I'm going to have a family routine, I said. I'm finally going to do it. That's right. No more of this wishy-washy drifting stuff where no one knows what to do and everyone is chronically bored.
I wrote it all out, allocated a specific amount of time for each part of the day. Prayer time, work time, meal preparation and cleanup, house chores. It all got put on the routine.
The children were as on board as children can get, only resisting when the schedule truly inconvenienced them which wasn't exactly rare but still not enough to use that as an excuse.
We actually got it working for a while...
And then...
The dishwasher broke down. It was epic. We had a technician come in and replace a spray arm because it wasn't cleaning the dishes properly. The technician installed the new part. I ran a cycle. The new part broke off during the very first cycle and got jammed underneath the heating element. What follows is ten days of hand washing dishes until we can get another technician to install the second new spray arm. I really didn't leave room in the schedule for hand washing dishes!
The hot water heater started leaking. It's over ten years old so it's probably about time to replace it anyway, but it's leaked enough that there might be floor damage. Now enter time dedicated to figuring out the scope of work and bidding it out. That wasn't in the routine either.
Then there was the great car seat install. We were going to flip the convertible seat around for the baby who just graduated from the baby bucket and move the older kid to a booster/harness type seat we had in the basement. It was supposed to be a simple switch, but... the convertible had a broken piece which meant it could only be installed safely one way, and the booster/harness seat appeared to be missing parts and did not match the online manual that was supposed to be for it. How much more time did we want to waste trying to figure it out? We decided enough already and just bought new ones. Thankfully they were easy to install and that hump is now behind us. But to say the process messed with our routine would be an understatement.
Then there was the time I had to make an unplanned road trip to pick up an older child after her ride fell through...
...and any number of other unexpected things.
Believe it or not, the basic structure of the routine I set up is sound enough that it can to some extent accommodate the unexpected. I think the trick is to have plenty of somewhat unstructured work time.
The main challenge, actually, is the ability to persevere on the part of those who run the household. Yep, that finger is pointing right back at me and my dear husband. This is an opportunity for us to become more disciplined so that we can bring that to our children as well.
And now I must return to my actually scheduled nap!