I’m supposed to be doing my planning for the upcoming week, so what am I doing? Creating a new blog post because a thought just occurred to me as I saw pics on my own computer. I figured this might help others, so I’m sharing it with you now, even though I should be doing something else, because, well, that’s just the kind of (A.D.D.) mama I am!
So here’s the thing…Do you regularly feel like you’re just not doing enough?
I know I do, frequently…and it seems to be a common thread on all the online homeschool groups I frequent.
But the fact is that most of us are doing plenty. Probably more than we even realize…so here’s a neat way to remind yourself of that.
If you’re like me, you are attached at the hip to your smart phone. And because I want to document so much of what we’re doing, I whip it out pretty much every day to snap a shot of things my kids are doing. I also always takes lots of pics on all the field trips and activities we do. All of these end up in the photos section of my computer. I’m sure all computers have them these days…I have a pc, Windows 7 and 8 (desktop pc and laptop pc), so what I’m referring to might not be the same on your computer, but I’m sure you can easily adapt or Google to find the info specific to what you have.
There’s a feature on Windows called “desktop slide show” that I’ve used for years. You can set your desktop background to rotate regularly through a folder of pics, when you’re not actively using your computer. So throughout the day, you see lots of different images, depending on what you put in the folder you point the slideshow to.
For me, I’ve always had it rotate regularly through ALL my pics, so every day we all get to see pics from all over our timeline….all the way back to babyhood and even pre-children (“Mom, who’s THAT??”….”That’s me, honey!”…”No WAY!”), and up through the present…you can set it to rotate every set amount of time. I do it pretty frequently on my desktop, as I have ALL my pics on there.
So what I’ve discovered when I am going through a year’s photos, is that often I do a heckuva lot more in a year with my kids than I realize at the time! So the thought occurred to me recently…why not go through photos regularly and make a folder to copy pics of all the stuff you do, and make THAT your desktop slideshow??
That way, you are regularly reminding yourself that you actually DO do a lot, and you really are NOT failing your kids!
It’s easy to forget how much we do…and be hard on ourselves for it…a natural mother thing to do, unfortunately. So with this visual reminder always within view, I think a lot of us can feel comforted that we are doing a lot…and even feel INSPIRED to do even more!
The flip side is that sometimes you might notice you really HAVEN’T done much, in which case I think I will feel inspired to get moving and plan more cool experiences! Either way, it’s a WIN!
So here’s some links to help you figure out how to do this…
Now go make a folder for your desktop slideshow and go through all your pics from this year, copy them to your new folder and make yourself and INSPIRATIONAL SLIDESHOW!!!