Get Your House in Order-liness

Get Your House in Order-liness

Without a doubt, there is one workshop that is always well attended each year at conference. This session is not about how we can teach our children to be better writers or more proficient in math. Even reading and writing take a back seat to this topic that is on almost every mother’s radar. What is this all-consuming topic? It is how to be better organized in home and school.

It makes sense that homeschoolers put such an emphasis on orderliness because we clearly see this being a trait of our Heavenly Father. God is a God of order as evidenced in creation. Everything God made He did so with purpose, plan, and design. The only reason we have the field of science is because God has set precepts, patterns, and principles into His design and as long as the earth exists, these realities will never change; we can trust them. This is why we have morning and evening, seedtime and harvest, and ebbs and flows in the oceans.

While orderliness comes more naturally to some personality types than to others, almost all of us struggle in one arena or another when it comes to keeping things neat and organized. Therefore, we have to be intentional lest things get out of hand quickly. The second law of thermodynamics (entropy) reflects this as it states that without some type of intervention, all things move toward disorder. It could be a fire disintegrating from a log into ashes or sugar dissolving into a sticky mess or, on a personal note, it could be what happens to our house, vehicle, or purse over time.

I know there may be some eclectic types who feel they are more productive when they work in loosely systemized manner, but I have found that even here, it is organized chaos, as they know exactly which things are stuck into which piles that are scattered around the room. Still, this represents the exception and not the norm.

Orderliness does several things for us. First, it helps us to save time. Because we know where things are, we don’t spend hours looking for something or running to the store to buy a new one. Personally, I confess that I am always working on organization. When I can’t find something, my wife asks me if I put it back where it belonged the last time I used it. I quip back, “Since I didn’t put it back where it belongs, that is one less place I have to look for it; therefore, I’m saving time!” She doesn’t think it is that funny.

Being organized also helps limit our frustration. A good example of this is the Sunday morning rush. How many times Junior cannot find his belt and Sally is running throughout the house looking for her shoe at the last moment. Dad is upset because they are setting a bad example by being late for church again, and Mom is frantically trying to negotiate between all parties involved. By the time they drive into the church parking lot, they really do need to spend time with Jesus.

A strong sense of orderliness reflects the responsibility of stewardship we have, whether we are talking about things or time. I know men who have five or six identical wrenches, not because they bought them with intention and purpose but because they never put their tools in a proper place after they use them. When they need a particular wrench they can’t find it, so they run to the hardware store to buy a new one. This lacks stewardship on numerous levels: 1) they usually pay more for the wrench since they need it now, 2) they are buying something they already have, and 3) they are out the hour trip to the store to buy it . . . all because they lacked orderliness.

Over the course of March, we are going to talk about orderliness through articles and our Take Fives. We should have some good laughs, and perhaps, we will learn some quick and easy keys to reflect God’s character trait of orderliness.