Homeschool burnout. It’s real. And, if you are struggling, have struggled, or may struggle in the future with burnout, know that you are NOT alone. Chances are you could grab the nearest homeschooling mom, spill your homeschool burnout woes, and she will commiserate. If she doesn’t, buy her a coffee and find out all of her secrets immediately!
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I have a few tricks for avoiding homeschool burnout that I have discovered over the years of struggling myself. 4 kids + 2 businesses = 1 mom? I’m pretty sure that is not a balanced equation. So, here are all of my secrets for maintaining my sense of peace as the earth continues to spin.
All of my secrets revolve around the parallels between minimalism in our space, and minimalism in our homeschool. Here are 10 minimalism parallels that may help you avoid burnout simply by shifting your mindset a bit:
1. Keep just enough of what you need and love.
This is the most basic tenant of minimalism, and so it is also the most basic tenant of minimalist homeschooling: surround yourself with just enough of what you truly need and love. If homeschool burnout is setting in, do an emergency operation, and remove everything that is not truly loved or needed right now. Simplify. Breathe. Recover from your homeschool burnout. Reassess.
>Read more about how to homeschool without over-achiever guilt
2. Allow a contingency budget of time.
Minimalists don’t cram more into a space than will comfortably fit. Minimalism strives for empty space and breathing room.
The same is true of our schedules in minimalist homeschooling: don’t cram more in than will comfortably fit. Allow some space and breathing room. The easiest way to do this is by building in a contingency budget of time. Think of it like open walkways between pieces of furniture so you aren’t living like a hoarder.
A contingency budget works by adding 20-25% extra time to each activity. If something is predicted to take 20 minutes, allow 25 minutes (or even 30 minutes), for example.
3. Stop hoarding.
In minimalism, people avoid hoarding because items that are not valuable or meaningful take up extra space and energy (and money). In minimalist homeschooling, hoarding items of little value or meaning also means extra stress, energy, and money. AND, homeschoolers don’t just hoard material items; sometimes homeschoolers hoard activities, lessons, projects, and facts in an effort to “do it all,” which contributes to homeschool burnout. What are you hoarding that is of little value or meaning?
4. A place for everything….
Minimalism strives for a space that can easily accommodate our needs and loves. Spaces don’t feel cluttered because each item has its own appropriate space. In minimalist homeschooling, we apply this concept to both our resources (the “stuff”), and our time commitments. Strive to have a neat and tidy space in your home and your calendar for each of your homeschool needs and loves.
5. …and everything in its place.
Even in a sparse and well-organized space, it takes some self-discipline to maintain it. That is, if we just let things pile up, without putting them where they belong, then our space will clutter quickly. It’s just a fact of life.
The same is true of our homeschools. If items are put back in their places, then the space stays tidy. And, if we do the school items during their assigned times, then our schedules stay neat. It takes some self-discipline, but if we don’t put things where they belong, or do things when they belong, piles of stuff to deal with will accumulate.
Being faced with piles of things that need to be done or put away is a recipe for homeschool burnout. To avoid that, establish some routines and habits to keep your schedule and schooling tidy and taken care of. In minimalist homeschooling these habits look like repetition. The 20th Minimalist Homeschooling Mindset Hack in the book is: repetition equals simplification.
6. Pay attention to the stuff coming in.
This is the best rule for maintaining a minimalist space: carefully consider every item that comes into your home. This is golden advice for homeschoolers! God bless all the generous homeschoolers who want to share and pass on materials, great ideas, and suggestions… but if we aren’t careful about what we allow into our homeschools, they can become cluttered and overwhelming very quickly. To avoid homeschool burnout, use discretion before any new book, idea, project, suggestion, or supply even enters your home. Understand that you double your work once it enters the door: now you have to bring it in, and bring it out at some point.
7. Reflect on the “traps” that are making you hold onto things.
Why are you holding on to those items that aren’t needed and loved? It’s time for some honest self-reflection about why those things are still in your home. If you can’t quite get to the bottom of it, the best thing might be to find some supportive people who can help. Can I suggest the Minimalist Homeschooling facebook group? Rest assured, it wouldn’t be the first time someone in the group asked for help letting things go…
8. Know how much space you have.
When you buy furniture, you know how many rooms and how much space you have, simply because you want items to fit well in your defined space. The same is true of your homeschool shelves and schedule: they have a defined space. Know the dimensions of your physical and temporal spaces before you get items for your homeschool. Don’t buy all the curricula just assuming that you will find the space and time for it.
While you’re at it, define your spaces, too. If you’re prioritizing each season, then your goals probably fall into different categories that represent levels of importance. In the book, we call these major and minor subjects. The 21st Minimalist homeschooling Mindset Hack in the book is: Major subjects offer a sense of accomplishment, minor subjects offer a sense of abundance, and unscheduled time offers the freedom to learn independently.
PS – The word” subjects” is used loosely. “Subjects” can range from studying traditional subjects to building a business, or taking field trips – whatever form educational items take in your homeschool.
The idea here is to know how much room you have for major subjects, or minor subjects, or unstructured time; to grasp the dimensions of that temporal space before you start picking and choosing different curricula.
9. It’s about who you are and what you do, not what you have.
In the end, freedom from clutter offers people the opportunity to enjoy life more, do more of what they like, and more importantly, be who they would like to be. In short, minimalists find that life’s value comes not from what you have or even what you do. Rather, life’s value comes from being who you most want to be. Minimalism offers the space to be the best version of yourself because you are not worried about what needs to be done or had.
Similarly, the value of homeschooling is much more about allowing and encouraging everyone to be the best version of themselves. If your children are being the students you’d like them to be, and you are being the teacher that you would like to be, then doing the things that you would most like to do will automatically flow from that state of being. You will naturally do what is consistent with who you want to be. It’s impossible to experience homeschool burnout when you are being who you want to be, because nobody ever strives to be burnt -out!
10. Trust.
Trust that you will have what you need when you need it. It is so easy for people to hold onto things just in case they need them in the future, and homeschooling presents plenty of opportunities to do just that.
It is faith-strengthening to release those items out into the world, and trust both that they will find their way to someone who needs them more, and to trust that when you DO need something, it will be available. Time and time again, my faith has been affirmed, and all of our needs have been provided – sometimes in ways that were even better than what I had released years earlier.
If stress is setting in about what you might need just in case, or because everybody else has done it, do a quick faith-check before that stress from a pile of unused items leads you straight to homeschool burnout.
>Read more about Christian Minimalist Homeschooling with 55 verses that support it.
What do you do to avoid homeschool burnout? Which one of these minimalism parallels will impact your homeschool most? Share in the comments below…
Looking for some support simplifying your homeschool and focusing on what is truly needed and loved? Please, join us on facebook. We would love to meet you!
There is a book that offers a step-by-step guide to design your own minimalist homeschool: Minimalist Homeschooling: A values-based approach to maximize learning and minimize stress. With 15 worksheets, the book will help you minimize your homeschool from top to bottom.
This post is part of the Minimalist Homeschooling Mindset Series in which I go into more detail about the philosophy behind minimalist homeschooling based on the mindset hacks from the book.
Wishing you all of the simple things,
Zara
Don’t forget to pin this post so you have it when the stress sets in!
A million yeses to all of this! Simple and minimal are beautiful!
We complicate things when we make them complicated ;). Thanks for coming by, Amy!