The Routine

People are creatures of habit.  Spjutes especially are creatures of habit.  Sometimes I get off the phone with one of my sisters and I have to giggle.  We all, without discussing it with each other, do things very similarly in our homes.

First, a little background.  My mom was all about routine.  How did she have six kids so close together?  Routine.  How did she get so much done in small amounts of time?  Routine.  We had our morning chores.  We had our afternoon chores.  We had weekend chores.  There were family night charts, chore charts, and dish charts.  That's right, we each had a part to doing the dishes.  And it rotated…set the table, clear the table, rinse the dishes, load the dishwasher, wash the big dishes.  We were a finely oiled machine.  Orchestrated by my mom of course.  We even had a breakfast routine.  My sister wrote a great post about it on her blog.  Basically on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we had mush (hot oatmeal with raisins).  How she forced this down our throats three days a week I will never understand because I've tried with my kids and its not happening.  Anyway, on Tuesdays and Thursdays we had pancakes.  Those were great days.  On Mondays Mom did laundry.  I'm sure she had a day for bathrooms.  On the weekends we were each assigned a room to clean.  When we weeded the mountain there was a map drawn with specific zones we were to do each day.  Routine I tell you.

My sisters and I seem to be continuing the tradition.  I am definitely a creature of routine.  Too much so at times I'm sure, but it keeps me sane.  I also have a breakfast rotation.  I totally get why Mom did it.  You don't have to wonder what to make for breakfast, you just have to figure out what day it is.  I also have a cleaning routine.  It's awesome.  By having a routine I know everything at least gets done once a week (except dusting - for some reason I hate dusting so it is left out of my routine).  How do my sisters fit into this?  Well, I usually end up talking to one of them on Monday.   Why?  Because we call each other while we're folding laundry.  Yes, we all fold laundry on Monday.  My sister April mentioned she had just finished mopping her floor today when I talked to her while folding laundry.  What did I just finish doing?  That's right, mopping the floor.  I'm sure if we ever really talked about it we'd find even more things that we do the same.

So even though Mom's not here, and we all miss her like mad, she's here more than we realize.  Most everything we do, all the little day to day things that we spend most of our time doing, we got from her.  That makes me happy.  Somehow laundry doesn't seem quite as bad when I think of Mom doing it, on Mondays, for years and years.  I bet she's gotten a good laugh on the other side, watching us all do laundry at the same time, miles apart.  Routine.