Friday, March 13, 2009

Another reason I am thankful for homeschooling

Each year our city has a spring cleanup. We can put out pretty much anything at the curb and the city will take it away.

One of the best summaries of the problems with bureaucracies is Parkinson’s Law:

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

We have a similar problem, stuff expands to fill our garage. Every year or so we'll wade in, sort, organize, prune, and try to bring order to the jungle in our garage. This year the garage seemed more chaotic than normal.

I stayed home from work yesterday to get ready for the string cleanup. Janine had called one homeschooling family to ask if their boys might be available to help clean up. I asked with a seventeen year old homeschooler from church if he would be willing to help out. (I tried to pay him, but he came as an act of service.)

We had five come to help. It made a huge difference. I put in eleven hours. Janine put in almost as many. Our daughters help. But without the help of the five additional people we never could have accomplished all that we did. We have a nice pile for the street, another pile to take to a charity, and our garage looks great.

I am very grateful that other people homeschool so their sons can come help out.


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Technorati tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home school, home education, parenting, children, education

2 comments:

ChristineMM said...

Wow you are lucky to have that resource. I don't know any homeschooled kids who would help me out with decluttering. Decluttering is sometimes easier with reinforcements to tell you "yes get rid of it, you really aren't using it" and so forth.

Henry Cate said...

When decluttering there are a few categories I put stuff into:

1) This is stuff I use often enough that I should keep it.
2) This is valuable and I may use it.
3) This is trash and I should throw it away.
4) This has some value, but I'll probably not use it.

I have trouble throwing stuff away from the last category. I find that donating to a charity lets me get rid of more stuff. I still keep some stuff in the fourth category, but not near as much as I use to keep.