Four Tips to Time off

 You know what every home school needs?   TIME OFF.

Yep.  My home management tip for today is TIME OFF.  Take a break, go on a vacation, or a stay-cation, or a week break for doing things out of routine.

As you know... I am not actually here this week, I am doing what all good parents do.. I"m taking a break!   We are blessed enough to be able to leave our home for our vacation, but I know two families that are staying home this year for stay-cations, and having a blast with their families.   So it all works. :)

 Tips from my house to yours.

1. Pack well.  Seriously.   If you are gone for two weeks, pack enough for five-six days max.  Give a limited size of container for your children or they will try to take the world with them, this way you teach them important skills of prioritizing and space management.  This picture is of my clothes for two weeks.  More tops than bottoms, I need to toss in a jacket as well yet.  Everyone gets a container this size.  Roll your clothes as they take less space.  Save your loonies and quarters for the laundry and you are good to go. 

2. Pack Food.   Admittedly I don't have a picture as it's the first and last thing I pack.   We do canned goods when we travel rather than prepare from scratch as we go to bear country and the less they can smell the better. We don't need mid-afternoon raiders on our campsite thank you very much.  You'll notice the box of single serving chips... means no open bags of chips for bears to enjoy.   We pack the fresh and frozen food last of course...We'd hoped to find dry ice this year to keep food frozen longer, but I think we'll be doing lots of ice instead...

3. Pack Carefully.   I have changed how I packed things up this year.  I had all the pans and whatnot under the seat, but it felt like too much wasted space on top of them, so I moved them over and was able to pack a ton of things on top.  Even managed to roll the tarp and ground carpet up.. Used to take up 3 x 3 feet and was miserably awkward to move, rolled it fits under the seat for the most part.  So rethink how you pack and you might be surprised at how you can make it work.

4. Be Delighted in the skills your family possesses.  :)
We know have kayaks instead of a canoe as it offers more flexibility.  I LOVE sales.  :)  anyways, how to travel with three kayaks was more problematic than move a canoe, buy my husbands ingenuity lead us to this great solution.  We had to refit the bike rack to make it work (the bikes now travel backward) but it works and I am so thrilled with how he worked it all out.  :)

So this post is part of the homeschool crews five day blog hop.  In case you couldn't guess, the theme of the day was home management.  :)

To see what others have to say, go a visiting, starting by clicking the image below.  :)