Large Family Living
A how-to guide to large family living: homeschooling 6+ children, home businesses, cooking from scratch, and small scale farming. Learn how our growing family of 8 lives and works together with systems that make large family life better, easier, and more fun.
Large Family Home Systems
We can all use a bit of simplification in our lives. Some of us need A LOT. If you are in a season of overwhelm, perhaps with a new baby or young children, a new way of eating, working a home business, or just juggling a lot of demands of life, taking a look at daily routines, and how they can be simplified using better systems, is life changing!
We have a system for everything in our homes, whether we are aware of it or not. Some systems include:
- dishes
- laundry
- lawn care
- wardrobes
- bed time and waking routines
- meals
- date nights
- gifts and celebrations
- exercise
- family time
When we are not intentional about our systems, our routines and habits work against us, rather than for us. Gift giving, for example, can include pre-planning, budgeting ahead, and making planned and intentional purchases. Or, it can look like a high stress event of 11th hour shopping and blowing the budget due to not having a good a gift giving system work for us. Likewise, laundry and getting dressed each day could be making a quick selection from a capsule wardrobe closet, or it could look like running late again while ourselves or children rummaging through several baskets of laundry to find what we are looking for and dreading 9 loads of laundry to catch up on the weekend. Read this post for our family’s top 5 home systems that simplify and reduce overwhelm with large family living.
Large Family Minimalism
What are the basic necessities and comforts that make a loving and happy home? If we took the time to make a list, we might think of things like family time playing together, freedom of time to pursue interests, eating good meals together, open communication with engaging, respectful conversations, faith life/prayer… Likely, many or most of the necessities and comforts on our lists would not include the material items we have in our homes, overpacked schedules, or long to-do lists.
If you have a large family, you understand the sheer volume of necessary items in the home can become overwhelming without good home organizational systems. Take a coat closet: the number of jackets, snow pants, boots, tennis shoes, and sandals needed to clothe our families through all seasons takes up physical and mental space plus time and energy to manage. Finding “house rocks” in the overstuffed coat closet, or tripping over toys on the way to open it can raise a person’s stress level.
So how do we find balance? What practical tips can we apply to our families to have peace and calm, while everyone feels happy and well loved in the home? Let’s remember our “happy home” lists to hold perspective of what is truly important to our families as we tackle the large family living strategies.
Read more about our large family living must haves, must not haves, how we approach decluttering with a lot of children and hobbies, and more in this post.
Large Family Home Management Schedule
Terrible morning sickness, post-partum exhaustion, and big seasons of business growth had me quit our home management system in the past. How could I possibly get it all done? To heck with clean floors, making balanced meals, homeschooling field trips, and clutter free counter tops! As our family, businesses, and responsibilities grew, so did my overwhelm. It wasn’t until our family adopted a daily AND a “day of the week” home management schedule that I felt like I could breathe again. I also discovered this schedule works better through hard seasons than any others we have tried.
Our schedule now allows time for prayer, eating well, homeschooling, chores, business, outings, and more activities. Check out our detailed daily and weekly schedules in this post.
Homeschooling Many Children (With Toddlers and Newborns)
The how-tos and what to do for homeschooling will be different for each family, depending on your family goals and current situations. I will share what works well for our family of 8, with 6 children ages 10 to newborn. At the time of writing this, we have 3 homeschooling children, 2 toddlers, and a newborn baby. My husband works full-time outside the home, has a small home-based wood working business, I have an online business, and we small scale farm. When we work our home management systems, including homeschooling with consistency, we can be mostly successful. I say mostly, as sometimes no amount of preparation and careful planning yields expected results in life with newborns and toddlers. In these situations, we take the opportunities to grow in virtue. Ahh, yes, the many opportunities..
Consistency over time yields results. Needing to replicate a classroom and school hours in our homes is a myth. We do not need long arduous hours to be effective and proficient at homeschooling and learning well. Homeschooled children often learn to love learning, read many good books, seek opportunities to discover information outside of the “school day”, and learn more quickly with individualized attention and intentional efficiency. Learn tips for finding more time, teaching “self-teaching and critical thinking, how we encourage our children to love learning, and how we approach curriculum in our large family in this post.
I hope you find these large family living resources helpful for your family. Please let me know your feedback and your favorite family life strategies and traditions in the comments below.
Resources
Posts
5 Home Systems That Simplify and Reduce Overwhelm
Large Family Minimalism
Large Family Home Management Schedule
Large Family Homeschooling
Books
Home Management, Plain and Simple
A Mother’s Rule of Life
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