The Porch Swing @ Shady Creek Hollow

Setting Some New Routines at The Porch Swing

I'm setting up some new routines around here. I'm trying to get more organized. And I'd love your input into which of the topics below you would find most appealing. Please help me by picking your favorite topics. They are:

• Easy Peasy Recipes- Good Cheap Food Mostly Made From Scratch
• Decorating on a Dollar- Turning Your Home into a Serene Oasis for Pennies
• And They Will Not Depart From It- Building Your Child's Character & Education
• Help-meet 101- Simple Practical Marriage Enrichment for Wives
• Luxurious Simplicity & Frugality- Living the Good Life in a Bad Economy
• Humble Hospitality- How to Open Your Home Without Closing Your Bank Account 
• Simple Church- Understanding House Churches
• Handwork- Practical Crafts for You & Your Family
• All Good Gifts- Unique Low Cost Gift Ideas & Instructions 

And here's another question. Would anybody be interested in a forum here at The Porch Swing, or maybe an on-line Bible study? Please send me your comments. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. Love Never Fails, Patty

 

Intentional Living 2

If you're like me, once you sat down and actually started making your list of goals you found that they overlapped. After all how can you separate personal, spiritual, and responsibility type goals in a way that covers them all? I broke mine down this way:

1. Working Towards Being a Godly Woman: a.Woman, b. Wife, 3. Mother, 4. In the Community

2. Working Towards Being a Good Steward of My Life: 1. Diet, 2. Fitness, 3. Beauty, 4. Clothing, 5. Health

3. Working Towards Making Our Home an Oasis: 1. Bedroom, 2. Bathrooms, 3. Kitchen, 4. Dining Room, 5. Outdoor spaces

4. Working Towards Making Full Use of My Spiritual Gifts

5. Pursuing My Passions

Of course your list will be different from mine. But having a written list gives me a framework to build upon. I can easily look at this outline, pray, & brainstorm actual practical ways to achieve any given goal. An example from my life would be that after thinking about making my home more peaceful I realized that decluttering would achieve 75% of this big goal. So now I have one day a week that is dedicated to decluttering one area per week. It works!!!

As with any goals, if I don't have some way to measure my progress and also establish a time line I won't actually see any results. The way I do this is to keep a planner with a list of what I want to do and when I want to do it. I check things off as they're done or move them to the next day if they don't get addressed.

I pretty much have a standard routine and if you have been visiting here often you probably know the basics of that routine. I read the Bible & and work thorough a Bible Study or Devotional each morning, I have a specific set of tasks for each day [Mon. deep clean whole house, Tues. laundry & iron, Wed. declutter, Thurs. run errands and grocery shop, Fri. deep clean kitchen & bake, Sat. yardwork, Sun. rest]  & I walk 4 miles every day in an hour. When I finish all the tasks I've set for myself then I pursue my passions [hobbies, reading, writing, etc.]

I keep notebooks with ideas I've culled from everywhere that help me narrow my focus on decorating, health, beauty, writing, cooking etc. I like to add to the notebooks then let some time pass before acting on any idea. This lets me live with it, in my mind, for a while to make sure I don't jump on something too quickly and make a mistake.

I also don't try to take on too many changes at once. It took me a long time to be consistent in my Bible reading and walking. I'm still working on that level of consistency in eating right so I try to only go after one big change at a time. Once it's become more or less a habit, then I look at my list and add another change. This whole process is not a sprint- I fully expect it to take my whole life to get to a level of discipline that is comfortable for me. Also something that is really helpful to me is not beating myself up mentally if I fail occasionally. My rule of thumb is to be as kind to myself [all that infernal internal chatter] as I'd be to my daughter, mother, or friends. 

Also if your life is already in flux ie: new baby, death of a loved one, new marriage, job change, or move I'd suggest letting your life find its equilibrium before jumping into anything else new. Just my thoughts.    

So you see what I do is pretty common sense and I'm sure you can come up with a system that works for you as easily. It just takes some thought and planning and tweaking. 

I really believe that you only have discipline by practicing it. Just like any other habit it is an acquired skill that anyone can master. I'll be writing on this topic from time to time as I continue to strengthen the habit of discipline in my life.         

Intentional Living

I'm starting a new category today here at Pattyspen. It is something that has been percolating through me for quite a while and I've wondered if it might hit a note with other folks as well. The whole concept is that we can choose to live whatever way we want. We can let life happen to us and try to scurry around cleaning up the mess that kind of sloppy living presents. Or we can be proactive and plan our lives [with God's grace and help]. We can actually work towards living in a way that honors God and gets us where we'd like to be. I'm not trying to be a crabapple here, but I do think that for the average person life can drift off in the direction of striving to get what they see advertised on TV, or what their neighbors, work colleagues, family, & friends have if it is not lived intentionally.    

First off, I'm not talking about coming up with some kind of legalistic list of rules or veering off into some kind of 'name it and claim it' mindless hilarity. I'm talking about taking time to really think about your life. What are your hopes and dreams....what are your responsibilities & how would you like to fulfill them? Have you actually taken the time to ponder your life lately? Journaling is good place to start. Just make a short list of what is important to you. Is it family? Is it achieving a certain goal? Making this honest list will accomplish two things.

First: You'll get a close hard look at your personal motives. You might be surprised as I was to find that I'm much more materialistic than I want to be. Knowing this about yourself can help you reevaluate your desires.

Second: As you write down your list, you may realize that some of the things you've falsely believed to be important to you are actually not that important at all. You can painlessly let them go and formulate a better goal that more closely aligns with God's will for you and your newly directed desires. Sometimes we hold onto things that should have been discarded long ago- or never should have made the list to begin with. An example in my life is- I always thought I needed a nice working business wardrobe. This was important during the many years I worked outside the home. But now I'm a full time homemaker. I don't need several dark suits. I don't even like them anymore. See, my life has changed radically but my goal didn't. I realized this when I found myself in stores still checking out the dark business suits.

So the very first step to living an Intentional Life is to evaluate what is important to you in the right now. Not what is important to your Mom, or your friends, or even what is important to the folks on TV who seem to constantly either be having plastic surgery or tearing apart their homes to achieve the newest standard of what is 'GOOD'. The honest truth is that as Christians God should set our standard not the world. We know that, but are we living an Iintentional Life that shows it? It's a hard question isn't? It sure was for me.  

I love what my son-in-law told my daughter recently. They have moved to the fanciest part of Atlanta recently because that is where God provided Allie's job. As the leader of their new household he had the courage to take an early stand and say, out loud, before it even became an issue. "We are not going to play a keeping up with the Jones game".  I love that man!! It takes guts to get that real with yourself.

Now, as I mentioned, here is the first step towards taking the path of Intentional Living:

Today turn off the TV,

Get a piece of paper [or a notepad] & a pen,

Pray for wisdom,

Make a short list [5 items] of goals you truly value and you'd honestly like to accomplish.

OK, right about now you're saying.....Aww... this is just a revisit of that thing I did before. Maybe it is, maybe you are one of those folks who has taken an inventory of their lives and truly worked on it in the past. But I'm suggesting that doing it again may show you new things about yourself that you've never seen before. What can it hurt? You can afford to miss an hour of TV to do this simple task, can't you? 

For today don't try to solve the problem of 'how am I going to achieve these 5 goals'. Just make the list and let God start bringing a myriad of random things to your attention. Jot them down if you feel led. This is not a fruitless exercise- this pausing to reflect is probably the most important part of the process and will prepare your heart and mind for greater action later.

More tomorrow on Intentional Living. You can do this. Your life can be different, you can function on a level higher than the day to day mundane trudge. You can do this.  GBY today...this very moment...as you begin... down the path to Intentional Living