Wise Women...

In my ward, a sister has started what she calls wise women. It's basically emails back and forth on tips that can help us busy women get through our day or help us out in our lives! She emails everyone a specific topic, and then who ever wants to comment on what helps them for this certain topic can do so. She then puts everyone's ideas all together on one email and sends it to everyone so we can read all the creative ideas that are given. So here are some of the ideas that women have sent. Hopefully it will help you in your busy lives!!

1. For me, being a stay-at-home mom, I've split up my laundry days to Mon. Thurs. & Sat. I'd rather do 3 batches every 2-3 days than do 10 loads on a Saturday. I don't do laundry in between, it gives me a chance to get out, relax, enjoy other things and not see a continuous pile of laundry on the sofa everyday. Getting children (and spouse) involved in helping plan meals is another thing that has been successful. It saves me from spending time wondering what everyone "feels like having for dinner" and everyone gets an opportunity to help in the kitchen, at least once during the week, cooking one of their favorite meals. Those are just a couple of ideas that have worked well in our family.

2. Learn not to procrastinate. Don't put things off for tomorrow unless you absolutely cannot do it today. Know your own schedule-what you can work on and when you can work on it, then accomplish it. When you are able to get those little things out of the way, you'll find you have more time to do things you want to do-things you enjoy. It's a lot easier than you think, so if something is nagging you on your mind, just do it (clean that bathroom or put away that pile of clothes). You'll find it was simple, fast, and now the rest of the day is yours!

3. One thing I do is write 2 scriptures for each day on the calendar ahead of time. My children are little and cannot sit for scripture reading, so we choose 1 scripture for morning and 1 for night. I used to just open the Book of Mormon and read a random scripture, but that doesn't always work. (I still want to read from holy writ rather than story books so that my daughter gets into the habit of reading from the Book of Mormon.) So I'd go in the index and look up scriptures by topic ahead of time (that are meaningful to a 4 year-old) and explain them to my daughter.