Evenings are the Pathway

live.

Yesterday, a friend popped by and I invited her to look at something I was sewing down in my basement. My basement was a disaster, but she's a good friend. We laughed that it actually made her a little happy to see someone else's messy spot cause after all, nobody is truly perfect but we think that everybody else is. 


Still, sometimes I feel pretty overwhelmed from the very moment I wake up to a messy house and unpleasant space. It's awful, really. And thinking about that reminded me of the importance of evenings. We discussed this recently on a TJEd forum (and I'm paraphrasing some of Donna's wisdom here), but its so true:

Evenings are a pathway to the mornings. 

You wanna take the narrow path? Or the wide easy road? Well, you all know what happens when we take the wide and easy road, don't you? It leads to, um, destruction actually (Matthew 7:13-14)

So, the narrow path looks like this.

Following dinner (served on time or a little early), everyone can help clean up the kitchen. You don't want to wake up to a sink full of dishes, and besides its a great opportunity for family work. Even the littlest ones can scrape a plate and shake a placemat. Take it from Flylady and shine that sink!

Then, round up the troops for a half-hour tidy, family-style. You are setting the stage here for two major benefits: a lovely evening with your family and a fabulous morning. Doesn't that sound great? There are days when I begin our morning routine with the tidy-up, and the next thing I know my morning has been spent cleaning and school gets away on us. Should not be. Mornings, in our house, are protected learning time. But its really hard to learn when you're living in a mess, no?

Most of the time, I just try to be diligent. I love the feeling of walking into a tidy kitchen first thing upon rising, with sparkling clean island, countertops and sink to greet me. When its the opposite, my energy is already sapped just from looking at it. I much prefer this:

So make a plan, "stage" your house and start tonight :). Begin where you are, but begin! I promise you will be thankful you did.  

God bless your day!
xo