I had a proud moment last week. As I was writing this post about the experiments I’m trying in my house this Fall, my oldest son came up with an experiment of his own. He’s in charge of clearing and cleaning the kitchen table this fall, and he was getting tired of the other kids leaving their dishes on the table. So he called us together for a brief family meeting and instituted some new policies.
First, we all now have assigned seats. That way he can tell who left their dishes. If anyone leaves the table without cleaning their dishes, he’ll clear them, but that person owes him $1. He had me at family meeting. I was so proud of him for coming up with a solution. It’s worked great so far.
Each season, I evaluate what’s been working at our house—and what hasn’t—and like a mad scientist, I formulate new experiments to try on my little guinea pi—ahem—children. Here are 10 new ones for this fall.
Experiment 1: Family Retreat
We kicked off our Fall experiments with a new annual tradition borrowed from my friend Rachel Dahl—a family retreat. We loaded up our bikes (getting 7 bikes on one car is a feat in and of itself) and headed to the mountains for Labor Day weekend. We had a lot of family fun at the pool, on our bikes, and in the nearby stream. We ate good food (with the exception of some horribly botched Rice Krispie treats made by a child who will remain nameless) and played lots of games.
But we also did some hard-core family strategizing. We wrote out a family timeline until 2033, the year our youngest will graduate from high school. We listed important family events like graduations, baptisms, etc. We dreamed of places we want to travel together and other activities we wanted to put in the timeline. We made and presented vision boards and talked about our goals. We learned about what why families are important, came up with a list of our own family values, and brainstormed a family mission statement.
It was clear after the first night that this is a tradition we’ll keep. It was just so nice to get away and celebrate being a family. I’ll send out the full agenda in the How She Moms email this week and on Patreon.
Experiment 2: Work
The next new thing this Fall was a new stage for me. It’s the first year all my kids are in full-time school—kind of. At the moment, my four youngest are in school five days a week and my oldest has gone from hybrid to fully remote learning for a couple of weeks, due to a small COVID outbreak at his school.
When I started How She Moms almost three years ago, I ear-marked this year as the time to turn How She Moms from a hobby to a real business, because I’d knew this was the year I’d have more time to invest in it. And over the last couple of months, I went from spending about 10 hours a week on it to about 30. I’m loving it, and I have so many big plans, including last week’s launch of the How She Moms Patreon account. Patreon is an easy way listeners can support the podcast, with a membership of $5 a month. In turn, I can use those resources to produce more and better content, including two bonus episodes a month, featuring full interviews with some of the amazing moms I’ve included in my regular episodes.
I decided to take the time to edit these interviews into bonus episodes because I have so many hours of amazing conversations recorded with moms. I share some of the best moments in my regular episodes, but there’s so much great content where that came from.
You can join my Patreon community here:
I’m also working on a premium membership that I’m hoping to launch in January that will allow us to do online workshops in a group setting. We’ll focus on one area each month, in the categories of household management, motherhood, or personal development. I’ll keep you updated as I get this up and running.
I welcome any other ideas of things you’d like me to offer in this Patreon community. It will continue to evolve as I figure it out! If you want to sign up and support this podcast, just go to patreon.com/howshemoms.
Experiment 3: Pantry
Perhaps my favorite new experiment is my pantry situation. Every year I struggle keeping food stocked for school lunches throughout the week. Even when I begged and threatened, they would sneak their lunch food for snacks while they were home, and we’d be scrambling to find anything to pack by Thursday and Friday. Most of us are gluten free, so school lunch hasn’t really been a viable option.
Several years ago, I bought a lock with a code for my pantry to help the situation, but it wasn’t a very reliable solution. I’d lock it sometimes, like when I was making dinner and wanted them to keep their hands out of the snacks, but I wasn’t consistent with it, and when I did lock it, it was annoying to have to unlock it for every little snack. Plus, I felt like I was running a bread line, rationing out food. I felt like I was actually encouraging them to become hoarders with a scarcity mentality.
Another problem was that with so many kids competing for the good stuff, they’d hurry up and eat their favorite lunch foods, so they would get their fair share–or more than their share. There was always someone who didn’t get any pudding or any fruit bars in their lunches before they vanished.
And yet another problem is that a couple of my kids in particular have no self control when it comes to treats. I couldn’t buy any treats that weren’t going to be eaten on the day of purchase, or they’d disappear. This was annoying, because sometimes it’s nice to have little treats on hand.
So this Fall, I totally reorganized how I store food and it’s solved all those problems. I now have a bin for each child in the pantry, low enough for them to reach when it’s time to pack lunch. As I unload groceries, I distribute lunch food equally among the bins. I let the kids choose the lunch food they want on the Walmart To Go app while I’m putting in my order, so I make sure all the specific requests make it into the right bins. The only other food in the pantry is stuff I use for cooking, like canned goods, oil and vinegar, rice, etc. I also now keep some treats on the high shelves.
But here’s what really made it work this time. I moved all the stuff they’re allowed to snack on, plus breakfast cereal, oatmeal, etc.– everything I want them to be able to access—to another bank of cupboards outside the pantry. Now I don’t have to unlock the pantry every time someone’s stomach rumbles, and I don’t feel like I’m rationing their food. But the beautiful thing is that I only have to shop for lunch food once a week, and they’re not fighting over lunch food. They stick to their bins, and lunch making is a breeze. We did have one day when I forgot to check my kindergartner’s lunch and he brought only a bag of chips, but otherwise it’s worked great.
And now I just keep the pantry locked all the time, except for when they’re making their lunches in the morning and when I’m cooking dinner. The kids don’t even ask me to unlock it, because they like having lunch food available when they need it. It’s a beautiful thing.
Experiment 4: Chores
With the start of school comes the start of new routines. I’m on the second iteration of our new chore system. This summer, I just designated specific days for each chore, like bedrooms on Monday, bathrooms on Tuesday, etc. It was simple and worked great. But in the Fall, the kids have much less time to do chores and their schedules are all different.
I started out with a grid on my whiteboard that had the days of the week on the top, and the kids’ names on the side. Then I filled in the chore that worked best with their schedules for each day. I quickly realized this was way too complicated for me, and really hard to adjust if they didn’t get their chore done for the day. So I made a new grid with their chores for the week across the top. Each day they have to do one of the chores and mark it with an X before they can play with friends or get screen time. By Saturday, they need to have all their X’s. They also have a few jobs to do every day—practice their instruments, do their homework, their kitchen job, and get some exercise. My two oldest have been biking the two miles to school each day, so that’s some good built-in exercise. I’ll post a picture of the new chart on Instagram and Facebook. It’s not pretty, but it does the job.
Experiment 5: Allowance
This next one is more of an update than a new experiment. I talked about allowance in the Summer Experiments episode—we started giving our oldest two a big allowance, but requiring them to pay for everything themselves, including their phones and clothing, and it’s been interesting to see it play out. One son who likes to save just decided to make a big purchase of air pods, which he loves, and he still has lots of cash to spare. Another, who likes to spend, is doing laundry very frequently because he doesn’t want to spend his money on clothes. We’re about to reach a pants crisis soon, now that shorts season is ending, so I’m interested to see this play out. We give him plenty of money to cover wardrobe expenses, and plenty of opportunities to earn extra cash with bonus work around the house. I’m pretty happy with the financial lessons happening here.
Experiment 6: Daytime Schedule
Now that my kids are in school, my daytime schedule opened right up. I knew I needed structure to keep myself on track, and I really like the idea of organizing block time that so many people are talking about, creating blocks of time to focus on certain tasks. I’m always a sucker for alliteration and word play, so I created Marketing Monday, where I work on all my social media posts, emails, etc., followed by To-Dos-day, the day I work through my to-do list for both my podcast and my family. Throughout the week, when I think of one of those niggly, detail-oriented tasks that don’t necessarily need to be done on a specific day, I just write it in my planner for the next Tuesday and bam, it’s out of my head until then. Once Tuesday comes, I prioritize the list and get ‘er done. Nothing else is scheduled on that day, so I make amazing headway. And then whatever I don’t get done, I transfer to the list for next Tuesday. Sorry, I mean the next To-Dos-day. The rest of the week I can focus on writing and recording podcasts. I pepper interviews throughout the week to keep things interesting.
Experiment 7: Piano Unschooling
Another delightfully successful new experiment is an unschooling approach to piano. I have really let the kids lead this fall, and it’s been a huge success. I pick a selection of songs I think they’ll like, that are at or slightly above their level. I play them all for them, and they tell me which ones they love. Some like to work on a couple at a time, others like to focus on one until they master it. Every now and again, I have them do a sight-reading day where they play through some books that are slightly too easy for them. I don’t have scheduled lessons for any of them. I just make sure they practice for 10, 15, or 30 minutes, depending on age and ability. And I try to be nearby to help them through tricky parts. They’re all working on songs they’re passionate about, so they often play longer than the required time. And now that I can keep treats in the house, I give them a little treat after they practice to add a little extra Pavlovian response to the joy of piano.
And my favorite part is that I finally realized I need to be included in this piano experiment. I’m treating myself to time at the piano almost every day, and I’ve been polishing up some of the songs I’ve been tinkering around with since high school. Even more fun, my neighbor joins me sometimes with her accordion and we play duets. I’ve never accompanied an accordion before and let me tell you, it’s super fun.
I even signed up to play for an hour once a week in the hospital lobby. Last Friday was my first day, and it was so fun to just sit and play and feel like I’m doing some service in the process. Definitely a big component of self care for me.
Experiment 8: Soccer
The next experiment isn’t brand new, we actually did it last fall too, but it’s just so great I have to share it again. Last year, I decided not to let sports practices commandeer my whole fall schedule. So while one son played flag football, I enlisted my then 9-year-old son and his friend to run soccer practice for the younger kids and their friends while I supervised. It was such a success that we’re doing it again this year. They get great exercise, they get leadership and planning experience, and we don’t end up living out of the car. It’s seriously the cutest thing watching them run drills with their clipboards. They meet regularly for planning meetings. The other advantage is that it’s a lot cheaper. They charge $2 per kid per practice.
Experiment 9: Bedtime Routines
Here’s a big taboo. I’m not supposed to talk about how I’ve been sleeping. I’ll keep that part down to a sentence—I’m majorly struggling with insomnia these days, which seems to be pretty common for women of a certain age. So I’m really invested in making our bedtime routine go more smoothly, so I have the best chance possible of a good night’s sleep. I’m also experimenting with the Whoop wristband, which my husband bought me for our anniversary. It records sleep and activity level, so I can really tell how long it takes me to fall asleep, when and for how long I wake up in the night, and how much time I spend in each stage of sleep. It’s been so helpful to track as I try different methods of getting and staying asleep. It’s a bit pricey, but certainly cheaper than doing a clinical sleep study.
Anyway, our current bedtime routine looks like this. We read scriptures as a family and pray together at 7:00.
Then the youngest two and I head upstairs. I’ve made a rule that once I go upstairs I don’t go down again. So I get everything done on the main floor and then I get my pajamas on and brush my teeth while the youngest two do the same. Then I sing and read with them. During this time, the big kids go downstairs and watch tv until 9.
I’ve totally resorted to bribing my youngest with a piece of candy in the morning if he stays in bed. Yes, that’s the second time I’ve mentioned candy bribery in this episode. I’m not proud of it, but it’s where we are right now. Candy really is the only thing that motivates my five-year-old. If it gets bad, I’ll open a bag of skittles and eat one every time he gets out of bed. He knows he only gets what’s left.
Then everyone, even the older kids, are supposed to be in their rooms by 9:00. I read to my 10-year-old, and then go to my own room. It took several weeks to get this 9:00 weekday curfew down, but we’re doing really well with it. The sun setting earlier is most certainly helping.
Experiment 10: Weekly Goal Check-ins
I’m going to end with another favorite new family tradition—our weekly goal check-ins. Every Sunday we have a quick family meeting where we each share our three main goals for the week. I write them in my planner, so we can check back and report progress with the previous week’s goals and then set the next week’s goals. It’s fun to hold each other accountable, celebrate successes and encourage progress. I think it’s also really good for the kids to see their parents setting and accomplishing goals.
So there you have it. Ten experiments that are going on in the Archibald family. Whether or not any of these experiments apply to your own family situation, I hope they help you think of your own experiments that you can try with your family. Whether they succeed or fail, you’ve learned something that will help you with the next set of experiments in this grand science project we call motherhood.
