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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.
Looking at our home and family,
no one else would have thought
that everything was falling apart.
Maybe it wasn't really falling apart.
The meals were being made.
We ate dinner together.
We were not late to church.
We attended every week.
The kids were doing great.
The laundry mostly got done.
Everyone learned to read.
But I felt like I was drowning
I was always scrambling, taking care
of the next emergency, and I did not
feel like I had anything under control
I spent all kinds of time and money trying
to figure it out, trying all kinds of
overhaul solutions that were temporary
Band-Aids that never actually stayed on
or did anything in the long run except
to make me feel more like a failure.
Maybe you can relate
However, I did finally install
three habits that appeared at first
to be so boring, so little, so
insignificant that they would not help
my internal or external chaos at all.
But they actually changed everything
Hi, I'm Misty Winkler, and you
have found the Christian homemaking
podcast, Simply Convivial.
I'm a homeschooling mom of five, although
three of my children are now adults and I
only have two high schoolers left at home
and two grandbabies in town.
I'm author of the book Simplified
Organization: Learn to Love What
Must Be Done, and I want to help
you become an engaged, competent,
cheerful Christian homemaker.
Because the work that we do as moms
in our homes matters matters immensely
And that's why we need to have these
three boring habits so that we can bring
our full selves to our work every day.
So grab a basket of laundry
to fold and let's dig in
So when I had five kids under 10,
I felt like I was always scrambling
and taking care of emergencies,
putting out fires, never getting
ahead, not making any progress.
The harder I worked, the more
behind I felt like I was.
And whether or not that was true
in reality, it's how I felt.
And then that's the story that
kept being reinforced in my mind.
Everywhere I looked, I only
saw things that I did not do,
that I was not getting to.
And that led me to feeling
overwhelmed, like I was drowning,
and I knew it was not okay.
I knew it didn't have to be that way.
I came close a few times to just giving up
But I knew that that wasn't really an
option because God had called me to this
role as mom and homemaker, and so it was
my duty and responsibility to do it well.
And I knew that God wouldn't give
me a calling or responsibility
that I could not do for His glory.
And the way that I was approaching
my life was not giving glory to God
So I read every Christian
homemaking book out there,
I purchased schedules.
I purchased cleaning
schedules from online.
I even tried checklists that were printed
in magazines at the time because this
was before YouTube and before Pinterest
and when magazines were a real thing
And nothing really made a difference.
Nothing stuck.
Nothing really seemed to fit my life.
I would get all set up for a big life
overhaul, home makeover, self-habit
makeover, and it just didn't go anywhere
After trying promised solution after
promised solution, I finally attempted
a few recommendations that I kept
seeing pop up time after time, but they
just seemed irrelevant, insignificant,
that those were not going to be
good enough to fix my big problem.
But none of the big answers or
solutions were fixing my big problem,
so I finally tried the little
baby step, insignificant steps
And that's when things
seemed to fall into place.
So if you are on an internet hunt for
the final system, the final solution, the
final planner, checklist, routine That
will finally make it all make sense and
stop the overwhelm and stop the internal
chaos that's happening in your head, Then
you've landed in the right spot because
I have what's actually going to work, and
it's not any of those major overhauls.
These three habits that I finally
attempted sincerely were making my bed.
I know, I know.
Making my bed
Writing a top three to-do list
for each and every day and looking
at my calendar every day I didn't
think this would be enough.
But these small habits changed
how I approached my life and
also how I thought about myself.
So let's talk about how each one makes a
significant difference about the internal
story that we're telling ourselves.
These are habits that we can use
as hooks to change our attitudes,
which is the real problem.
Now, every self-help type book out
there will either assume you're
already making your bed or will tell
you you need to be making your bed.
And I was one of those kids who refused
to make my bed on principle because it
was just going to be slept in, and like it
seemed like the definition of unimportant,
meaningless, repetitive work It seemed
pointless to me as a child, and my opinion
did not change as I became an adult.
It was a principle that I had adopted
that making my bed was a waste of time.
I did not wanna waste time, so
I was not going to make my bed.
And because everyone out there says,
"Make your bed," and it's on every
cleaning checklist or every set of
routines out there, when I would try
those life overhaul systems, when I
would be trying to use a pre-printed
planner that told me what to do every
day or a cleaning checklist that told
me what to do every day, I would make
my bed when I was following those lists.
But while I was making my bed, I
would tell myself, " This is dumb.
I can't believe I'm doing this.
What a waste of time.
This does not even matter."
And so I really should not
have been surprised that that
never stuck as a habit, because
How we talk to ourselves matters.
So finally, after I was fed up with
all the overhauls And I think that
someone mentioned making the bed,
and it was like the last straw.
I'm like, "I have tried.
It has never worked."
And I don't know, something in me
just said, "Do it one more time."
And that's when I really heard the
dialogue that I was telling myself because
I wasn't trying to do a whole long list.
It was just one thing.
I made my bed, and even though I didn't
fully believe it, I chose not to believe
my feelings but to believe pretty much
everyone else in the world who was a
productive human being who made their
bed and said other people should, too.
I said, "I'm gonna believe this
preponderance of evidence even
though it contradicts my feelings."
And so I would make my bed, and then
pause and look at it and say, "My
bedroom looks so much better now.
I'm the kind of person that makes my bed.
I bring order out of chaos."
And ever since I started doing that, I
have been making my bed almost every day.
Because now making my bed is me
telling myself that I'm the kind of
person that brings order out of chaos.
In this little personal corner of my room,
this is a declaration of what I'm going
to be doing today, how I approach life.
Making my bed isn't really
just about making the bed.
The aesthetics of the thing are
not of primary importance to me.
But what does matter is what I tell
myself about my day and myself.
And so my bed is making a
statement about the kind of person
that I am choosing to be today
I am a responsible person.
Responsible people make their bed, so
I'm going to make my bed It's boring,
but it works, and it's totally worth
the two minutes that it takes Try it.
So the second habit that totally
changed everything for me was using
an index card to make a daily top
three list I had tried planners
I had made myself many, many planner
pages and templates and checklists and
spent more time making them and thinking
them through than actually using them
I wanted to think through every
contingency, everything that needed to
be done, fit it all into a plan that
fit on one or two pages that would be
the mastermind, and all I would have
to do is work that system that I had
figured out, that I'd engineered and
put together on a working template.
And then once I got that figured
out, everything would be amazing.
I never got to that point.
Turns out I was not very good
at predicting the way each
and every day was gonna go.
That's just life with small children
is just not predictable, so my systems
always fell apart within one or two days
So instead of attempting to figure it
all out and get something that would
take all my responsibilities and work
them out evenly across my week, I took
to just writing the three most important
things for that one day that I was in.
This made me pay attention
to right now, to today.
And so instead of thinking about all
the ways that I had failed in the past
or thinking about how everything could
work out perfectly in the future, the
daily top three card trained me to notice
today and what actually mattered today
I think I had four
children when I started.
And then by the time my fifth
came around, I had been doing it
off and on for a couple years.
And then during that postpartum
time, paying attention to today, I
realized I was telling myself, "I
should be getting everything done.
How can I try to fit everything
that I used to do every day into
my day while caring for a baby,
while being postpartum, while being
sleep deprived, while nursing?"
And it dawned on me, because I was
making that top three list for the day
and actually thinking about the day I
was in instead of grand plans I wasn't
supposed to fit everything in each day.
I was supposed to nurse my baby and use
that nursing time to think, maybe to read,
depending on how much sleep I'd had, and
to connect with my other children through
soft, nurturing, loving communication.
I was connecting with my baby, and my
children needed more attention during
this time of transition for the family.
And here I had this time
where I was stuck in a chair.
And so instead of fighting
this feeling of being stuck-
I recognized it for the gift that it was,
and that realization happened because
I'd built this habit of recognizing
what was important day by day.
So the daily top three card changed my
attitude about my day, changed how I
thought about my to-do list, and I have
many episodes on the daily top three card.
If you've watched my channel
for any amount of time
Then you've heard about
my daily card habit.
But if you want the full scoop, then
check out my new free training called
From Overwhelm to Organized: The One
Practice That Changes Everything.
In this, I do a deep dive on my
daily card habit so that you can
figure out how to make it work
for you in your current season.
You can register for free
for this on-demand, available
anytime, right away workshop.
Go to simplyconvivial.com/organized
or find the link in
the episode description
All right, the third habit was
one that I was not anticipating.
I didn't even count it as a habit.
Even when I realized I needed
this habit, it still didn't
seem like it was significant.
But I have since realized that
it's not a planner or a cleaning
checklist that matters most.
The most important organizational
tool that we have in our arsenal is an
up-to-date, accurate master calendar
that we then look at 'cause it won't do
you any good if you don't look at it.
So we have to have a single calendar that
has every time-bound obligation on it.
We update it right away.
There's never any appointment or
commitment just lingering in our brain
that we'll put on the calendar later.
Put it on the calendar right away, and
then look at the calendar every day.
It took me many mistakes
to figure this out.
I have missed appointments, shown up
on the wrong day to an appointment
remembered that I was going to take
a meal to someone an hour before
I was supposed to do it, an hour
before I was supposed to deliver it
And so finally, the pain of
missing my commitments drove me
to really commit to my calendar
And that has been a lifeline
through many seasons.
I don't have to worry or overthink
about the future because I know
that I put things on the calendar
and I look at the calendar.
So I don't need to keep them in my head.
If I have any questions about what's
coming up or about our commitments,
I can look at the calendar.
At this point with teenagers,
I don't answer questions about
our calendar or our schedule.
I say, "Look at the calendar."
It gives so much peace of mind
to be able to see the week and
know where we are going to be
And be able to think ahead for
how can I be prepared for that?
And as I really committed to my
calendar, I recognized that I
have to look at it every day.
Looking at it at the beginning of
the week is not enough to keep me
up to date the whole week, even if
nothing changes on the calendar.
I need to look at it for that
particular day, for the next day, and
for the rest of the week every day.
When I do that, I do not feel scattered.
I feel on top of our commitments
and like we are handling everything.
There are definitely weeks, especially
now, where my calendar is overwhelming and
I feel like, "Ah, how is this gonna work?"
But I can see that time.
I can make plans to make it work
And I'm not holding those
reminders in my head.
I'm looking at them objectively
on a color-coded Google Calendar
And so I know we can make it work
So now my brain does not have to
remind me of anything, and I don't
have to worry about missing anything
because I know that it's on my calendar
if I need to be reminded of it,
and I know that I will look at that
calendar because writing it down does
you no good if you don't look at it
So these habits are super basic.
They're boring even, but they make all
the difference in our approach to our
life, in our attitude about ourselves and
about our work, and they allow us to stop
feeling scattered and out of control.
Because the most important kind of
control you're supposed to have is not
control of the outcome, not control
of your circumstances, not control
of other people it's self-control
that we are all supposed to have.
And making my bed, writing my daily
top card, and looking at my calendar
every day are three boring but super
meaningful self-control habits that
build lasting progress and lasting change
Because it changes my perspective
about myself and my life and my home.
And it'll do the same for you
So remember, repent, rejoice, repeat