productivity

I’ve always had a reputation for getting things done, but I’m pretty sure this hasn’t always been a good thing. In fact, my husband used to joke that I was so good at organizing things, I could organize him and our family right into a neat little corner of the house. He was actually being quite kind to challenge my motivations for organization. In that season of my life, my own unchecked desires for order and control coupled with a tendency toward perfectionism may have gotten a lot of things done, but I don’t think they served my family, people around me, or the purposes of the Lord very well.

We all live somewhere. We inhabit a space, whether it be a small apartment, a large home, or something in between. This is the space God has given us for shelter and enjoyment, and we should take care of it. When we work hard and do this well, we honor God, and in the process, we also benefit. Our personal benefit in keeping a clean and orderly home is a more peaceful space, increased productivity, and when accomplished as a family, a sense of stewardship of what God has given us.

For most of my life, during most of my waking hours, my time has been consumed by the activities and needs of the moment: those things that were determined for me merely by my stage of life. 

When I was a student, I went to school and participated in school-related activities. As a new wife, I worked both in and outside the home and invested myself in helping to build a solid foundation in our marriage. Then came parenthood and years of caring for little ones, balancing the various roles and challenges that life as a family necessitated.

Do you ever ask yourself, “Why am I not getting more done when I feel so busy?” I find myself pondering this question in many aspects of life: in parenting, in friendships, in marriage, in my home, or wherever I am.

I have a confession to make: I don’t use social media. I don’t tweet, post, snap, like, or live-stream. Cutting ties with social media was a choice I prayerfully made a few years ago in an effort to battle distraction, temptation, and time-wasting. However, I was still distracted because my smartphone was right at my fingertips, ready to offer me streaming TV shows, news articles, games, google searches, sports scores, YouTube, and a host of…