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The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler — Education
The Christian Homemaking Podcast: Simply Convivial with Mystie Winckler

Christian homemakers need encouragement and motivation to stay the course. Homemaking and homeschooling can feel overwhelming, but they don’t have to be. If you’re a Christian mom longing for a well-ordered home, a peaceful homeschool, and a joyful heart—without the stress or burnout—you’re in the right place. Moms can be productive and peaceful when grounded in Scriptural truth.

I’m Mystie Winckler, homeschooling mom of five, founder of Simply Convivial, and your guide to managing both home and heart with faith and focus. Here, we talk about biblical homemaking, sustainable homeschooling, and cheerful productivity—all through the lens of organizing your attitude and embracing your God-given calling.

In each episode, you’ll find practical homemaking systems, homeschooling strategies, and mindset shifts that will help you manage your home without perfectionism or frustration. We’ll tackle topics like:
✔️ Christian homemaking routines that actually work
✔️ Productivity, mom-style
✔️ Homeschooling with peace—even when life gets messy
✔️ Time management for moms (without rigid schedules)
✔️ Decluttering your home & your attitude
✔️ How to be diligent, not just busy

Motherhood is a marathon, not a sprint. You don’t need more willpower—you need a grace-filled, biblical approach to managing life at home. Let’s cultivate faithfulness, embrace joy, and build habits that make home a place of peace and purpose.

👉 Subscribe now and start organizing your home and heart—cheerfully.

Copyright: © 2024 Simplified Organization LLC

Latest Episodes:

A Balanced Life - what it looks like for moms Sep 09, 2019

Show notes

Balance.

The dictionary defines the verb to balance as "to keep or put something in a steady position so that it does not fall" or "to offset or compare the value of one thing with another"

The first definition is the one we usually mean when we talk about achieving balance in our lives. We want to be steady, regular, diligent, consistent. We hate feeling like we're scrambling, dropping the ball, and never getting to what matters. So we think that balance is the answer.

But what is that something that we're putting in a steady position so it doesn't fall? Is it our to-do list? Is it our various roles and responsibilities? Is it our attitude? Or is it C - all of the above?

In seeking the first definition of balance, we often settle for the second, which basically means we make trade-offs and hope everything will come out even in the end. We didn't get to the laundry, but the schoolwork was done. We didn't mop, but we did get dinner on the table. Does the value of what was done make up for what doesn't?

Sure, we want all of the things done so that we never have to make trade-offs like that, but it's just not going to happen in this life. It's an idealistic dream. We can continue honing our skills and getting better at what we do. We can expand our capacity and align our expectations. But we will always be making trade-offs. We just need to make sure those trade-offs are done in favor of the work with ultimate value.

And, if we're going to keep anything in a steady position so it doesn't fall, let's make it our attitude, not our chores. Keeping an emotional even keel will keep the scales balanced no matter what it is that suffered in the day's survival mode skirmish. Having a balanced emotional life is the best kind of balanced life to live.

How to organize your calendar Aug 21, 2019

Show notes

Learn how to organize your calendar! If you’re a busy mom and you want to be organized, you absolutely MUST have a working, accurate calendar. These 3 tips will have you using an organized calendar and bing more in control and aware of your time. Time management is an important skill for both the stay at home mom and the working mom.

These organization tips will boost your productivity and enable better home management. Whether you use a wall calendar, google calendar, or a pocket planner – these 3 calendar organization tips will make the calendar of your choice work for you.

There are three things your calendar must be if it is going to be organized – and the only way to keep it organized is to keep using it, keep updating it, and keep looking at it.

#1. Organize your calendar by putting all appointments on it.

If you’ve made a commitment to someone else to be somewhere or do something at a particular time, it should be on your calendar.

Don’t assume you’ll remember or put any appointment – even sports practices or regular club meetings you think you’ll never forget. Put them all on the calendar. These are not clutter; they are reminders that your time is spoken for.

What is calendar-clutter is non-obligations or anytime-commitments on the calendar. These should be on a to-do list, not on your calendar. Your calendar should be an at-a-glance chart of how much time you have available to you, in what chunks, each day.

#2 Make your calendar easy to see.

Your calendar will do you no good if you don’t look at it.

You can use a large wall calendar, a portable planner with a calendar, or a digital calendar – but the key is that it is easy and convenient to look at it.

And then we must look at it – multiple times a day.

#3 Organize your calendar by color-coding it

If you do have a lot of people or a variety of commitments that make it hard to see at-a-glance what’s on your plate when you look at your calendar, you can use color-coding to make visual distinctions.

Repeating, regular obligations can go in a lighter color so that the one-off appointments stand out more boldly.

Commitments that simply involve you dropping off and picking up your kids can be in a particular color, separate from your own obligations.

Your Calendar Is Your Most Important Organization Tool

When you want to get your life organized, what’s the first step? If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you know the first step is always a brain dump.

But then, once you have a brain dump that fills an entire notebook, where do you begin? What do you do with all that? Where does it go.

There are 5 important bins you need before you can start sorting and processing that brain dump, but the one you should set up first and the one you should make your priority is your calendar.

Your calendar is your most important organizational tool.

“Good!” you might think, “I already have one!”

But, do you?

Are you using it?

Is it 100% accurate?

Do you look at it?

Yeah, that’s the kicker, isn’t it?

How to organize your thoughts intentionally Aug 13, 2019

Show notes

A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Don't let useless thinking waste your mental energy, your time, or your brain power. Get your thoughts organized with these organized mind tips that will help you have an organized mindset and mom life.

You need to know how to organize thoughts so you can problem solve and keep track of your thoughts and ideas, whether you're a sahm or a working mom. Every mom's mind is full and so we need mind organization for mom brains. Organize your thoughts for GOOD!

Organization is not about our stuff, but about our minds.

So you have thoughts - what happens with them? Our minds are a place where ideas swirl, information comes and goes, and what do we do with it all?

Here are 3 things I do to manage the mess that is the thoughts inside my head.

Beat perfectionism with iteration - Get Organized Tip #5 Aug 06, 2019

Show notes

Perfectionism kills productivity and progress. This strategy will help you beat perfectionism with action and improve incrementally.

Perfection is a mindset. It is all in our heads. So we beat perfectionism by starting with our attitudes.

We need a thinking strategy that will help us to talk back to perfectionism. I call this strategy iteration. Iteration means that we take a small steps forward, looking back to assess and learn after each step. Instead of holding out for the ideal or trying to jump to the final goal, iteration looks for progress and learns and grows and adapts as progress is made.

Iteration isn’t just baby step by baby step progress, but also includes evaluation so that each step is informed and so that we remain flexible.

One way to start iterating is to break down your year into chunks and do interval planning. Instead of making a large, ambitious goal and a long-term plan to get there, you make incremental goals, work on a smaller chunk of the project or outcome, then assess and choose the next right small goal between intervals. By continuing to move forward and remaining flexible, we can beat perfectionism and see momentum in our lives.

Stay organized with a weekly review - Get Organized Tip #4 Aug 06, 2019

Show notes

A weekly review is my secret weapon to stay organized. It’s a time reserved for big picture thinking, planning, and list making. More importantly, it’s a time to LOOK at those lists – and my calendar.

A weekly review does not need to take an hour. You can take 15 minutes to get your stuff ready for the week ahead. A weekly review is the key, the linchpin, to all other plans, all other planners, all other systems. Without it, none of the rest will work.

Someone who is organized has responsible self-control, is diligent, and likes it.

A weekly review is the key for all other planning. Without it, your plans will not work. A weekly review is time set aside for looking at your lists. It’s crazy, but it turns out that your plans, lists, and calendar will not do you any good unless you look at it.

We wrap our minds around our lives as they actually are right now so we can be prepared to handle what’s happening. We also view our upcoming obligations in light of the big picture. It helps us get focused on what needs to happen so we can enter our week with calm clarity. That’s how we stay organized.

Keep a to do list SHORT - Get Organized Tip #3 Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

To get more done at home you need to keep your to do list short. It will help you focus on priorities and feel success, day by day, at home. Every stay at home mom needs a to do list, but we have to do it right if we’re going to experience productivity.

These tips will help you get organized at home as you focus on a daily top 3 to do list for optimal sahm productivity. I’ve been a stay at home mom for 16 years – let me share what I’ve learned about how to get more done at home.

Keeping a short to do list forces you to do two things.

First, we are forced to recognize that we cannot do all that we want to do. We likely will do more than 3 things, but having to choose three forces us to choose what’s most important, write it out, and put our attention there, where it matters most.

Second, a list of three is attainable. It’s not overwhelming, and so it’s easier to actually get started. When the list doesn’t look impossible, we’re able to get over ourselves, choose self-control, and just get started.

A small space for a to do list reminds us that our time and our energy are limited. We need to be careful to choose what we focus on in a day, because our ability to focus is limited.

Making a to do list is something we will get better at with practice. So start today and build the skill of making a prioritized list and following through. Grow in organization. You’re practicing, learning, and growing in the skill of being organized.

Write things down. - Get Organized Tip #2 Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

A brain dump – which means write things down – is the best way to declutter your mind. Clear your mind so you get get organized more effectively.

Whether you use a brain dump journal or just a cheap spiral notebook, a brain dump strategy will clear your mind and prepare you for organization at home. It’s the first step to declutter your mind so you can declutter your life. If you want to know how to get organized, start with a brain dump.

Write things down. All the things.

The first step for getting organized isn’t to buy containers or a label maker. The first step is to declutter your head.

We start every project and start getting organized by writing down everything in our heads. All those swirling thoughts and big ideas need to be written down on paper. When we write things down on paper instead of keeping them in our head, we can see them and think about them better.

When we write things down, we see first why we felt so crazy. We’re trying to keep track of and trying to work for too many things. When we see them on paper, we’re able to more clearly and deliberately choose where to place our attention. It gives us more objectivity as we think about what we ought to do next.

Get organized at home - tip #1: shift your mindset Aug 05, 2019

Show notes

Want to get organized at home? I have 5 essential practices you need to be organized – this is tip #1 and it’s all about your attitude and mindset in being organized and getting organized – and even staying organized.

Declutter your home by decluttering and organizing your mind first. When we try to organize and declutter, we usually start with the stuff, but we need to start with ourselves. These organization tips will get you ready to organize your life and be happy.

When we are trying to get organized, we need to start off by clarifying what our definition of organization is. Because if we get our definition of what organization is from Pinterest or the magazines, we will think that it means having life go our way.

When we think that being organized means that our life will go our way, we are bound to be disappointed and bound to fail. Newsflash: Life will not go our way.

Being organized does not mean life goes your way and it doesn’t mean you have matching containers in all your closets. Being organized means that you are prepared and exercising self-control, not control of others or the situation.
Organization is simply shorthand for managing life’s resources to the best of our abilities. It isn’t a magic bullet that changes everything. It’s not a goal to be checked off once reached. It’s not a status to arrive at, after which we can do as we please.

Organization is on-going, just like laundry, dishes, and sweeping. It is a set of actions we must continually, consistently take. Organization is a state-of-mind as well as a state-of-home. There is no end-point goal, but there are always baby steps and further developments to make.

So how does one get from a state of chaos to a state of organization? How can we actually organize life when it feels like a jumbled mess? By taking it one day at a time, one step at a time.

There is no sudden overhaul to make or popular bandwagon to join or new leaf to turn over.

There is learning to take the right next action – and then taking it – each hour of every day.

There is only one kind of control we must have to be organized: self-control.

We might not control our homes or our lives, but we should be controlling ourselves.

If you want to organize your life, you need to start with your self, not your stuff. Being organized is a set of practices and mindsets, not a status to achieve.

Do habits make life easy? Jun 24, 2019

Show notes

Who doesn’t want a life that is smooth and easy? Years ago, when I had only quite small children and I had immersed myself in books on educational theory, I latched onto an oft-quoted bit of wisdom from Charlotte Mason:

"The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days."

She’s right, of course, but also wrong.

Persevere, mama! Jun 17, 2019

Show notes

To blaze a trail or to lay down the rails is to intentionally decide and built the habits that we know will make our lives more effective. It will not make life easier – building the habits is hard work and paying attention and doing what’s called for in the moment requires attention and effort – but once intentional logistics become habit, then it takes less energy to maintain your equilibrium and consistency.

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