentioned. But the other part of it that both my husband are really passionate about is that we really feel like as parents, we’re called to disciple our children. And Vodi Bakum has the most fun way of looking at that deuteronomy verse that you talked about. And he’s like, there’s no public school in the desert. So when Moses is giving these instructions to Israelites, it’s not like, okay, yeah, while they’re at a public school, they’ll do the public school thing. And then when we’re around them, yeah, that’s when we teach our kids. We’re called to train our kids up in the Lord. And I think it’s just so important and I think it’s easy to think when because what I hear a lot from people is, well, if I home school, it’s going to drive us all crazy. Like, I’m going to drive my kids crazy, my kids are going to drive me crazy. They’re going to drive each other crazy. And that’s a very common thing. And it happens. I will just tell you, yes, that’s going to happen. But really it comes back to parenting. It’s calling you to get on top of some different parenting issues that you probably have going on. And that’s really important because I think it’s easy to say, well, I’ll just have the school take care of it. And right now, what we know that’s happening in school, that’s the last place you really want your kids to be. What is happening is no longer a secret agenda. It’s now a very blatant agenda that is coming out into our school systems. And we’ve been fed a lie for a long time. And I think I’ve homeschooled long enough now because this is, I think, our 15th or so year homeschooling. And that you start recognizing this lie that we have been told is that trust us, trust the schools. You’re not equipped to teach your children. We are equipped to teach your children. And that’s a lie we’ve been fed for a long time. And so we’re supposed to put this trust in this government agency that right now is trying to push more politics than academics and so that’s the other part of the issue is you might feel like you’re not equipped. God is going to call you and equip you. If he is calling you to parent your child, he’s going to equip you in that. So that’s really important to understand that if you’re feeling unable to homeschool, you need to lean on in the Lord and find support. There’s so much out there to help you support. And so that I think is really, again, going back to discipleship is really being the heart of the issue and just knowing that God is going to help you, he’s going to give you discernment, he’ll help you find better curriculum. If the curriculum you’re using isn’t working for you, you have amazing resources. Like you guys have so many great resources, especially with the homegrown homeschooling program that you guys put on. It was so good to be a part of that and just to see all the different people that are there. But I always encourage people get to a homeschool convention, find your people. So that’s where you find your people. And then online you can do a Google search and find other homeschool communities as well because those are the people who are going to help you figure out how am I doing this whole homeschool thing when you really look again.

Yvette Hampton:

Big right? And so what you’re saying is homeschooling really is discipleship and discipleship is parenting and parenting is discipleship. And so our kids are being parented by someone, right? They’re either being parented by us or they’re being parented by the public school system or private school system, wherever you have your kids. So whoever has them for the most amount of time is the one who’s truly parenting and discipling their hearts for the majority of time. And so yeah, it is a high calling and it’s a lot of work. It is not for the faint of heart but it is for every parent who has a know. And I think you and I are on the same page. And I know we’ve talked with Heidi St. John about this as like we used to be in that boat where we were. Well, you know, homeschooling is for some but maybe not for everybody. Maybe God’s calling this person to it, but not that person. And we’re now in the boat of like he’s calling all parents to homeschool because he has called all parents to disciple the hearts of their children just as we’ve read in Ephesians or in Deuteronomy and in Ecclesiastes. I mean, that is what God has called us to do as parents. And so it is training up our children right in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. As Ephesians 6:4, it’s teaching them obedience, it’s teaching them to obey. Colossians 3:20 is children, obey your parents in all things. For this. Pleases the Lord. We want our kids to have blessings and so therefore we want them to obey the things that we’re teaching. There’s just so much scripture that backs up our responsibility as parents to teach them the word of God and to teach them all the things of the Lord. And so that is what we’re called to do. So yeah. So your first point, of course, is start with the end of mind and know why you’re doing this. Why are you homeschooling? What is your purpose in doing this? So what would be your next thing now once parents have figured out, okay, here’s our why, we know what we’re doing. We know that we’re called to disciple our kids and to teach them the ways of the Lord. But then they’re like, but what next? What do we do now?

Kristi Clover:

What next? Well, honestly, I mean, if you want to get practical, your next thing is to figure out what your state laws are. So if you have a child, because I’ll meet people that are like, I have a three year old, I want to home school. And it’s like, well, absolutely, teach your kid whatever you want, but pretty much every state does not require you to register a three year old, so you don’t have to officially homeschool. And in the state of California, I’m very familiar with our homeschool laws here, we’re not even required to start homeschooling until our child is age six as of September 1. So there’s some of those types of things. But knowing your state laws is really important, and that is as easy as going to HSLDA, which is Homeschool Legal Defense Association. So if you go to HSLDA, not just Christian some homeschoolees for you, but they have a list of all that you need as far as how to get homeschooling in your state. And so that’s probably the practically figure out your why, pray about it, and then contact HSLDA. And we’re lifetime members because we did the math. We started figuring out we’re yep, yep, might as well pay the lifetime membership. And we love supporting them as well, but they have all the information about how to get started. So in California, we homeschool under a private school affidavit. So we actually aren’t even part of any other kind of a school system. We’re part of the private school system, so a lot of people don’t know that. In fact, fun fact is that California is one of the easier states to homeschool in, which is shocking for everyone. And I think it’s because we’re under the umbrella of private schools. So it’s really saved us a lot of headache as they continue to make all of these fun changes in our public schools. I mean, some of the curriculum they have for the longest time, parents in my area were like, oh, that doesn’t come here. We’re such a conservative part of California. It’s everywhere. And even our church has gotten involved. We’re going to school board meetings and begging them to stop teaching sex education to kindergartners and the content that is in these are pornographic and it’s not healthy for any child. I mean, they’re sexualizing our children at such a young age. So again, it goes back to that why if I were just starting off, if I had a child getting ready to be in the school system, my why would look a lot different now than it did when I started. I think discipleship I want my kids to have a Christian worldview, that’s what’s most important to me is that they understand. I want them to love the Lord with all their heartful, mind and strength and develop a love for learning. And those are really our two goals. And really if they come out with nothing more than just to love the Lord and they hated every aspect of learning, they’re not going to love it anymore in public school. But you know what? That’s my job as a parent, is to introduce them all that I can. And the hardest part, now that I have two young adults again, you may not be thinking this if you’re just starting out or have kids under the age of 18, but your kids get to make their own decision on whether or not to follow the Lord. And it’s our job to present all that we can, to give them as much love and to shine for Jesus. And in fact, one thing I’d like to remind myself about that Deuteronomy verse, Deuteronomy 6 is that what it says is that we’re to put these in our own heart first.

Yvette Hampton:

Amen.

Kristi Clover:

And then we’re to impress them onto our kids. So you need to be loving the Lord and really learning what that looks like and teach your kids how to love the Lord. And that’s not always going to be because you found the perfect math curriculum or writing curriculum that’s important, but your kids hearts are more important. And what’s happening right now is our kids are being thrown into a Babylon. So that’s really the dynamic that we have and we probably have had that for a long time and we just haven’t seen it until COVID wasn’t as obvious. Oh, no. And now it’s crazy to see how revealing they are. I mean, Satanic groups are literally like, oh yeah, we’re out here, we’re for this. Oh yeah, right, exactly. So that’s what again, it comes down to the heart of your child. And I like to think about like when Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, they were all taken like the Israelites were taken captive. And you have I don’t remember the number, but I believe it was millions of Israelite children were being taken away from their homeland and they were being thrown into Babylon, being taught all the cultural things, being educated in the Babylonian style of education, which was very it’s anti God. They believe in multiple gods and all kinds of crazy stuff. And yet at the end of the day. There were only four Israelite kids that we hear that stood up for the Lord. And so that’s what’s important is that we have to give our kids a firm foundation. And yes, the Lord will totally work. And yes, the Lord I was 15 and living in a dysfunctional Christian family when the Lord really gripped my heart, and he can do that for anyone. But I love that I can give my kids this foundation and that, I mean, the Lord’s still going to be at work, but I don’t want them in a Babylon environment. So that’s my little two cent on that is that I just think we are in a different day and age now. And I think if it takes every ounce of your energy, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to protect your children.

Yvette Hampton:

Yes, absolutely. It’s our job to do that. To protect their hearts, protect their bodies, protect their minds, protect their souls. So we’re here to help you do that. You said you’ve been homeschooling for somewhere around 15 years, right?

Kristi Clover:

Kristi yeah, about 15 years. Graduated, two kids so far. So we’re doing it.

Yvette Hampton:

So cool. Yay.

Kristi Clover:

It’s working.

Yvette Hampton:

And they’re still functional adults, which is amazing.

Kristi Clover:

Full time jobs. My oldest is married. I didn’t even think I mentioned that on the Monday’s episode. Yeah. My oldest, I am a mother of I’ll tell you that’s. Busy adding that 6th child, that was the easiest thing ever. No morning sickness, just a really day and then voila, I have another addition to our family. It’s awesome.

Yvette Hampton:

That’s so cool. I love that. I look forward to getting to that point. We’re getting there quickly. Brooklyn’s going to be a senior this year. Oh, man. I know. It’s so fast. It is so fast. We will have a middle schooler and a high schooler. Who’s almost done with high school. Yeah, I know. I was looking at my calendar the other day and the co op that we’re doing this year with both my girls, they have a graduation planning meeting and I was like, I have to go to a meeting to plan her graduation. It’s just so surreal and it’s weird. Like, I remember when I was pregnant with her, this was probably about two weeks before she was born and just thinking like, how surreal it was. She’s almost here. She’s almost going to be on this earth, out of my body, and how bizarre that reality was. And so getting to this next phase of life, because it really is the next big phase. She’s going to adult now. Yeah, it’s bizarre. And I’m so thankful that the Lord’s given us all these years to home school and to be able to build a relationship with her and with my youngest daughter. I mean, I’m so very grateful for that. Which on a quick note, I’ve said this, I think before on the podcast, but I’m going to go back to something you talked about on Monday, you talked about how oftentimes parents will say, oh, just the thought of being with their kids all day and their kids being with them and them being with each other. And one of the things I’ve realized is that oftentimes parents who don’t home school, they think that they don’t want to be with their kids or can’t be with their kids because their kids will drive them crazy. The reason their kids drive them crazy is because they’re not the ones raising them. Someone else is raising them with their own morals, standards and values and beliefs. And not that your kids are going to be perfect if they’re in your home, but when you’re raising them your way, it’s a very different outcome usually than when someone else is raising them and you have them in the evenings and on the weekends and on spring break and in the summertime. And then you think, I don’t really like this kid. I don’t like the way they act. Take them in, take on that role of full time parenting, not part time parenting, and see how things change. I think people will be really surprised to see what the Lord does and how he can work through you and your kids lives you have on your website. It’s a home school webinar. It’s the how to home school webinar. It’s kind of a crash course. I want to go through that and I want to do like the crash crash course. The crash course of the crash course. We do the crash course.

Kristi Clover:

We can do the crash course of the crash course. Yes. If you need more help in the crash course, right.

Yvette Hampton:

If you need further explanation things, we will put a link to that from Christie’s website as well. But we talked about setting that foundation. We talked about HSLDA and knowing what your state laws are and really knowing the why of homeschooling. What would be the next thing that parents need to consider when know here’s.

Kristi Clover:

The thing is that I’m going to speak to the families, okay? So if you are pulling your kid out of school, so you already have kids in school and now you’re going to be homeschooling them at home. Honestly, one of the biggest recommendations I have. And it was something that was told to me when we first started homeschooling, because it was a kindergartner and a first grader out of school is you need to spend at least a good month, if not just your first year of time, just getting back to being a family and what that looks like, because you’re changing the dynamics. And so sometimes you don’t even need to home school with curriculum and that blows people’s mind. I mean, math is one of those things, like math and phonics, like learning to read and math are two things that are helpful to have some curriculum. But there’s so many ways to learn that’s kind of a little unschooling. So you might be if you’re one of those parents, you’re like, yeah, that’s all nice and pretty, Kristi, but I need curriculum. Then there is curriculum out there, but I just want people to know that you can homeschool and kind of do it the easy way. You can study science by looking out and seeing what the weather is. Track the weather, see what that looks like, compare the weather to your area, to other areas that’s learning science. Maybe go to the library, check out some books on weather. You can pick up a rock and see what’s underneath it and study that. We tend to kind of study what’s around us. So we have hummingbirds that are constantly building nests in our yard. So we did a whole little unit study on hummingbirds. And for those of you that I just dropped a word that is a home school ease word unit studies that’s simply taking a subject and building curriculum around that and not like official curriculum that you’re taking something like a hummingbird. And I’m going to find some books about hummingbirds, I’m going to learn science. Maybe there’s not so much history around hummingbirds, but sometimes there is. You’d be surprised. Like with cats, you can study the history of cats in Egypt, cats in other countries. So there’s so many fun ways to really learn how to learn. And that would be my encouragement to families is don’t feel bogged down by all of the choices that you have and sometimes that is just what you need. You need a gentle start. Open your Bible, maybe get there’s some great missionary books out there. YWAM has a whole series of missionary books that we really enjoy. One of my favorite books is about to blank on, oh, I need to go get it. It’s hero tales. That’s the name of it, hero Tales. And it’s just snippets of different missionary lives and they also have like a character study on there. So when you learn about missionaries, you can learn about the countries that they’re from. What are some of the unique things that are happening there? What are some cultures and customs of those things? Find them on a map. So there’s so many ways when you start homeschooling, you really learn how to make it a lifestyle. So that’s my encouragement to those who are pulling their kids out. If you’re pulling your kids out of high school or you’re pulling them out and starting into high school, you do need to be more deliberate. I would say like 2nd, 3rd grade down, you can totally be relaxed about your start for homeschooling. Just stick to the basics, have fun with it. But then if you’re homeschooling, like even junior high to high school, you can know because especially for high school, you’re building a transcript. And so that’s just as scary as it might sound. You are calling up HSLDA, looking on their website, finding.

Yvette Hampton:

Out.

Kristi Clover:

And again, HSLDA is Homeschool Legal Defense Association. There are lawyers in the homeschooling realm, and they’ll show you exactly what’s required in your state law to graduate your child, and it will blow your mind. It will blow your mind, because we got used. I was just sharing with this with someone today at coffee that when we go through high school, we think, oh, four years of English, four years of science, four years of math. And it’s shocking that in California at least, it’s like two to three years of English, two years of math, two years of science, and they graduate. I mean, it is crazy to see what’s required in your state, and so that’s all you’re paying attention to is what’s required and then have fun with it. And another important part of starting off is what are your kids interested in? And learn about that, and that is going to spark their interest. So when I first told the kids, because we were a few weeks into this school, and they’re having fun at recess and all that, and so my oldest was like, more time to read. Okay, let’s home school. I can read all day. And then my second at the time, he was like, but I just want to play soccer all day. Can I do that? And then I was like, well, no, we can’t do soccer all day. We can play more soccer than you can do at school. But he was so cute. I’m like, So what do you think? He’s like, can we do a volcano? And I was like, absolutely. We are going to build a volcano. So we ended up doing this cute little unit study on Hawaii. So we learned about Hawaiian culture. We happened to have a Hawaii vacation that we were tying it into. So we went to Hawaii. We took microscopes in Hawaii and learned about the sun and how intense it is. And I brought chocolate. And I learned this is like this cute little science project I read about. And I learned you should always bring extra chocolate for your children to eat, because as we were burning, I was showing how intense the sun is when it goes to the microscope, and it burned the chocolate. And they’re like, that’s cool, but can we eat it? I’m like.

Yvette Hampton:

Right.

Kristi Clover:

Sorry. So bring extra chocolate. That’s my hack for you and for mom, too. And yes, that’s a must. So homeschooling and chocolate go very closely together. But no, just figure out what your kids are passionate about and what they’re interested in did. Because I had little boys at the start of our homeschool journey, so we did knights, and so we studied the medieval period, and we learned about all these crazy things. And we did Egypt, because Egypt’s a fun thing to learn about with boys. And so just find what they’re interested in. And as you’re building when you go into high school, what’s amazing is how it takes what is it like, however many thousands of hours to become an expert at something. We have that opportunity to do that in our home schools because our kids have more time. We’re not spending all of the changing class periods changing teacher time. We’re in there. We get it done. We’re usually done by lunch. My high schoolers go a little bit beyond lunch, typically, but my oldest has a passion for reading and for writing, and so I just let him go in that area. We centered a lot of his homeschooling around writing. He wrote two novels by the time he was 17. He didn’t publish them, but he wrote two novels, which is a huge undertaking. Then my second, who we graduated, he had a real passion and infinity and just an inspiration with photography. And so he was always writing. It rained. He was, like, out the door with his camera. He wanted to catch the dew drops and the raindrops falling off the flowers, and so we just were able to really get him involved in learning about that. Now he’s a professional photographer, and my oldest son is working, and he’s doing copy editing with his job. And so it’s just so cool to see how you can really look for these strengths. You can build up the weaknesses, but look for those strengths and pour into them and just let them flourish. And that’s something that you can’t do in other things. So I’m hoping that by saying all that, it will really encourage people that you have to take off these, like, well, what are they learning in public school? I need my home school to look like the public school. This is your school, and honestly, we can say that, so we’re blue in the face. It’ll take three years. This is honest to goodness three years of homeschooling before you, ah, I don’t care what the public schools are doing. This is my home school. And it’s like, just breathe a little, but just keep reminding yourself that Christine Yvette told you that this is your home school and you can design it the way you want to. It doesn’t need to look like the public school.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, I love the three years. That’s so funny. And I think you’re spot on because that’s about how long it took me to realize, oh, okay, so this is not going to look like my schedule. That looked like the public school schedule. And it was so frustrating because I always felt like I was failing my kids and I was failing myself, and I just was doing it all wrong. And so it took about that long, and so, yeah, learn it before you don’t do the three years. Just skip the three years of trying to replicate regular, traditional school and do it the way that works best for your families. Kristi, you’ve got five kids and you have a wide range, so your oldest is how old? And your youngest is how old?

Kristi Clover:

21. Down to nine, actually. Well, and by the time this airs, she’ll be ten. So that’ll give her some credit there. She’s going to be like, mom, I’m ten.

Yvette Hampton:

Right? Yeah. Not nine anymore where credit is due. Right.

Kristi Clover:

So we have eleven year gap.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, especially when you get into those double digits. I mean you got to give her the double digits.

Kristi Clover:

My baby is going to have double digits. Oh man, breathing through that.

Yvette Hampton:

Oh, it’s okay. Deep breath, deep breath.

Kristi Clover:

I know.

Yvette Hampton:

So you’ve got an eleven year age gap with your kids. It’s the question of course, that everybody asks, how do you home school with all I mean, that’s a big range of ages and different grades and different levels for everything. So tell us what your typical homeschool day looks like.

Kristi Clover:

Well, my typical homeschool day now looks a little bit different because everyone is in our home school. So it’s a little easier with everyone homeschooling and everyone is a reader now. So I’ve kind of entered into that sweet spot where we have all readers because once you have readers, it actually does get a lot easier. So I always tell people that it’s when you have the pre readers, it’s a little more complicated. So the number one thing is to whether you because I’ve homeschooled through it all. So we started homeschooling with two kids in kindergarten and first grade, and I had a toddler, which is honestly one of the hardest parts of homeschooling is working around your toddlers. So babies, you can totally work around their schedule because their schedule is kind of what you put them on. But toddlers are like, why aren’t we playing? We’re supposed to be playing. So my number one recommendation if you are homeschooling with young kids alongside of your school age kids, is to have a game plan for those kids. Don’t just think, oh, I’m planning my curriculum. You need to plan your curriculum or plan what you’re doing for them, your school age kids, but then also have a game plan for fun. Let them be part of your home school around two and a half. They’re like, school is fun because you’re giving them coloring books. I would make copies of what I was doing with the older boys and they were just scribbling all over it and they’re like, yeah, we got this. That is my recommendation there. And I actually part of my how to homeschool webinar and part of my homeschool organization course. Both of those have a whole section just about how to juggle that how do you homeschool and you have big kids and little kids in the house because it’s really important. It is a juggling act and it is difficult, but it’s totally doable. I just want to encourage you that it’s totally doable. And so I have a lot of very specific tips for that. But my typical schedule now, as it kind of always is, is that I try to divide up their work between work that needs to be done with mom and work that they can do independently and sometimes that’s kind of a combo. So I might have to introduce a sheet so I might be talking through a grammar worksheet or a math page and kind of giving them some information about how they’re going to be doing this and then they can do the rest on their own. So penmanship is pretty much always on their own. So they save all of those for either when I’m working with another sibling or for later on in the day. And I say that because it helps with making kids focus. So by the time we hit lunch, if they have had a focus day and they need more help, yes, of course I help them, but they just know that the work that requires my help needs to be done before lunch. So morning time, I’m 100% there. I’m switching off between kids so I’m having them do some of the independent work while I work with another and then we switch off and kind of trying to figure it out. Most of my time is usually with my younger learners and my older kids all learn kind of they start learning how to organize themselves and how to structure their days. That’s just part of the rhythm that I try to teach them and it teaches them independence as well. But that’s really what I try to do because we’ll also have those kids who will just not get to their work and will find every excuse not to do their work. So it was helpful for me to say, well buddy, we need to make sure that we have this done earlier. So I’ll probably give them a little help in the afternoon. They’ll be like tomorrow. And I’ll give little reminders for that child. Sometimes the ones that tend to kind of put it off is like, okay, remember, mommy’s going to go run some errands later this afternoon. So if you need me and you need my help, then this is what we do. And my next bit of information between the mornings and the afternoons and dividing up what is the mom time stuff and the independent stuff. And again, that’s why high school sometimes will go later because they’re doing mostly independent at that time, sure, but also just helping them to kind of I don’t know if you’re this way, but I find that there’s some subjects I don’t get to and so I move those up front. So if I’m not getting to writing then guess what our very first subject is of the day is going to be writing. Because I’m fresh in the morning, my kids are fresh in the morning and that really helps us. And so I try to move the things that by the end of the day it’s the subjects. And it’s the things that I’m like, I’m tired. I’m the whining kid. I’m the one. I’m like, Are we done yet? The kids are like, no, mom. So I find that I need that extra motivation because we’re doing our read alouds up front, but really looking at how you can structure things. And you know what, one of the things we did when we had especially babies that weren’t sleeping well, I was trying to do sleep training and homeschooling and all the things. And my husband traveled for like 20 years of our marriage, so most of my homeschooling, of my older boys, he was on the road. So it was me and five kids. And so we had to juggle that. What I found is oftentimes when the babies are going to bed at like 738 o’clock, then I’m doing a read aloud or I’m doing our Bible time at that time. So there are some times in some seasons of our lives when I would just kind of pick some things to do in the evening because it was just easier to do it then. So that’s a few of my little tips for kind of routines. But you don’t need to have and I do say routines. I try to tell people, please don’t try to schedule your whole year into a teacher planner because you’re just going to have a mountain of eraser dust. And so that’s one of the things that I try to teach in my homeschool organization course, is really how to strip that from your mind. Because that’s the first thing I did when we started homeschooling. I bought a teacher planner because I’m like, well, that’s me too, at Target.

Yvette Hampton:

Which I’d never buy anything at Target now, but I did 13 years ago, right?

Kristi Clover:

And you just end up erasing. I don’t think I made it more than a week into it when I was erasing and drawing arrows and trying to figure out how to put tabs on it to know where in the world I was. And so I really try to teach people in my organization course how to take things by week, how to divide it out using the table of contents. So there’s lots of strategy to really simplify, and especially for you as the parent, because we can really drive ourselves insane when we’re trying to plan out. Some states require 180 days. We’re like, that’s 180 days of planning. Please get that off your brain. That is so much more complicated than looking at 36 weeks or 34, depending upon your state. So that’s really how I try to simplify things. And what I’ve learned later in life, and actually I’ve learned this about myself through homeschooling, is that I actually have add a little bit of ADHD hyperactive. My mind’s always going. So that’s my h. My brain makes me creative, makes me be able to do interviews like this on the fly. But I’m also easily distracted. What I’ve learned is, if things aren’t simple, my brain literally puts up a strike sign. They’re like my brain is just like, no, you think that you want to do that, but we’re not doing that. And I cannot get myself to do it unless I have figured out the simplest way. And then my brain’s like, okay, I can do this. So I think that’s what’s really unique is that I have really had to learn how to be efficient in all that.

Yvette Hampton:

Yes, I’m exactly the same way, and it definitely works for me. I’m pretty sure we answered a question similar to this on a Q&A that we did recently with Aby. And we talked about planning. And one of the things that I said was, I learned this years ago, was to get a notebook, just a spiral bound notebook. And each day and you could do it by the week if you really wanted to, if that makes you feel better. But each day, just write down what the next thing is that your kids have to do. So each kid has their own spiral bound notebook. Write down their checklist. My girls like, checklists, and I like, checklists. It just makes me feel accomplished. And there’s that satisfaction in checking off the thing that you’ve done. And so, yeah, it’s so much easier to do it that way.

Kristi Clover:

But you do have to kind of.

Yvette Hampton:

Plan out here’s our course of action, what’s our goal? And I think it’s important to know what our goal is for the end of that year.

Yvette Hampton:

Kristi, we talked last time at the end of our episode a little bit about scheduling and what your schedule looked like with your kids. I want to talk a little bit more specifically about curriculum today because I know this is one of the questions that everyone’s favorite questions when they get started. We talked about kind of deschooling and starting slow for those younger years. But talk to the mom who maybe she’s pulling in her middle school kid or her high school kid or maybe even elementary school, and she’s just like, I want curriculum. But there’s so much there’s so much to choose from. And I think this is the most at least for myself, this is the most overwhelming part of homeschooling is knowing what curriculum to choose because it can get really expensive. And then how do I choose it? And then once I choose it, what do I do with it?

Kristi Clover:

How do I use yeah, so that’s a great question. And I think that it requires an honest evaluation of yourself as the teacher because your curriculum needs to be something that will work for your kids learning styles, and you’re probably just figuring that out. When you’re a new home school mom, you probably have observed certain things, like, are your kids very tactile? They tend to listen better. Do they tend to visually see things. And really, when you’re incorporating all of the senses, that’s when they’re learning best. But you also have to pay attention to your teaching style because I only have the capacity for so much. And so when we first started homeschooling, we had two kids in school and we had a toddler. I was able to do more hands on type of curriculum, curriculum where we were doing more things together because my oldest two are so close in age, they’re only 17 months apart. So I could kind of teach them together except for reading and math, which those are usually the two subjects where everybody’s kind of learning incrementally and they build upon each other. But in all the other subjects, I was teaching them together. And so that was a lot easier until I suddenly had high school and junior high and elementary and a baby and someone else in between, like a toddler. It’s hard when you have this big stretch. So that’s when I had to get real and be like, I can’t really set up all of the things that I thought I could. I needed more video based learning. And so our math curriculum is video based. Our writing curriculum is more video, in fact. Yeah. As much as I love IEW and I love all things fun and fabulous, such a great curriculum, I also know okay, I’m going to be very honest. Andrew, if you’re listening, don’t listen to this part. I have never completely finished the all things fun and fascinating. I’ve gotten at least halfway through with my kids, but I rely on andrew poudois to teach my children. So we have just gotten to a point where that’s what I do with my kids. They watch Andrew on the TV, and then they do their thing, and then I can kind of come in and help from.

Yvette Hampton:

So just for those of you who are like, what in the world is she talking about? And who’s andrew Poudawa is the founder president of IEW, which is the Institute for Excellence in Writing. They’re one of our sponsors on the podcast. And we’re not talking about them because they are it’s because we’ve used them. You’ve used them, and it’s fantastic writing curriculum. And so a lot of their curriculum is video based. I think almost everything they have, not all of it, but a lot of their main is video based. And so Andrew kind of like CTC math, teaches your kids how to do math online. Andrew Poudawa, who’s the founder, he does basically like the classroom lecture, but he’s mean, so engaging, and they’re fantastic videos. And so you can do the curriculum with your kids, but he teaches it to them for you so that you don’t have to teach. So that’s what she’s talking about. I wanted to just clarify that. So people are like, who is Andrew?

Kristi Clover:

Andrew, what is she talking about? Yes, I try not to do homeschoolees, and I did it, so I apologize. Institute for Excellence in Writing, IEW yeah, those were a few of those real moments. And what’s great is that here’s the other thing, is most curriculums do have a resource where you can call in and ask, and they do. And so I was like, I’m not getting to writing. I’ve tried doing it in the morning. I’ve got too many kids doing different levels of writing. And so I was like, okay, so they helped me figure out this would be good for these kids, this would be good for those kids. But I had to get very real with myself. So my Pollyanna, optimistic person of like, I can do it all. Yeah, that did not happen. That didn’t play out past the first week of homeschooling. So when you’re picking curriculum, I would encourage you to think how many age levels if you have kids clover together, then it’s going to be easier. I still combine history and science with at least two kids in my home school, if I can’t get them all kind of under that umbrella. So this year, for instance, my son who is doing 9th grade work, he did American history using sunlight, whereas the girls and I did American History using not grass. And we read that together. So he was able to do his work independently. We were able to do our work independently. So there’s a lot of different things like that. But you need to really pay attention to typically there’s multiple subjects that you’re teaching, so you want to see what is your capacity, do you have young kids in the house. When you have babies and toddlers in the house, I encourage people, especially if they have younger ages of school age kids, please just stick to the basics reading, writing, and arithmetic and incorporate science and history into those subjects so you’re not killing yourselves. Because what people do is they’ll break down language arts. Okay, I need a curriculum for vocabulary, writing, penmanship, grammar, whatever, other spelling. So you’ve got five language arts that you buy curriculum for those, and then you’re like, oh, history, geography, oh, I should do math work, which is I guess, geography. Then we’ll do math, we’ll do math concepts, we’ll do like, math theory, and then, oh, we need Bible, we need Bible theory, we need worldview. So you end up having like 20 things that you think you have to teach. And that’s one of the reasons why when here’s something straight from my course. So what I always encourage people to do is create a course of study. And so what that is, is you’re taking each subject you’re required to teach in that, like in our school, Bible is number one. So state doesn’t require but clover, we require that in our school. So I write those down and then I write down the curriculum that I’m going to be using or I’m thinking about using, and then I kind of take a look at it and say, oh, can I use this here? And so that helps me to see, do I have a gap? Am I hitting everything I need to hit? Wow. Because sometimes you can skip over. You’ll save so much money when you do it like that. And so really trying to see how you can spread things out, does it look like a lot on paper? Because it’s going to feel like a lot for your kids. And so that’s another thing, is please give your poor children a break. They don’t need to do everything all the time, so you can even split things up. I think that’s a common misconception because we look at the public school like we talked about earlier, and we look at the public school and say, okay, how do I teach all these subjects all at once? Because that’s what they do in school. And that’s not what you can seriously have like a month of doing science and a month of doing history and a month of however you want to do it. You just need to teach them little samples and you’ll figure it out. And the best advice I can give to families trying to figure out where to start with curriculum is just start with something. You can start at costco. You can honestly go to Costco and get the workbooks and just have your kids do some workbooks. Get some books from the library, pull out your Bible, and that can kind of be your simple starter. But you can change the if your child is hitting their head up against a wall because they’re just like, this is so hard, then you might not have a curriculum that works with how they’re learning. The other thing that’s really important to understand is that when your child’s getting frustrated, so when you feel the tension rising and they’re getting frustrated, oftentimes it’s because you’re going too hard too fast. So it’s time to hit the pause button. Who cares what you’ve had planned for people going through my course, I’m like, I don’t care what’s in the crate because I teach people a crate system. You’re going to stop right there and you’re going to give your kids a break and let’s make sure that they have some fundamentals. And I think all of my kids have gone through this with math in particular. There just comes a point where they’re learning learning and then they’re just frustrated. And what it usually comes down to is that they don’t have their fundamentals down. So we’ll take like up to a month sometimes, take a break from who cares, take a break from the curriculum, and we’re just going to do math drills. And so we’ll just focus on times tables or focus on addition or subtraction, just really get that so that they can answer those questions four times three and they’re like, twelve, they’ve got it down. And that is going to be what makes all of the harder like the upper division math so much easier when they really have those fundamentals. And so sometimes it’s not a learning. I think some parents like, oh no, my child is a learning. Oh no, this is a parenting issue. Sometimes it’s just you have the wrong curriculum or sometimes you need to hit the pause button and scale back. Same with phonics as well. Same with reading. It’s okay. I think in society people are just like, your child’s not reading by age five or six. Like what? I have a friend, I know, I have a girlfriend and she still to this day has not told me which of her children, but one of her sons did not read until he was twelve years old. And he went from not being able to read at twelve years old to reading like the Bible aloud to the family reading chapter books. Because sometimes you just have to wait for the brain to get it and then it just takes off and they catch up like that. So never be worried if you feel like your child is behind, your child is learning at their rate. And when the brain gets it, then it’s so amazing to watch. And for the record, that friend that has five kids, all of them have master’s degrees. So it’s not like, oh no, didn’t read until twelve. They were phenomenal. And honestly, I even hate saying that as some sort of a line because I don’t even believe that you have to. And this is probably shocking for everyone. I am so out of the box now of like, you have to do this and do this and do the formula. I don’t think you need the piece of paper. There’s a lot of things that you can do that don’t require that. And by piece of paper, I mean college degree.

Yvette Hampton:

That $150,000 of debt rocked onto it, right?

Kristi Clover:

No, I mean, we are totally thinking outside the box. My husband used to be in the financial industry because every time he mentioned we homeschool our kids and they’re like, well, what are you going to do about college? He’s like, well, actually, my kids can get into college easily. And our oldest is in college, almost done, but he’s doing online and he’s working full time and he’s married. Yeah, and he’s married and supporting his wife. And it’s just this beautiful thing that when you think outside of the box and you have to do that in homeschooling and what you’ll find is that it becomes a lifestyle. And again, it takes three years. I know it’s going to drive everybody crazy, but it’s going to take three years until you go, I think I got this down. I think I know what I’m doing. But it takes that long. So just give yourself grace. In both of my books, I’m like the name of the game is give yourself grace. It’s okay. Yeah, it’s going to be okay.

Yvette Hampton:

One thing I want to say, going back to curriculum is I think one of the greatest things we can do is find maybe three people whose kids are around the same ages as your kids or maybe a little bit older. Ask them what they use, and ask them, especially during the summertime, if you can borrow their curriculum just for like, two weeks, bring it home, look through it yourself, see if it’s something that would work for you, and then look at it with your kids. And see if it’s something that would work well for you and your kids. Or you can look at it online. A lot of companies, I think every one of our sponsors, has trial things that you can do for free. They have free lessons that you can try out, stuff like that. So try it out for free before buying it.

Kristi Clover:

Yes.

Yvette Hampton:

But ask your friends what they use and what they like about it. And not that you have to do what they do, but that’s going to really help you to narrow down what might work best for your family and maybe friends who do things a little bit differently. Maybe you’ve got a friend who does more Charlotte Mason style and one who’s more unit studies and one who’s more classical. So figure out what works best for your family, talk with your friends and see if that curriculum that they’re using might be a good fit for you. Okay, Kristi, because I want to get back into this really quickly. I want to talk about. You talked about a crate system and organization. I want to talk about organization. Like, how do we organize our homeschool day? Now, we have set the foundation. We know why we’re homeschooling. We know what our goal is. We know where we’re going with it, right? We know what the end goal is. We talked about what our day might look like. We talked about curriculum, what now? How do we put it all into practice? How do we organize it all and actually put it into play?

Kristi Clover:

All right, so how to organize your home. I love again, my brain works a little differently as far as I really was looking for ways to organize our homeschool. And that’s actually, when I started on YouTube was funny, is I did this little video of like, oh, here, let me show you a few of the different systems I use in my home school, and it exploded. So that video is one of my most popular videos. And I introduced people a little bit to my crate system there. And I had so many questions that I decided to create a homeschool organization course. So my homeschool organization course you can find that@homeschoolorganization.com so pretty easy to find. But I talk through not only how to plan and prep for your year, I also help people how to use different systems. And so one of my kind of featured systems is the crate system. And so we pretty much can train you how to put all of your kids, all of your curriculum, into one crate. So you have one crate that has all of the curriculum for the year in that crate divided by weeks. And that’s the key, is that I think it’s so natural for people to think because teacher planners are by day. So we talked about teacher planners earlier. Teacher planners are by day. And I really want you to get that until it is like, Monday. You’re not thinking about daily work. I want you to think by week. And so that’s what the crate system is designed to do. Now, what’s amazing with the crate system, because you planned out your entire home school by week. And again, you have one crate. You have all of your kids in that one crate. We color code our kids, and so they can pull it out, but it creates independence for my kids and also creates a bite sized look at the week. And so one of my friends who was using the system, she was like, Kristi, you’ve revolutionized how we homeschool because her daughter would feel so overwhelmed not knowing what was coming each day. And so she was able to stay. She’d pull out her crate or pull out her folder for the week, and she’s like, this is all I have to get done for the entire week. And so from there, there’s different systems I recommend. Sometimes I recommend some kids can handle just shoving your week’s worth in a clipboard and they are good to go. Like, they just know kind of naturally how to divide it up. That was my oldest son. He was fine. He could take the whole week, stick it in there, he’d do a few pages of math so he could handle that. Other kids need your help training them, how to put it into more of a daily binder or whatever system that you want to have with them. So that is kind of a little bit how the crate system works. And there’s all kinds of nuances that go along with it because it naturally happens. I always say it happens around week twelve. And every year I’m like, yes, week twelve. Week 13 is about the time that I’m like, I need to do adjusting here because we’ve slowed down, sped up. Like we’re pulling things from weeks ahead, we’re a couple of weeks behind and I’m shoving things into the next week. So it kind of just creates this one spot. Works great for military families, works great for missionaries. I’ve had a lot of families. I’ve had parents come up to me crying when they came and saw me one year to the next year. They’re like, I was ready to throw in the towel, was so overwhelmed. And so I really try to come at it practically because I knew what I needed as a homeschool mom, and I wanted to teach that to people. And so part of just the way that I show people again is to introduce all of these different systems and how they work together, how you can tweak it. And I have people that are so cute because they’re like, I love your creek system, but I kind of changed it a little and I’m like, awesome.

Yvette Hampton:

Do what works for you.

Kristi Clover:

And we change it up. Sometimes I’ll put my daughter’s readers in there and so the readers are actually in there. And I can’t do that when I have all five of my kids in one crate because it gets a little and sometimes I will have a second crate that’s okay, I have the space for it. So it depends on your space. It depends on all those things. And again, it’s always fluctuating. So my second oldest, so my second son, when he hit high school, it’s got one of those file boxes and that became his mini crate. And I created that a little differently. Because he needed to see not only his weekly work, but I needed a spot for him to be able to easily because he was working so independently. I needed a spot for him to move his work because we were realizing again, you just kind of have to figure out what’s working. But for him, it’s like, this is work that now mom needs to edit. So like any papers, math, anything that I needed to grade or edit, then we kind of developed a system where I’m pulling things and he’s pulling things. You just kind of work on things together. But really the key feature for the crate is that you have everything in one spot and you’re literally putting your school on autopilot. That is the key feature of the crate and how it works so beautifully. And it’s worked in times when I had to fly to Spain for an emergency situation with a family member who got hurt in Spain and I had to go out and be with them. And it helped when we had another emergency situation with another family. And it allowed me to be able to stay longer. It allowed me to be able to pick up and go. When I had to have surgery one time that was unexpected. My home school continued when I’ve had morning sickness. My kids could handle it when I was suddenly turning very green and couldn’t do it. And again, what I love about it is that again, homeschooling is life. I think that’s what people forget is that before I want, I’d rather my kids get B’s. Not that I grade, that’s a whole other topic about grading. But I’d rather my kids not be as academically strong, but be amazing men and women of God, amazing parents, amazing spouses. That is my goal. Not just to create these perfect kids that look great on the pedestal. I’m not about creating pedestal kids, no one is perfect. Your home school, let me just say this, your home school will not be perfect. Your home, your parenting, your kids, you. No one is perfect. And that should never be what we’re striving for. If you are keeping your eyes like your verse talked about, I’ve never heard that verse used, by the way, for homeschooling. And I love it. I have to sneak that and put that on my little verses.

Yvette Hampton:

You’re welcome. Ecclesiastes 1213.

Kristi Clover:

I know, and I’m blanking on the verse because we have another one that we use about how, like, a student will never be above his master. Is it Luke? It was Luke.

Yvette Hampton:

Yes, it’s Luke. 640.

Kristi Clover:

Yeah. So good because, yeah, when they’re fully trained, they should be like the teacher and I’m like, be like the master. And I’m like, I don’t want my kids to look like the public school, but I’ve totally lost my train of thought of where I was. But just to know that it’s not about creating perfect and I think in this day and age of pinterest and instagram and all these places, we want to put on the happy face, like, look at my happy family. You know what? That’s not what it’s all about. We are called to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And that is honestly, it is a hard thing to teach. But I also know that there’s not really a lot of curriculum that’s going to completely teach that to my kids. What there is, is my life and that’s going to speak a lot louder than anything else. So when my kids see me have to take a break and go and bless a family member and love on a family member, that’s going to be what happens is that they’re seeing that and learning that in the moment.

Yvette Hampton:

Yeah, that’s real life. It’s real life learning. Because school isn’t just about the academics. The academics are important, but it’s not the most important part. We talk about that all the time on the podcast. But it’s true. It is a part of homeschooling, but it is not the only part and it is not the most important part about homeschooling. Okay, this crate system sounds amazing. Is this part of your because I’m looking on your website, the Ultimate Homeschool Organization course.

Kristi Clover:

Yes.

Yvette Hampton:

You talk about the crate system in.

Kristi Clover:

There and how to organize organization. Yes. Homeschoolorganization.com, if you go there or Kristiclover.com will also get you there, but yeah, either this will send you straight to me. So the crate system and all of my systems are all housed in there. And again, I was very deliberate about how I pieced everything together and then I have bonus videos to make sure I explain all the little nuances. Because it’s easy to talk with a crate system like I just did and to show you how to plan it out, but then getting it to work with other systems because you said you like checklists. And I help people create the simplest checklist you can ever create. In fact, you can put together a teacher planner. It’s included, I’m like for free within the course. It’s included in the course. And how to put together your own teacher planner. And it’s like the simplest thing ever. And it’s using the weekly system. And I do want to say one thing because we’re talking about home school organization and we’re talking about how we love checklists. And some curriculum comes with checklists and they’re usually pretty darn overwhelming. And I want to introduce one wonderful tip that everyone will love, and that is the power of the X. And that is you do not have to do everything in the curriculum. Checking it off feels great, but you are the teacher. And if your kids are getting bogged down and feel like there is too much, you know what, for history, you’re probably going to cycle it through three or four times. They’re going to pick up new nuggets here and there. They don’t need to read this extra book. They don’t need to do all this extra work. So sometimes you as a parent can just decide, we’re going to skip this part. Harder to do with phonics and math. Those you just take a week off and just pick up where you left off. But don’t be afraid to just cross it out and just be done. Yeah, we’re not doing that this year.

Yvette Hampton:

Oh, man, I love that. Okay, so we’ll put links to that in the show notes. And then you have your book home school basics. Again, we’ve done a whole podcast episode on that, so we’ll put a link to that. And that book is fantastic, you guys. I highly recommend it because she gives more detail on all of these things in the book as well. So if you’re a reader and you enjoy reading, then that is a book for you. Kristi, do you have any last bit of encouragement that you can leave with our.

Kristi Clover:

You know, this is what I like to compare homeschooling choosing to homeschool. So number one, you can homeschool your kids. You can do it. It’s going to probably be way easier than you think it is because you are probably putting a ton of extra pressure on yourself. But with the new Indiana Jones movie coming out soon, and I don’t know what point this is releasing or when you’re listening to this, but that’s all the buzz right now. There’s a new Indiana Jones movie coming out and I would say that the best representation of what it feels like to homeschool is like in the best Indiana Jones movie, which is number three, which is moment. And it’s like, sorry, Harrison Ford, but that was the best. There’s this moment where he has to save his dad’s life and he has to step out and he has to take the step of faith. And so you see him put his foot out and it looks like he’s going to fall. Like there’s this huge chasm between him and the other side. And that’s what it feels like. It feels like, I am going to take this step in homeschool and I’m going to fall to my death. It is sometimes so terrifying. Like, this is going to be a hot mess. And sometimes it literally takes day one. We are homeschooling. Everyone else is back in school and my kids are in my house. What am I doing? So what I love about that moment in the movie is his foot goes out. You still think he’s going to fall and die. And he steps forward and there’s solid ground. And then the camera pans out and you have this new angle and you see the whole time there was this very straight and it’s a straight and narrow path, but it’s a solid path that he can get across the other side. And that’s exactly what it’s like to homeschool, is sometimes you have to take that step of faith. Just like Peter getting out of the boat, just like Indiana Jones at that chasm, there is firm foundation and that’s Christ. And as long as you keep your eyes on Christ, you will get through your homeschool season and you will never, ever regret it. Every hard day, every tear, blood, sweat, tears. Like whatever it is, there’s usually not blood involved. Unless you’re like me and you. Yeah, I’m always cutting myself. I’m like my. Kids are like, mom usually bruises. I’m like, I don’t. But it’s so worth it. And you just have to give yourself grace along the way, and that’s the most important thing. It’s not going to be perfect. So take away your perfect little like, there’s no trophy at the end of the day, but there is a crown of glory that you’re going to at the end of the day for working. And this is, I truly believe, a calling. As a mother, a calling as a father. We are called to finish strong. And it is hard, it’s really hard to parent your child. You are raising a human being, and it’s a mighty calling, but you can do it. And the Lord will see you through it. And he will bring people along your path, too, to encourage you. Don’t try to do it alone.

How To Homeschool – My Original Roadmap

When I was just diving into homeschooling for the first time, my good friend, Holly Lerner, gave me a simple two-page document, which became my early roadmap for success. Over the years, Holly served as a homeschooling and motherhood mentor to me, and her example has been a constant inspiration and encouragement.

I still have that original document from Holly. Simply titled: “How to Homeschool,” the guide that inspired me can now inspire thousands of new homeschooling moms.

I recently sat down with Kristi Clover to record an interview for the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast (this four-part interview will air 9/4, 9/6, 9/7, 9/8/2023), and as I was planning I realized that with so many new families beginning to homeschool it was time to go back to the basics and record a “How to Homeschool” guide. So, once again, I brought out Holly’s instructions, and these served as a guide to my interview with Kristi.

How to Homeschool, by Holly Lerner

Foundation for Parenting

Ecclesiastes 12:13 “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Why We Homeschool

  • Train our children in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), godly character
  • Teach obedience (Colossians 3:20) Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”
  • Titus 2:3-5
    • “teaching what is good
    • “love [our] children” (delight in them)
    • “workers at home”
    • “that the word of God may not be dishonored”

How to Make Decisions

  • Pray (Phil 4:6) “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
  • Focus on God: glory to God and serve God
  • Always LOVE (1 Cor 13:1-3) If I have lots of great things, “but have not love, I gain nothing.”
  • Remember the future: Learn these and teach by modeling godly character traits in our home
    • Diligence
    • Faith
    • Moral excellence
    • Knowledge
    • Self-control
    • Perseverance
    • Godliness
    • Brotherly kindness
    • Love
  • 2 Peter 1:5-7 “… make every effort to supplement your faithwith virtue, and virtuewith knowledge,and knowledge with self-control, and self-controlwith steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness,and godlinesswith brotherly affection, and brotherly affectionwith love.”

Priorities in Education & Training

  • Have a mindset to guide our thinking in discouraging times (What Scripture do we need to dwell on when we are discouraged?)
  • IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT ACADEMICS!!! Academics are one aspect of one of four areas of the chart. Don’t let it take over everything else.
  • Prioritize academic subjects (don’t try to do everything every day)

How to Approach Teaching Academics

  • Academics are an opportunity to…
    • Teach character
      • Do it when they don’t like it
      • Do it diligently
      • Persevere when it’s hard
    • Learn skills to equip children for future service to God
  • Realize and Remember that…
      • We are not imitating the school system or a school setting, so don’t compare to schools or grade level skills or government standards
      • Children will learn quickly when they are ready, so don’t worry if you think they seem “behind” or if you are not accomplishing what you had hoped to accomplish
  • Pick one thing to do well and consistently
      • Aim for independence
      • Read
      • Write
      • Math
      • Choose something that you can do with all your children
    • Choose 1 subject to focus on each year (so you can build slowly and get better at all of this!)
  • Manage Age Ranges and Abilities
      • List activities that the little ones (nonreaders) can do independently
    • Limit individual instruction for the older ones to how long the youngest can be independent (or juggle with an older one working with a younger one so you can teach a 3rd one or more…)
  • Set Goals for each year – as a family and for each child
  • Use what you have!
    • You don’t have to buy curriculum or find the “perfect” thing in order to be successful/productive/teaching well.

I pray that this simple outline serves you as well as it has served our family.

Recommended Resources:

Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for free.

Free Homeschool Survival Kit

Homegrown Generation Family Expo – Online Homeschool Conference. Get instant access to all of the sessions from 2023 and 2020 (over 50 hours of content)!

The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast – Biblical homeschooling, parenting, and family discipleship encouragement and advice. Each show shares practical advice to help point our children to Christ, build a solid Biblical worldview, teach effectively, preserve our marriages, manage our homes, and approach child-rearing and discipline issues with a heart-centered focus that will result in confident, biblically-minded, wise, well-balanced adults.

The Homeschool Insights Podcast – Practical, Biblical, home education and parenting encouragement and resources in under ten minutes a day.

More on this topic:

This is Why We Homeschool

Homeschooling Multiple Ages: 20 Secrets to Simplify Teaching and Make History Come Alive

Rescuing Our Children: An Urgent Call to Take Back Education

17 Favorite Books for Homeschoolers

Yvette Hampton: Hey, everyone, welcome back to The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. I am back with Aby Rinella and we are doing another Q&A episode, and these are so much fun. We love getting to encourage you and just having the opportunity to serve you, homeschool parents, and answer some of your questions. And so, if you have questions for us, be sure to send them to us at podcast@schoolhouserocked.com, and let us know how we can encourage you. Aby, welcome back to the podcast.

Aby Rinella: Hey, it’s good to be here.

Yvette Hampton: This is one of my favorite questions. I love being asked this question and getting to answer it, because I always have a ton of resources to offer. The question is 

“What are your favorite homeschool books?” 

We’ve actually done several podcast episodes with authors of various homeschool books. And that’s a broad question. Because we could talk about books that are related specifically to homeschooling, like how to homeschool, or books that relate to things that are related to homeschooling, or parenting, because that falls under the umbrella of homeschooling.

Aby Rinella: Right, for sure.

Yvette Hampton: Or…

Aby Rinella: Marriage.

Yvette Hampton: Marriage, or homeschool books could also be, “What kind of books do your homeschoolers read?”So, it’s a really broad question. So, I’m going to talk through some of my favorite homeschool books, meaning those that I think have been really helpful in teaching me how to homeschool, or at least given me some guidance. My… One of the new ones actually that I have, and we did a podcast with her recently, it’s by Aimee Smith, and it’s called The Restful Homeschool Resolution, and it’s a 21-day journey that she takes you on through scripture and through just thinking through like, “Where are we? What are we doing? Why are we doing this? How is God working in your homeschool and in your heart?” And it’s just fun.

Yvette Hampton: It’s a book/journal, and it’s very well written. You can listen to that conversation with Aimee if you want to know more about that book, but that one’s fantastic and it’s a brand new book. It just came out, I don’t know, some time in the last six months, I think. So, that’s a great one. Another one that we’ve talked about on the podcast that I really love is by Tricia Goyer and Kristi Clover, and we have had both of these homeschool moms on the podcast, and this one’s called Homeschool Basics. This is a fantastic book for  any homeschool mom, even those of us who are seasoned in homeschooling, but it’s a great one for those who are just getting started.

Yvette Hampton: And it’s actually called, Homeschool Basics: How to Get Started, Keep Motivated, and Bring Out the Best in Your Kids. And I love that last part, “Bring out the best in your kids,” because it’s not just about checking the boxes and having the right curriculum and doing it all the right way. But it’s really like, how do you make that connection with your kids, how do you build that relationship with them? We talked with Kristi about these concepts on The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast and it was a great conversation. 

Tricia Goyer recently wrote another one called The Grumble-Free Year: Twelve Months, Eleven Family Members, and One Impossible Goal, which is also excellent.

Yvette Hampton: In our homeschooling. This one, I read this one a couple summers ago and loved it, it’s called Mere Motherhood, and it’s by Cindy Rollins. This one is not talked about a lot, I don’t hear a lot of people talking about it, but it is such… It’s like one of those gems that if you have it and you’ve read it, it’s… I almost feel like I’m in this secret club of moms in the know who have read this book.

Aby Rinella: Ooh. I want to be in that club.

Yvette Hampton: It’s fantastic. So, it’s called Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey Toward Sanctification. So, it’s Cindy’s… It’s a story of her journey of getting started in homeschooling, homeschooling her kids, and her kids are all adults now and grown. So, it’s written by a veteran homeschool mom, and it’s not really a how-to book, but she gives so much… This book is just full of wisdom. And it is very well-written, it’s entertaining because she tells some really funny stories in the book, and then she has a ton of resources, but it’s interesting because the resources are interwoven through the book. And so, as I was reading it, I was highlighting like crazy, like, “Oh, I need to read that book. Oh, oh, I need to check this thing out, or check that thing out!”

Aby Rinella: I’m just sitting here putting things in my Amazon cart as we’re talking. This is an expensive episode. [chuckle]

Yvette Hampton: I know, it is going to be an expensive episode. But, Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins. The next one. This one’s by Heidi St. John, and it’s called The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight. And this one I read early in my homeschool journey, probably within my first one or two years of homeschooling, and it’s managing your days through the homeschool years, so talking about time management. [chuckle] Apparently, I need to read this one again. It’s been a while. Since we were just talking about time management. But, yeah, it’s The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight, by Heidi St. John, and it’s a fantastic book. Just another must-have. Another one, we recently did another podcast on this one, and I’ll link back to all of these, so you can actually just hear from these women yourselves, but this one is called, MOM: Master Organizer of Mayhem, by Kristy Clover. Another new book that just came out. And you’ll want to listen to that podcast, because Kristi is the master of organization.

Aby Rinella: Yes.

Yvette Hampton: She’s just wired that way and gives some really, really practical advice on how you can organize your day. So those are my how-to-homeschool books that I love and recommend. Two others that I think every homeschool mom should own, or every homeschool dad, is, Honey for a Child’s Heart. And… That’s so good. And there’s also Honey for a Teen’s Heart. And it’s just a book about books. And it’s about the imaginative use of books in family life. It’s a book that will help you figure out what books you can read to your kids, what books your kids can read on their own, and she gives little descriptions of each of them and has them broken down by category and tells what age groups each book is good for. And they’re just… It’s just a fantastic resource to have, so that one’s more of a resource book. And she talks about reading. And then there’s also Books Children Love, and that’s basically the same thing, it’s a guide to the best children’s literature. So, as you’re looking for good books for your kids, because we know with homeschooling, one of the most important things is good books. Read to your kids, read to them. Every day.

Aby Rinella: Right. And we also know that you can no longer just browse the libraries like you used to.

Yvette Hampton: Right. Yes.

Aby Rinella: And let kids pick out books. And I know so many homeschool moms are asking what books we can or cannot read. So, what an incredible resource that you can just trust to go to.

Yvette Hampton: Yep. Yep. And both of these books were written many years ago, and so you’re not going to find books that have been written in the last, even 10 years. Let’s see, Books Children Love, the first printing of it was 1987.

Aby Rinella: Oh, wow.

Yvette Hampton: So, we’re talking about books that have been around for quite some time. And not just classics, but just really good children’s literature, fantastic books. And Honey for a Child’s Heart, this came out in 1969 originally, and then the copy that I have was… Is dated 1989. So, these are just great resources that, really, I think every homeschool family should have those. And I know I’m going fast here, but again, I’ll link to all these. My two absolute favorite books on parenting are Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp

Aby Rinella: Yes. You’re stealing all of mine.

Yvette Hampton: I’m sorry, Aby.

[laughter]

Yvette Hampton: You’re going to have to make up some others. Shepherding A Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp, and then Ginger Hubbard, who’s a very, very sweet, good friend of mine, she’s got two. I Can’t Believe You Just Said That! is her newest one and that’s been out for about two years.

Aby Rinella: And if you say Don’t Make Me Count to Three!, you have stolen almost my whole list.

Yvette Hampton: Okay, then, I won’t tell you my second, but from the same author, Ginger Hubbard.

[laughter]

Aby Rinella: You can. No, say it. Tell us. Tell us.

Yvette Hampton: Oh, it’s called Don’t Make Me Count to Three! .

[laughter]

Aby Rinella: This is how you know these are quality books because our lists look almost exactly alike.

Yvette Hampton: Are they? And we didn’t even talk about this beforehand.

Aby Rinella: I know. Isn’t that crazy?

Yvette Hampton: Yeah. Yeah, that is awesome. So, yeah, Don’t Make Me Count to Three!, that’s a book I read early, early in my… When my oldest was probably one or two years old, and she’s now 14. So, that’s an absolute must read. That, and Don’t Make Me Count to Three! and Shepherding a Child’s Heart, those two, if you could pick any two books on parenting.

And Israel Wayne has a new parenting book that just came out as well, called Raising Them Up: Parenting for Christians is what it’s called.

Aby Rinella: And we just did a podcast with him.

Aby Rinella: That is another phenomenal parenting… Those were definitely my top two parenting books, Don’t Make Me Count to Three! and Shepherding a Child’s Heart. Alright, do you have more on your list or can I give the measly two I have left that you haven’t stolen from me?

[laughter]

Yvette Hampton: Well, okay. This… I don’t know, I’m just bragging about this because I’m really excited, I just discovered for free… Well, I didn’t discover them for free. We had a book sale for our local homeschool support group. And I have wanted for years to get the McGuffey’s Readers, and someone put the entire box set on the free table for someone to just be blessed by them. And I felt like I had won the lottery, literally, because I got this whole boxed set, which I have wanted these… I’ve wanted this set for years and years and years.

Yvette Hampton: And these are the original McGuffey’s Readers. These were written in the 1800s. And the funny thing is, is we rarely watch TV, we don’t have cable to watch, but on Amazon, we will sometimes watch Little House on the Prairie, and these are what the kids read on Little House. And so, my daughter, she was so excited because she was like, “Those are the books that they read on Little House.” And literally, she’s reading them now and she’s loving them, and you know what’s so amazing is, guess what, they talk about God.

Aby Rinella: Oh, constantly.

Yvette Hampton: And they have Scripture.

Aby Rinella: Yeah, isn’t that amazing?

Yvette Hampton: Yeah, they’re all about morals and values in the Bible. And these are the books that they actually used.

Aby Rinella: For school.

Yvette Hampton: To learn how to read. They used them for spelling, for everything. And so, anyway, so those are great. If you guys can get your hands on them, you should.

Aby Rinella: That’s exciting.

Yvette Hampton: McGuffey’s Readers, they’re amazing. So, that’s the end of my list. Aby, do you have anything left? [chuckle]

Aby Rinella: Well, do I have anything… That’s the question, do I have anything left? because you… She took that one first. No, it’s actually, I kid you not, of my whole entire list, I only have two left.

Yvette Hampton: Oh, no.

Aby Rinella: That means those are amazing books. One is Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie, and it is… I read this book before the beginning of every single school year.

Yvette Hampton: Love it.

Aby Rinella: And I just keep re-reading it because it puts you back where you need to be when you start. 

And we have talked about about time management. So many homeschool moms, “Let’s talk about time management, let’s talk about curriculum, let’s talk about this,” but this book will put you back to where your heart needs to be before you even start looking into those things. And last but not least, the one I have on my list that you didn’t, but you’re going to go, “Oh yeah, that one too,” is by Todd Wilson, called Lies Homeschooling Moms Believe.

Yvette Hampton: Oh, yeah. I haven’t read that.

Aby Rinella: And that’s a fun one because it’s written from a dad’s point of view, and Todd Wilson is absolutely hilarious. And what’s really great about it is you read these things and you’re like, “I’m not the only one that believed that lie?” So, it debunks a lot of the lies that we as moms tell ourselves. So, that’s another really great one. So, that’s really… That’s really all I have on my list after you stole all of those from me.

[chuckle]

Yvette Hampton: And I thought of one more.

Aby Rinella: Oh, you… Okay.

Yvette Hampton: Just one more. By Durenda Wilson, The Unhurried Homeschooler.

Aby Rinella: Oh, that is a…

Yvette Hampton: That’s another good one.

Aby Rinella: That was like the precedent to teaching for… Yeah, absolutely. The Unhurried Homeschooler.

Yvette Hampton: Yes. And that’s a short one too. That’s a super easy read.

Aby Rinella: Yes. I would say that one would be one that you read every single fall too, or in the summer. That’s a yearly and annual reader to get your heart back where you need to be.

Yvette Hampton: Yes.

Aby Rinella: In fact, put that one almost to the top… I mean, put it to the top, Durenda Wilson’s Unhurried Homeschooler.

Yvette Hampton: Yeah. So now, go out and buy all of these books and read them all before the next school year!

[laughter]

Aby Rinella: No pressure.

Yvette Hampton: You will be blessed. I promise. [chuckle] You may not…

Aby Rinella: Manage your time well.

Yvette Hampton: Yeah, manage your time well. You may not get to make dinner or do laundry or anything, but you will be well read, and you will know all you need to know about home homeschooling. 

Aby Rinella: You won’t have time to homeschool, but you’ll know all about it!

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Photo by David Lezcano on Unsplash

Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

Organizing the Mayhem – Homeschool Organization, with Kristi Clover

For the first episode of the third season of The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast Yvette Hampton and Aby Rinella sat down with Kristi Clover to talk discuss a subject that most of us consider at the start of every year, ORGANIZATION. Kristi is a master organizer and has just released a fabulous book on the subject, that is sure to be an encouragement and valuable resource to you, M.O.M. – Master Organizer of Mayhem.

Kristi offers 10 simple rules to help parents manage the chaos of their homes on a daily basis. From learning routines and habits to creating systems to stay organized, she dives into the most common areas moms struggle with in their homes.

In addition to Kristi being a home organization and efficiency expert, she’s also an author, a speaker, and the host of the Simply Joyful Podcast. Her passion is to encourage families to find simple ways to bring more joy into their home and life. She loves to share about her adventures in motherhood and home life through a variety of media that you can find at KristiClover.com. As a mom of five, she’s never short on opportunities to “practice what she preaches” in the realm of home organization and #momlife. Kristi lives in San Diego with her husband, Steve, and their five children. Be sure to connect with Kristi online for an extra dose of encouragement. She’s @KristiClover on most social media networks. Enjoy this transcript of their conversation.

Yvette:                 Hey, everyone. This is Yvette Hampton. Welcome back to the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. As always we have such an exciting guest on today. I also have my amazing cohost with me again today, Aby Rinella, We are talking to Kristi Clover, mom of moms, homeschool mom of homeschool moms, and part of the speaker line up for the upcoming, Homegrown Generation Family Expo. She is so much fun. You guys are going to love this episode with her. We are talking about her new book, M.O.M.is that what you actually call it Kristi? M.O.M?

Listen to Kristi Clover on The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast.

Kristi Clover:                 Yeah, M-O-M – Master Organizer of Mayhem. There it is.

Yvette:                         M.O.M. – Master Organizer of Mayhem. I love that title. I love the cover of the book. It is so much fun. It’s so eye-catching when you first look at it. It’s got a bunch of Legos all over it. So, welcome. And this is a great time, because your book just came out and I’m excited about it and want to tell people all about it. And Aby, thanks for joining us again today.

Aby Rinella:                  I’m excited to be here. Organization is my Love Language, so I’m super excited to be on here.

Kristi:                           I love it. Let me speak love to you today.

Yvette:                         It’s the eighth Love Language, huh?

Aby:                             Oh, it is.

Kristi:                           Oh, yeah! No, totally. I laughed, because I was so stressed out at one point because, I shared with you guys before we started that we started this home renovation. My friends are like, “You cannot call it remodel. You’re down to studs.” I’m like, “Great.” At the same time, we’re doing book launch, so I just, I have moments where I’m like, “Oh, find a happy place. Find a happy place.”

Kristi:                           I started doing this deep declutter, and my husband was laughing. He’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “I feel really happy right now.” He’s like, “I’m just going to walk away.” I’m like, “Yeah, you do that. I’m really happy right now.” I was in this delirious moment. He was like, “Okay.”

Yvette:                         Oh my gosh. It’s like nesting, right? Because, instead of birthing a child, you’re birthing a brand new home.

Backstage Pass members can watch the full video of this interview – over 40 minutes!

Kristi:                           Yes! And a book. This is not recommended. I’m like, “I brought this upon myself because I called it Master Organizer of Mayhem”, so the Lord was like, “Ha-ha-ha, let’s bring a little more mayhem into your life”. And school, and homeschooling.

Aby:                             Like when you pray for patience and you’re like “oh, I shouldn’t have done that”.

Kristi:                           Oh, I don’t do that anymore.

Yvette:                         So very quickly Kristi, tell us about your family, because you’ve got some kiddos, and a husband, and people you like.

Kristi:                           Oh yes. Just a few kiddos. I love it because the homeschool community, I can say this: We only have five kids. Here in San Diego, people are like “you have what! Are you crazy? Do you know how that works?”. And we’re like yeah. And I have a funny story about that in the book actually. Someone here in San Diego who asked that to me. I was in a very hormonal state. I was pregnant with our fifth and yeah I had a very snarky response.

Kristi:                           So, Steve and I have been married for 22 years. We just celebrated our 22nd anniversary. We have five kids. Grant is the oldest, he’s 17. Then Blake is 16, Wade is 11, Ashlyn is 8, and Kaitlin is 6. So when I was pregnant with Kaitlin, it’s socially acceptable to continue to have more kids if you have all of one gender. So when I was pregnant with Ashlyn, everyone was like, “Aww, did you get your girl?”. And Mama Bear, mom of boys was like, “I did but I love my boys.” Leave me alone!

Kristi:                           When I was pregnant with Kaitlyn, I had the gentleman who decided to hit me on a day when I was very tired and hormonal. And he looked at the three boys and Ashlyn and he’s like, “You do know how that works, right?”. I’m like, “Yeah and you know what they say, practice makes perfect.”

Kristi:                           So sorry I went a little rated-PG there. But yeah it was awesome. And he is like “Ahhh.” And the woman behind him was blushing. The woman at the cash register was laughing so hard. So, I’m trying to get the kids out of the store and all of my older kids were like, “What does that mean? What do you mean?” And I was like, “Nothing! Nothing, mommy shouldn’t have said that.” Don’t speak when you’re pregnant, I don’t know.

Check out Kristi’s other excellent books:
Homeschool Basics: How to Get Started, Keep Motivated, and Bring Out the Best in Your Kids

Sanity Savers for Moms: Simple Solutions for a More Joy-filled Life

The Scoop on Scope: Periscope Pointers for Bloggers, Beginners, and Beyond 

During the interview, Kristi also mentions Kathi Lipp’s books on organization:

Clutter Free: Quick and Easy Steps to Simplifying Your Space

Clutter Free – What Jesus Has to Say About Your Stuff

Yvette:                         Oh goodness. Well come to the South, where lots of people have lots of kids. And it is totally socially acceptable. And we’re the family that only has two kids. We don’t drive a mini van, and what else don’t we do, probably lots of homeschooling things.

Kristi:                           We don’t fit in a mini van anymore, because my teenagers are 6’2″! So they won’t fit in the car very well, and everyone is too scrunched for a mini van. So we’re literally at the stage where we have an SUV, but everyone is trying to talk us into a mega sprinter thing that fits 12 and ya know 10 bikes and a camper.

Aby:                             It’s got a camper in it. You can sleep in there.

Kristi:                           We’re just gonna drive a motor home.

Don’t miss Kristi Clover at the 2020 Homegrown Generation Family Expo. You can enjoy this live, interactive, online conference from the comfort of your home. Coming February 17-21, Lifetime Registration for the Expo is just $20.

Yvette:                         So much fun. So these multiple kids that you have, that you’ve practiced for, for many years. And you now have a perfect child. This has been, I’m sure one of the many things that has caused you to write this book, called “M.O.M.– Master Organizer of Mayhem”. I love the title of it. Tell us about your book and help us, moms who are trying to figure out. Because I know this is a difficult thing for any mom, not just homeschool mom. But homeschool mom when you add real life and then homeschooling, it can get really crazy and really chaotic and really stressful. So tell us about your book.

Kristi:                           he book is really fun because it started when I actually only had two kids. Way back, like you know go in that time machine, like flashback, whatever it’s called. The Wayback, so if we go back in time to when I just had two kids. I think Grant and Blake were only four and three at the time, I was asked to speak at our women’s event. So I was like okay what would you like me to talk on? “Can you please talk about home organization?” And I remember thinking, Okay, that’s weird, I know I’m a little, I love it and I thrive on it but I’m not perfect at it.

Kristi:                           So I sat down and I really tried to think through. What gives people the perception that I’m so organized? I started asking friends too, why do people think… Because anytime I asked a girlfriend, what are some descriptions of me, what do you feel are some of my strengths? Organization always came up. And I’m like you guys have been to my house, it is messy sometimes. I feel like when I’m overwhelmed, I do, I let things go. And that’s okay. And what I’ve learned is that is absolutely the right thing to do, because if you really truly need a break. Unless you’re really crazy like me and need to get in there and get a project done, and that’s wonderful.

Kristi:                           What I discovered is, it’s my systems. So I would have people over for a play date one day and the house would be torn apart with all the little kids. And the next day, I would be hosting an event and people would be like, “What happened here? Were you up all night cleaning?” I’m like, “No, I just put things away and I just have this little system for doing this.” And they’re like, “Explain that.”

Kristi:                           And on top of all of that my husband has been traveling for 20 years of our marriage. I think when people were trying to figure out how I did things. That was kinda where it started. So long story short, I sat down and I wrote out this talk “M.O.M – Master Organizer of Mayhem”, and I came up with 10 rules. And they’re kind of like this foundation for things that I’ve noticed have to be in place for me to feel most organized. It doesn’t mean that you have to have everything going on at the same time. But they are key components to how to be organized.

Kristi:                           Decluttering is one and asking for help. So there’s a lot of these core foundational things that I put in the book. And what’s fun is, that from 12-13 years ago when I first gave this talk, the rules are exactly the same. I changed the order, but the rules are exactly the same. So it’s been neat to see how when continuing to apply them as my family has grown they have continued to work.

Kristi:                           And the second phase of the book is actually a lot. I share some systems that I put in place as well.

Yvette:                         I definitely want to talk about the 10 foundational rules that you have set. But you also talk in there about setting a good foundation first. How do we do that as moms?

Kristi:                           Well, a big key part is, a good foundation is really looking at all the 10 rules and looking through it. But the key is, I feel like we need to start be redefining organization. Because unlike 12 years ago, we have so much being thrown at us daily. We have an onslaught from TV shows. HGTV has wonderful shows, that I personally love watching. But you know when you look at a house that Joanna Gains or the Property Brothers, or whoever it is that is doing the space, they’ve completely cleaned it out, remodeled it and made it look perfect.

Kristi:                           We’ve got Instagram that is so focused on these beautiful rooms. There’s Facebook, Pinterest, all these things that we didn’t use to have. I mean Martha Stewart was my only person breathing down my neck, “Be perfect like me!”.

Kristi:                           That’s what we feel like. So often people associate organization with perfection. That’s not it at all. Organization to me is creating more efficiency in your home life, so you can maximize your time with your family. As well as for other priorities. So I like to help people figure out what their priorities are, so that it gives you that motivation, because everyone need to know their Why.

Kristi:                           If you’re totally happy in your mess and chaos, the God bless you! You be happy in your mess and chaos. If it’s not effecting you or anyone else in your family, and you have your systems down. Then that’s working! But if you are feeling stressed and people in your home… I have had some moms come up to me like I need this! My husband and I are fine with it but, they might have a special needs child who needs structure. So they have had to learn to get organized. Much like I had to learn to get organized.

Yvette:                         Let me ask you a question about that, though because I have often to friend’s houses and I have friends on both ends of the spectrum. You know, those whose houses are always neat and tidy and they have systems in place. They have an order of their life and typically those are the people who like to purge. Of course, I’m sure that’s one of your 10 rules.

Kristi:                           No, it’s not my gifting, decluttering is. I have friends that are very gifted at it.

Yvette:                         I’ve gotten really good at decluttering. We just simply don’t have space. That’s a whole different topic.

Yvette:                         But I have friends that who have just very organized, clean homes, and I have other friends who their house is always just a mess, all the time. I feel like, both of those friends, but typically those friends whose houses are typically messy. As soon as you walk through the door, they might say that they are comfortable with it, saying we’re okay, we’re okay living like this. But as soon as you walk through that door, they apologize for the mess in their house, almost always. “I’m sorry my house is a mess.” And I’m like look, I did not come to see your house, I came to see you. I really don’t care if your house is a mess. But I know because of their response that it is something that is stressful to them.

Yvette:                         And a lot of people simply don’t know how to declutter, how to organize, how to get rid of the chaos in their lives. Let’s go through some of the 10 foundational rules. Aby what are you thinking?

Aby:                             I’m thinking before we get into that, what I love that you said is going back to, we’re all homeschool moms here. And I love how you said it’s not a one size fits all. It really is what works best for your family. What are your husband’s needs. I might be okay with one thing. I just love how you’re saying it. We’re all created uniquely and differently, and so what’s chaos for you might not be chaos for me. That’s what I’m really liking about the direction your book goes, it is not a “you have to do this the way the Clover household does this in order to be the exact mom and wife Kristi is”. But its really just some basic fundamental concepts that really can work in anybody’s home.

Aby:                             That’s like there’s not one sized box curriculum for every single homeschool family. It’s something unique for each of us. So I’m super excited about that then because this book is for everyone.

Kristi:                           It is, and that’s why my first rule is glean and tweak. Because we can learn from other people and learn from Pinterest and learn from other books out there, you can learn from this book. But unless you tweak it for the season that you’re in, and your personal family… I have friends that, if I cleaned and organized my house and you walked into my house and said “Wow this is perfect!”. I still have friends that would walk in and be like “This is stressing me out”. There’s people who can’t handle anything on the counter. I’m all about let’s put a knickknack here, not to an extreme, I’ve seen them where it’s a little extreme. I have friends that, they just need that. But I don’t have to live according to that.

Kristi:                           My husband likes clean counters, but he just doesn’t want all the Kristi piles there. That is what it is. And now my children have learned how to have their own piles and it’s not good.

Yvette:                         You’ve talked about your first rule, because you have 10 foundational rules that can help moms figure out how to get rid of the chaos in their lives. And the first one you’ve mentioned is glean and tweak, let’s talk about some of the others.

Kristi:                           Okay so it can be anything and 10 rules makes about 2/3 of the book. So the 10 rules are glean and tweak, figuring out your top priorities. In that chapter what I think is important is that I go at it from two different angles. I want you to figure out personally, what is your schedule look like? What are your priorities as a family? Prioritize based on that, schedule your life around that. Because the problem is, if you don’t have cushion in your life and you’re saying yes to everything, you won’t have time to get organized. It’s going to continue to sit at the back as a back burner thing.

Kristi:                           I try to talk people into giving themselves some margin, not making their family “go-go-go”. I feel like as parents, especially homeschool parents, we are horrible at this. We feel like we have to give our kids everything in the maybe 18 years, 17-18-19 years we will have them in our house, in our schools. So we feel like oh we need to give them every experience possible. Oh my goodness, I think about my own personal life and I have learned more as an adult than I ever did as a kid. And not to knock my education, which by the way was public school. They will continue to learn and grow, we don’t have to put it all in the first few years of their lives, so it’s okay to say no to a lot of things.

Kristi:                           So I try to talk people into saying no to as many things as possible, saying yes to things that are going to help your family thrive the most. And then, looking at it from the standpoint of what are your house priorities. So what’s driving you crazy in your house. If you’re married talk to your spouse, what is driving him crazy.

Aby:                             It’s all my son’s room.

Kristi:                           Everyone of us would say it’s my son’s room.

Aby:                             Just had to throw that in there.

Kristi:                           You do it, and you know my advice is, close the door.

Aby:                             Oh I love that! Really? Until the smell starts to waif out. Then the smell comes out. I like that, just shut the door. That is freeing Kristi. I feel like you just freed me and every other mom like me.

Kristi:                           Well, I mean you do have to get in there from time to time. It’s truly something that is an eyesore, close the door so you don’t have to deal with it. When you have time, make time make that your [inaudible 00:16:36]

Kristi:                           One of the other rules is tackle your worst project. And if that’s honestly what’s driving everyone crazy in your house. Then you have to go through and help him declutter. And the key with kids is you have to teach them the systems. You have to teach them where to put things. I always laugh because moms will go through and they’ll organize the whole house but they’re like “Oh my kids leave it messy!”. And I’m like do they know where toys go though? “No I have to help them”. I’m like teach them where the toys go, or you don’t have a system.

Kristi:                           You don’t create systems for other people based on how you process things. You have to create systems for the people in your house that work for them. So that’s the crazy thing, you can be the most logical person in the house, in the world, and if it doesn’t work for them. Everyone’s different, I have a very neat child. I can trust that his room is, in fact if we have too much pounding and grinding and whatever they’re doing down below me happening in the house, I go to his room to do any kind of video or audio, because I always know that its always going to be perfect. And that is just him, that’s the way that he is wired. He thrives in that situation. He knows how to take care of it. Then I have other children. They don’t quite get it.

Aby:                             And I think that’s where the master organizer comes in, because you’re the master of finding what works for each kid. What are the systems that work for them, not just what is the system that works for me. I appreciate that, because my system is obviously the best system in the house. But each of my kids have a different system, so I like how you said that we need to find what systems work for them and then implement that into their space.

Kristi:                           Yeah, and I literally just ran into that in our own home, because I have a chore system that totally works for me. I know visually, like that is what they’re supposed to do, but for my little kids, it’s just too complicated for them.

Yvette:                         You talked about teaching our kids how to do this alongside of us, because we’ve talked about this with Ginger Hubbard, and we talked about coming alongside a child and training them on how to do things. Because often times as moms and dads, we just assume when we tell our child to go clean their room that they know how to do it, because we know how to do it so it should make sense to them. When we say go load the dishwasher or do the laundry we just assume that because we know it they understand it. And I think that’s oftentimes what causes so much frustration between us and our children is that we are saying go do this and they’re like No. Then they don’t do it and then they get reprimanded for it because they’re not obeying. In reality its sometimes maybe because they’re lazy, often times I think it’s because they simply really have not been taught how to do it.

Yvette:                         And I mean it may be with some kids, you know you said you have your son, he’s just wired that way. He is, just by nature, an organizer and he’s very clean. And I have one of those. I have my oldest, she loves to organize things and she does it for fun. And my youngest, not so much. She’s not uncontrollable but we have to come alongside them and say let me show you how to fold your clothes and how to put them in your drawer. Let me show you how to hang your shirts. And then practice it with them, don’t just show them one time. We can often, take it off the hanger, okay put it back on the hanger now. You can even make it into a game. Let’s fold the clothes again, now let’s throw them all over the floor and let’s refold them and put them back in the drawer. You know two or three times so you know that they understand what it is you’re asking them to do.

Yvette:                         And then if they do it right then you really know, okay you really understand this. And then if they don’t obey then that’s a different topic.

Aby:                             I think that’s what’s great about homeschool moms too, we have all day to do this. They’re not showing up at the front door after school and sports at 5 o’clock and we’re trying to get dinner. So, we’re very blessed that we can bring them alongside of us as we are cleaning the kitchen, as we’re cleaning up the toys and they get to do it with us. What are some of the things that you outsource to your children, that you delegate to your kids to do in your home?

Kristi:                           Oh you’re going to love this, this one is my secret one, no kids at the door, when my kids read this someday they’re going to be like “What!”. My number one tip is work yourself out of a job that you hate. So my kids learned how to do the dishes and the trash, because I don’t like dishes and trash. They also learned how to do laundry. Because number one, dishes and laundry those are crazy things that continue to repeat and repeat, so it made sense for them to learn that. Those are my three least favorite things to do. I am fine, I’m weird, we have a little floor vac that we use on the floors not just on our carpet but on our actual hard floors. It’s a little therapeutic for me, I kind of like it. Counters, I like cleaning them, I don’t mind those jobs. And of course, because I’m finding such joy in them my kids are like “Can I do it too!?” And I’m like no, go do the dishes first.

Kristi:                           We all have those little things and it really depends on number one, what do you need to have done around the house? What do you need help with? And I wrote, I think it’s just a blog post, but we happened to use a hashtag that said chore systems. And I laughed because I had two people, I think it might be the same person with two handles on Instagram, we’re like “That is child labor, you should not be making your children do the work that you should be doing.” And I didn’t respond, because that’s where my snark thing just comes in.

Yvette:                         You should have responded with “Practice makes perfect!”

Aby:                             That should be your hashtag.

Kristi:                           They live here so they have to.

Yvette:                         It’s a life skill.

Kristi:                           It is. My daughter cleans the bathrooms and she earned that, because she told me, “Mom, I feel like the bathroom could be cleaned more often.” And there was a little corner that I missed, and I haven’t cleaned the bathroom since she said that, ever. That became her job, and blessedly she’s a little OCD so I have to clean this bathroom in town.

Yvette:                         Oh I love that.

Kristi:                           I also think you cue in, you’re like if that’s bothering you, to your child, that is a job that you can take over in the household. And if you can’t find your socks, you just became the sock folder.

Kristi:                           I laugh because I don’t lose socks. I’ve never totally understood that lost sock thing, until having kids. It wasn’t even the two older boys, it was when it just got crazy and one of my kiddos, he is, we call him “Mr. Fun” because he is all about fun. And he does not intentionally disobey, it’s just that if something fun and shiny is happening, then he needs to be a part of it. So, it’s like we have to make sure we are helping him to narrow his vision, no wait finish this and then move on to the next thing.

Kristi:                           So it’s really hard. So yeah, I don’t remember what the original question was at some point. Help them to find what needs to be done and what do you want to work yourself out of a job on. And I loved your point too Aby, is you know seeing what they naturally have a tendency toward or what they are bothered by.

Yvette:                         Since you were just talking about laundry, I know you have a few systems for laundry in your home. Share those with us, because I know that for homeschool moms, especially if you have multiple kids, that can just be a drag. I mean it really can consume so much of your time

Aby:                             Because when it’s done it starts again.

Yvette:                         Yes.

Kristi:                           Right.

Aby:                             I’m so excited.

Yvette:                         Okay ready?

Aby:                             Yeah, I got my pen, I got my paper, I’m ready.

Kristi:                           Well I have an entire chapter on my hacks, but I will say this, that with laundry you do have to figure out what works best for you. I have heard so many different ways. There’s so many ways to do laundry as far as some people say, do a little bit everyday, that would drive me bonkers. I want to have a break from doing laundry. I cannot do it every day, then it really would pile up because if you get behind or life throws you any kind of a curve ball, your laundry is going to be missed.

Kristi:                           So what works for our family, especially since we have 7 people, is that everyone gets a day of the week, and my husband and I have one day together. I still do both of our laundry together, because he was traveling so much. Now, he’s not traveling. He’ll do the laundry sometimes, but even then I’m like oh wait I’ll just do it. I know what doesn’t go in the dryer and I know that this is how this is going to work.

Kristi:                           So, backing up a little, each person has their own day. What’s beautiful about that it creates a natural accountability, because if you don’t do your laundry and get it out of the washer, dryer and get it into your room to at least start the folding process. Someone else is coming behind you and your laundry is going to get moved, because they are ready to come and do it. So that has worked really well for us.

Yvette:                         That is brilliant.

Kristi:                           Because of that natural accountability. My other thing that is key, if you are doing that kind of laundry.

Kristi:                           So I can even talk through, I have a SMART, SMART is one of my little acronyms for five laundry hacks. So the M in SMART is mesh bag, they should be your best friend. Because if anything needs to go from the washer to like being hung up, you put it in a mesh bag. So that if somebody is moving your clothes from the washer to the dryer, the rule in the house is mesh bags do not go in the dryer. I do that with my husband and I too, so that if he is doing a load, he knows that doesn’t go in the dryer. So it’s not just for delicates.

Aby:                             Oh my gosh. I’m so excited about this. So for example, say Joey has a Tuesday day, as soon as he dries, he folds, he puts away his own clothes, he’s not doing like everybody’s clothes on Tuesday right? It’s his own clothes on Tuesday?

Kristi:                           It’s his own clothes on Tuesday.

Aby:                             So then, if on Friday he fails to do that special shirt, you say hey sorry you wait until Tuesday?

Kristi:                           No. Well…

Aby:                             Like you can cut in? You can share if you need?

Yvette:                         It’s called Laundry Grace.

Kristi:                           Laundry Grace, that’s right. And we aren’t sticklers on the day, all the time. So like if we just got back from Hawaii, we got back on a Sunday, you gotta be flexible. There’s days when suddenly we have three people that need to get their laundry done, because life has been crazy, we were out all day and didn’t have a chance to get laundry going. Then you know, we’re going to have to double up.

Aby:                             How young do you start this? Is your six year old doing it?

Kristi:                           My six year old is doing her laundry. She still needs help with the folding and putting away. She can do it but she doesn’t do it all the time, because she gets flustered, it takes her awhile. And Everyone’s different. My oldest, he does it all.

Kristi:                           One of my other things is, I truly believe in small loads. The larger the load, the more apt you are to let it sit there and not get it done. So it’s really important to have smaller loads. Which is why, again, having a day, that means everyone should be doing their clothes weekly. So my oldest, he was getting in the habit of doing huge loads, because of course his clothes are big too. He’s not in itty bitty little clothes anymore. So he was in the habit of waiting two weeks to do his if he just got busy. What was happening is, his clothes just weren’t getting as clean. And I had to explain to him again, small loads, clothes get cleaner. Everyone tells me I’m crazy to get my laundry done all in one day. But I’m like washer, dryer, fold really quick, washer, dryer, fold really quick. And then I pile it in order, so I’m literally just putting it into the drawer.

Aby:                             If you’re doing everyone has a day, you’re just doing it once a week. So it’s not stacking up, because you know that it’s just a once a week. That’s brilliant. Whats another, okay one more laundry hack before we have to move in.

Kristi:                           One more laundry hack, okay. So this is my rule breaker laundry hack for kids, have them wash everything on cold. I don’t buy a lot of white, if they have anything that’s white, they throw it in my whites divider. And I say white because people normally do, whites, brights and darks, but we actually do cold, warm and hot as our divider. So it’s kinda two laundry hacks. Divide by temperature and have all your kids wash their clothes on cold. If they have items that need to be washed more thoroughly, then you just do a separate wash with that, or throw them in one more time. Because quite frankly, I need to make sure they know what they are doing and if I have them, who knows if that black sock is going to sneak in with those white tank tops or whatever it is. I just don’t deal with that so everything gets washed on cold in our house, not my clothes but the little kids. I mean my oldest, sorry I mean my second oldest. he does do two loads, because he does have enough white clothes that he’s separating those.

Yvette:                         Let’s talk about a few more of the rules that you talk about in the book. So we’ve talked about laundry, we’ve talked about glean and tweak, we’ve talked about priorities.

Kristi:                           Well here’s a big one. The buzz is always on decluttering and everyone’s talking about KonMari method, and you know Marie Kondo. Her little spark joy, which I think is fun, if you hate something then why are you keeping it. But I don’t love, I mean my plunger does not spark joy for me but it is a necessity. I wrote that somewhere and I had someone, I have interesting people who follow me on social media, because this person was just like, “but my plunger sparks joy when I need it.” I’m like, no even when I need it I’m like, blah.

Aby:                             Yeah, the whole situation, there’s no joy in any of that situation.

Kristi:                           I don’t understand that, but it’s all good. My approach with the decluttering process, I call it a Four Leaf Method, because we have four categories, mostly. It’s the traditional what are you going to keep, so what’s gonna go back into your home. That’s when you want to make sure you’re categorizing to organize those things that you are keeping and keeping like things together. Your toss pile, things that just need to go in the trash. Whether it is just trash or toys that are broken that really don’t need to go anywhere other than in the trash can. Then also, we have a sell pile, so if there’s big items that need to be sold, those are going to be that sell pile.

Kristi:                           ut the key pile for us is, the blessings pile. The blessing pile is the traditional donation pile. But what’s helped us, it’s like some mental road block that changed for everyone in the house. That if this item is not useful or a blessing to us, then maybe it can bless someone else. It helps when you have that thing that you’re like, “But I spent money on that! I should keep it.” Why? If you spent money on that and it’s in great condition, see if a friend want it. And if they don’t want it, give it to Salvation Army.

Kristi:                           Because I’ve heard stories, in fact it was Kathi Lipp, she’s another organizer. She’s written a lot of books on organization and decluttering, and has another book coming out, I think in February on the topic. And I heard her speak recently, and she talked about how when she was really going through a hard time, she went into a Goodwill or Salvation Army, and her son really needed a new pair of shes and he was really bummed because he wanted this one kind of shoe. And they happened to find, in Salvation Army, the right size of the exact shoe. She was like it was God’s blessing on us. I think, that if that person hadn’t taken the time to donate that. You’re kinda giving God room to be like, “I can use your stuff.”

Kristi:                           If you don’t need your stuff, get rid of it. So if it’s not doing me any good in our house. Then let the lord use it somewhere else. And who knows, if it’s in horrible condition, maybe Salvation Army is just going to throw it away. But still, I just think it’s important, and it helps my kids to realize if we’re not playing with it, we can bless somebody else. It’s just neat to see how just changing that mentality of, this can bless someone else. So like when we got rid of a ton of our baby clothes, I literally sent an email out to all of my friends and we made this mountain, it was taller than most of my kids, of baby clothes. And my friends came over, and we had all of these babies that were being born, and so people were just coming over and grabbing them. It was great and it was fun and it was crazy, at church I see everybody in my kids’ clothes, and I’m like oh that’s so sweet. It was just fun to see them being reused.

Aby:                             I love that. I think it’s good for kids too because, like with my son, we talked to him. Well, he’s a boy so he’s hard on things. And we talk to him a lot too, when you’re done with things, we want to be stewards of the things that God has given us. Because when you’re done with it… We don’t want to give anyone else our junk, but if we’re stewards with our things. Then when you’re done with that, it’s in really great condition to bless somebody else. So it also, just inspires us and encourages us to take care of the things God has given us. Even if we don’t see them long term for our family. Then they can bless another family.

Yvette:                         And I love what that teaches kids, because we want to teach our kids that they can be content no matter what. And I think often times, especially in our society, we feel like our kids need more and more, we have to get them the newest, and the best and the biggest thing that’s out. That’s why Black Friday, that’s why people stand at in line for 24 hours before the big sale or even longer sometimes, even days, a week! It’s crazy to me. Why are we teaching our kids that? Be content in all things. And when we show them that the things that they have, that they are no longer using can be a blessing to someone else, I think that’s huge. And we have done that with our kids as well, since they were really little. What friend do you have that this might be a blessing to, or often just donating it, because it’s stuff we don’t use.

Yvette:                         I know moms, not that I’ve never done this, I have done this before, but I know moms that will sneak things out. But then I think you’re missing that opportunity to teach your kids to be a blessing to others. And not just to be a blessing to others, but to realize that they don’t need to have all these things to make them happy and to have joy in their lives.

Aby:                             Say, I’m storing up our treasures in Heaven.

Yvette:                         Yes. We have a few minutes left, so lets run through just a few others and then what we don’t get through, of course people just need to get the book.

Kristi:                           You need to get the book, because it’s so fun. Oh thank you. It was so much fun to write. It was fun to tell all my stories. I tried to make it playful and fun and just like we’re sitting down and having a cup of coffee. That’s kind of my approach to writing, I try to make every book I write feel like that.

Kristi:                           Okay, so a few other rules. So this is, a big one, especially for moms, especially for homeschool moms. One of the stories I share in the book on this rule has everything to do with a homeschool moment, and that is ask for help. I think so many moms try to be super heroes and do everything in their own strength, or even if they’re leaning on the Lord, he will give you strength but there’s just not enough time in the day to get everything done. So I like to encourage people to ask for help, and when people offer help you have to say yes.

Kristi:                           So one of the stories I share in the book is all about when we just had our 4th, and I had a bunch of friends who had mommy’s helpers coming in. And I’m like no I can handle this. And Steve was traveling like crazy and we were homeschooling, it was just so much, and I was just kind of at my wits end. I was trying to get Ashlyn, my 4th to sleep and she just wasn’t sleeping well. I just have a technique that use with the kids to, sleep training, to get them to [inaudible 00:38:01] to sleep, and it is hard on me the first several nights, trying to get them to kind of recreate that sleep cycle. I think she had just gone through a teething thing or something, but I was exhausted.

Kristi:                           So I decided to do what so many of us do is, ask for prayer. “Please pray for me. I have a definite need but I’m not going to say it. I’m just going to ask for prayer.” So at the end, I had a girlfriend say, “Kristi, I have a daughter who is trying to earn money for ballet camp, she would love to come over. Where do you live?” We lived three minutes apart and had no clue. It was the biggest blessing. Her daughter would come over and what was so funny is that so often when we are getting, my friends are like, “I have the mommy’s helper come over and play with the kids while I go run errands.” Well that’s fine if I really need the time alone to just get out of the house. But I did that from time to time, but I would often have my mommy’s helpers come over and help with the things I didn’t want to do, so that I could play with my kids.

Kristi:                           You can use help however you want to. And I’m always really upfront too, we have cleaners. I love my cleaners, I help them when they get here, and I help them when they leave. And they come every other week, and the day they come, man by that evening you can’t tell they were here. Unless you’re looking deep, because sometimes it’s just that whole Murphy’s Law of when I have a clean floor someone’s going to spill something. It works no matter if you have cleaners or not, if you clean the floor, your child will spill milk everywhere. It helps because it means, all at one time my house is clean.

Kristi:                           We had a season where we were hosting two different events. I was hosting our Co-Op and I was hosting our Bible study, and my husband was adamant, “I know you. You are going to want the house to be tidy, and you’re going to want it to be clean. We need to have the cleaners come on the off week.” We didn’t have the budget for it, it wasn’t so much a budget, we didn’t want to spend for another cleaning. I just asked them, for this much money will you do the kitchen, the bathrooms, just like the key things I knew I needed done, because I knew that’s where people were going to be. And they were like, “Oh yeah we can do that.” And they were already in our neighborhood.

Kristi:                           So again, ask! If you’re not asking, you’ll never have the solutions. I just think it’s so important for people to see where they could use help and get it.

Yvette:                         Yeah, I think so too. We sadly are out of time, but I would love to continue on and do this for the next two hours, but just tell me to get to work.

Kristi:                           Yes, we have lives. And I have to go get my grays covered. We were joking about that beforehand, I have to go get my hair done because I have spray paint on my grays now.

Yvette:                         Is it like a spray paint you go and get at Lowe’s? You just go to Lowe’s and get some brown spray paint that matches your hair color.

Kristi:                           I laugh because I had a girlfriend tell me about it, and I was like “Are you kidding me?” And she’s like, “No it’s a real thing.” It’s like L’Oreal or something like that, I get it off of Amazon, so yeah. I’ll share the link with you, I’m telling you, you got to do what you have to do. I’m telling you 40 takes over and you got to roll with it.

Yvette:                         I haven’t hit the grays yet, but I have hit the eyesight. I now have to wear reading glasses, which I didn’t have to wear before and I look at small print things like “I can’t see!”. So in order to read your book, I had to put my reading glasses on, but it was well worth it.

Yvette:                         So you guys, get this book.

Aby:                             Where can we get it Kristi?

Yvette:                         It’s fantastic.

Kristi:                           Thank you. You can get it anywhere books are sold. If your physical bookstore doesn’t have it, you can ask them and they will get it in. It’s on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, everywhere. It really is.

Yvette:                         We of course will put links in the show notes to it. It is called, “M.O.M – Master Organizer of Mayhem” by Kristi Clover. And Kristi, thank you. You have written a few other books, I know I would definitely love to have you on the podcast again to talk about some of your other stuff you have going on. You have got all kinds of great encouragements, so I love it. So maybe it won’t take us a year to have you back on, right?

Kristi:                           Life is a little, we’ve been told two more weeks and the house is done.

Aby:                             How long have they been telling you two more weeks?

Kristi:                           They’ve been great. They are keeping right within their timeline, so we’re very happy.

Yvette:                         You are a blessing, thank you for using what God has taught you and shown you to encourage me as a mom and Aby and to encourage all of our listeners. Because you really do have a gift for organization but not just for doing it for yourself but helping others to learn how to do it as well. And it is doable, so for those listening who just feel overwhelmed, truly, honestly get this book because it really will help you. Because it helped me to see things that I just couldn’t see them inside of my little box. So I would read a chapter and go well I can do that. And it really did change my perspective and my habits of doing things around our home. So this is a book that does the same thing as that. So thank you Kristi, you are a blessing.

Ready to take your children back? Stream Schoolhouse Rocked: The Homeschool Revolution for free tonight and learn how. After you have watched the movie, download the Free Homeschool Survival Kit. This free 70+ page resource will give you the encouragement and tools you need to start strong and finish well.