I have actually found that for unschooling to really work for us I need to be less organised.
When I lived alone, pre-husband, I was very organised, very set in my ways. I ate this at each meal, I put things away at this time, I liked this music not that . . . get my drift? And for the first 5+ years of our marriage I keot that up, and then I continued it into our lives as parents. My husband is not naturally neat, nor does he see what needs to be done. I fought this for a decade, serously. and then in the past few years I've heard my eldest talk to his siblings like me. 'We don't eat on the sofa! It makes crumbs!". "Finish your yogurt it's wasteful not to!". (don't hate me folks).
And when I could hear myself, and see how my ways had effected my household, I got it. They were never learning from me, how to run a house, how to change their ways to be more like mine, the right ways. They just learned to be afraid, to get stressed out, to abide by rules come hell or high water.
And that's when I took our unschooling-in-terms-of-curriculms philosophy int our whole lives, and learned to let go.
NOw my house is a sty, and I mean that. A friend is over now who also home schools and dh was saying how our counters are always this cluttered, and I reminded him of how clean things used to be, and how angry I was, how much I stomped and yelled and cried and fought and the daily headches, lack of sleep . . . that I see our messes on every surface and in every room as rogress.
I may tidy the train tracks tomorrow so I can sweep the floor and we'll build a new track. Or I may not, as I'm busy with my kids doing something else. The tracks have been there for a week anyway.
But at least now I'm with my kids, not just cleaning up after them so mch I'm never available to them.
Like PP, I do have some basic things that keep us from faling off the deep end. We too have the magnetic white board on the fridge for things we need to buy. And I have a big desk calendar on my wall (no fancy pictures just the big white ones) for all our plans. dh and I gt texting cell phones so I can suggest meals to start while we're wrapping up a park day or an outing. We no longer eat fancy, cullinary varieties like butter chicken and things full of stuff my kids don't like to eat, and only I know how to make. We eat homemade pizza (dough in the bread machine on a timer), burritos (beans from the can, tortillas in the freezer, lettuce in the yard), nachos, bbq, pasta . . tasty basics that anyone can make.
I buy easy-to-grab snack food for when we go out. mini applesauces, granola bars, tortilla chips, enough water bottles that I can always find at least one, fruit I can cut up quick, dried fruit that's even faster.
so if we have a plan, or we suddenly make one, getting out is pretty easy. we have baskets near the door for each of our things, and while it gets full of toys and rocks and stuff, they generally remember to put sunhats, gloves, shades back in there so they can grab them when they need to. blankets are in the car already, plus umbrellas and kites and more snacks.
When I get up in the morning I put a load of laundry on the line, start another and empty/reload the dishwasher. It takes me 10 minutes really, then we start in on breakfast. If nothing else is done that day, and generally nothing else is, that's enough to get us by.
HTH.
WCM
....I just want balance...
