December can be a rough month to remain on task for homeschooling children and their teacher. Twinkling outdoor lights, indoor decorations, Christmas music, baking smells, extra sweets, along with holiday events and a longer list of things to do, makes this a distracted time of year.

When January rolls around, sometimes it can feel like December raced by in a blink. Schoolwork was left undone or not absorbed by your students. Perhaps in other years, the work was completed, but everyone believed they missed out on the joys of the season.

The other morning, I woke to my alarm and sat up. In an instant, the things I needed to do flooded my brain in-box. The dreary list made me want to dive back under the warm covers for another few hours. Instead of giving in to the toasty impulse, I got my grumpy self out of bed and dressed.

As I did my regular morning routine as a late-forties woman (yes, I’ll be fifty in a few months. Not claiming that decade just yet), I muttered the same thing over and over. To every item and thought from the overwhelming “To Do List,” my internal response was “I don’t wanna.”

Duct tape. That gray, sticky, loyal friend has been a favorite product of many since its invention during World War II. Created as an easy, waterproof way of sealing ammunition boxes, it quickly gained popularity after the war as a new product that could fix anything. There are countless stories of how this amazing tape has helped over the years, from duct work repair to saving the astronauts on the problem-ridden Apollo 13 flight.

When we started homeschooling years ago, each student was assigned a part of a bookshelf and a small bin for their supplies. No matter what I did, that way of organizing did not work. Things would get messy very quickly, workbooks were routinely lost, and piles of papers in our schoolroom/dining room were a regular fixture. We needed a different way of operating.

Lately, has your home resembled a college frat house on a Monday morning, after a weekend of hard partying? Maybe it looks like a park littered with debris after an outdoor concert. Perhaps your place has been in fine condition, but all you do is clean up after everyone, and they’re tap-dancing on your last nerve with their sloppy behavior.
You’re not alone.

Sometimes a circus has an act called “Plate spinners.” The performers take a thin stick, balance a glass bowl or plate on top, and spin the dinnerware to keep it aloft. The trick works by gyroscopic force, and it’s the same principle that keeps a toy top in motion. If the movement slows down too much, the plate comes off, and crashes to the ground.