Did you know that your family already has rhythms? Every family has certain habits and routines they do every single day, whether you intentionally created these rhythms or not. The difference between a chaotic home and a peaceful home is the quality of the family rhythms. The secret is the intentionality put into creating them. Need a place to begin? Here are three rhythms every family needs for a peaceful home life.

Living in Never-Ending Chaos

Before I share with you the three rhythms your family needs for a peaceful home life, let me tell you about what our life used to look like and why having rhythms is so important. I still remember the days of our early marriage with two kids under two running around. No joke, we had piles everywhere.

Back then, I thought I was “organized” because the piles were contained. We had the cardtable pile full of paperwork and mail, the living room corner pile of boxes and books that didn’t have a home, the storage room pile, and the “hidden” bedroom pile of the remaining unopened boxes from when we moved in a year ago. Oh, and I can’t leave out the piles in our closets…but doesn’t everyone have those?

Back then, we somehow functioned without a family calendar. And on top of that craziness, we were always empty of supplies or ingredients. It drove my husband crazy because he would need to run to Walmart almost every other day just to get one ingredient, diapers, or some home-cleaning product.

And on top of all the unnecessary errands and failure to plan ahead, we continued to argue about how little time we had together as a family. It felt like everyone, and everything was taking up our schedules. We felt disconnected as a couple. And I was growing increasingly bitter towards my husband because we didn’t have any set-aside devotion or prayer time together as a family.

Our Journey to a Peaceful Home Life

For those who do not know our whole story, you can check it out HERE. It was around this time that our relationship was crumbling, and we were burning out from life. After several different situations, we chose marriage counseling as our path to healing.

We began a two-year journey of learning what we wanted our Home M.O. (mode of operation) to be. Through Christian counseling, marriage workshops, reading, praying, and seeking the support of several Biblical mentors, we eventually learned how to create a peaceful and sustainable home life through the chaos of our life.

One of our biggest “AHA” moments from the Lord during that season was realizing that we had access to PEACE every moment of every day (no matter what hardships, storms, or chaos was going on around us). Although much of life is not in our control, there are many things that are.

One thing we do have control over in our home is implementing healthy home rhythms that support our family to thrive with peace and joy.

We learned to put in place rhythms that supported our daily and weekly home organization (praise God for no more piles!), rhythms that supported our time management and family connection, and rhythms that supported our spiritual growth. Creating intentional rhythms really became a central part of creating peace in our home.

What are home rhythms?

Home rhythms are the systems or routines that help run your home on a day-to-day, week-to-week, and month-to-month basis.

Each rhythm is built up of a string of habits. Those habits may be intentional or unintentional.

Another way to think of rhythms is a mason jar full of rocks. The mason jar is the rhythm, and the rocks represent the collection of habits within that rhythm. It is your collection of habits that make up a particular rhythm! And the best part? You can decide what those rocks are!

For example, you most likely have a “morning rhythm.” Your morning rhythm might contain daily habits such as waking up at 6 am, getting dressed, drinking coffee and eating breakfast, reading your Bible, and leaving for work.

So how do you know if you need a new rhythm?

If you sense that there is stress or frustration in your home, it’s an indicator that you might benefit from adjusting the rhythms in your home. This is where designing your home rhythms with intention, and purpose comes into play. 

With the right rhythms in place in your home, it becomes easier to do the work with excellence and more intention.

Ultimately, with the proper rhythms in place, it leaves more time for the people and things that matter in life.  

Rhythms look different for everyone and every family. There is no right or wrong way of doing rhythms. Although every family is unique, we do know that there are certain rhythms that every family should purposefully have in place to have a peaceful home life. The habits within those rhythms will be different for every person and family, so please feel the freedom to make each rhythm your own.

As a side note- If you and your family would benefit from some coaching and support around creating and designing home rhythms to fit your unique home life, check out our Home M.O. course, which we launch a few times a year! In that course, we teach our students the system of how to create effective rhythms to have their dream home life.

3 Rhythms Every Family Needs to Have a Peaceful Home Life

Here are the three rhythms that will help every family to have a peaceful and sustainable home life! As a reminder, your family and home life are unique! Please feel free to adjust each of these rhythms based on your needs and desires. The habits within each of these rhythms will be unique to each of our homes.

1) Family Devotion Rhythm

For the Christian family, this rhythm is of utmost importance to maintaining a peaceful home life. This rhythm also applies to single people and those married without kids!

Without a set-aside time to connect with our family spiritually, we surrender our responsibility of discipling our family. Many families assume that their children are being “spiritually fed” on Sundays at church or Wednesdays at youth group. Of course, our church families have a huge impact on the spiritual growth of our children!

However, as Christ-centered parents, we certainly cannot give away the ultimate responsibility of spiritually equipping our children.

By having a regular family devotion rhythm in place, your family will come to rely on the safe and consistent space to learn about God, ask questions, and grow in their faith journey.

So what do I mean by “regular” family devotion?

Although the detailed answer to that question is completely up to each family, we do recommend choosing a day or time that is consistent. For some families, this means having a family devotion rhythm every night before bed. For others, it could look like every other night at dinner. As for our family, we have our family devotion rhythm every morning over breakfast, seven days a week.

If having a daily family devotion rhythm seems overwhelming to you, try picking one day a week to begin. Perhaps you could read the Bible together after church on Sundays or before bed every Friday night. Start small, and then grow from there.

Timing also depends on your kids’ ages. For young kids (under five years old), set reasonable expectations of a 5-minute devotion or less. If your kids are older, you can extend the devotion and Bible study time.

With any rhythm, when we make it too hard or complicated, we will easily give up before we even start. So make this one easy to begin and sustain!

Reflection Questions

How can you make a consistent family devotion rhythm (or personal devotion rhythm) a priority?

What day/s or time of day would it work best for you to have your family devotion rhythm?

2) Meal Planning Rhythm

It’s 5 pm.

You and your spouse are just getting home from work, and the kids are moaning and whining with the dreaded question…”What’s for dinner?”

You look at those hangry kids like a deer in headlights…your brain is scrambling, trying to remember what random ingredients you still have in the pantry. Maybe you could whip something together. But you’re so exhausted from a long day at work, everyone’s hungry, and you don’t have the time to come up with a creative solution because Johnny needs to be at baseball practice in an hour. So it’s Culver’s drive-through again.

This is not an unusual situation. Many busy families struggle on a day-to-day basis with dinner plans. It all comes down to one simple, underestimated, and overlooked rhythm: meal planning.

This may seem overly basic, but believe me, meal planning is truly a game-changer for any home!

I think most of us have good intentions to meal plan. Or perhaps, we will meal plan for a week or two, and then life gets busy, and we fall off the bandwagon. But like most things in life, it’s the slow and steady ones that win the race. Having a meal planning rhythm requires one to slow down to think, plan and strategize. And it also requires you to be steady and consistent.

On weeks….

• that are extra busy, you still meal plan.
• that multiple family members are sick, you still meal plan.
• you simply just don’t want to do it, you still meal plan.

Once you find what works for you and your family, stick with it. And not only do you need to stick with the planning part, but you also need to stick with the plan!

Need some tools to help you with meal planning? Here are some of my favorites!

Pinterest (for getting ideas and gathering recipes)
Recipe Tin (to store all of our family’s favorite recipes)
Instacart online grocery shopping (to make grocery shopping easier and more efficient)
Instapot (for quick cooking meals)
Magnetic whiteboard for the fridge (to write down the week’s menu)

Reflection Questions

1. What day could you commit to meal planning each week?
2. How do you see consistent meal planning impacting your home life?

3) Rest Rhythm

This rhythm may seem odd to include in our top 3 most important rhythms for families, but hear me out. If you want a home life of peace, having a “rest rhythm” in place is crucial.

Today’s modern family lives life fast and furious. Go-go-go, rushing from one sport or extracurricular to another. Many families are burning out and becoming disconnected because they are so busy.

And let’s just be real. Burned-out families are not doing much for the kingdom of God. And not just that. Burned-out families aren’t able to give their best to each other.

The antidote to busyness is REST! Yes, you can overcome a busy lifestyle by simply slowing down and implementing consistent rest rhythms. We find that the most deeply rooted families have a weekly rhythm of rest in place, like honoring the Sabbath (which is a 24-hour weekly rest period where you cease all work, including house projects).

Having a family rhythm of rest is more than just family time. It is intentional time blocked off in the calendar for rest and rejuvenation. This requires planning ahead so that you can completely unplug and do things that will recharge you.

Resting looks different for each individual and family, but we recommend that your rest time includes intentional worship or time with the Lord, self-care, a fun activity, and relaxation.

If having an intentional rest rhythm in place is new for you or your family, start by looking ahead at your calendar for the next 1-2 weeks. What 2-4 hour time blocks could you set aside for family rest? Better yet- is there a whole day you could set aside?

Reflection Questions

1. What would a weekly rest rhythm look like for you and your family?
2. What types of activities would you enjoy doing during your rest time?

Start with One Rhythm Today to Create a Peaceful Home Life

These three rhythms are absolutely necessary if you want to lead a peaceful home life. Having a family devotion rhythm, meal planning rhythm, and rest rhythm in place for your family will dramatically impact the atmosphere of your home life.

If you already have these three rhythms in place, now would be a good time to reflect on how they are going. How are these rhythms working for you? What tweaks or adjustments might you need to make so that they work even better for your family and home life?

And if implementing home rhythms is new for you- then the key is to just START!

If intentionally building home rhythms is a new concept for you and your family, then I would recommend taking it one rhythm at a time.

It takes about 3-6 months to successfully implement a new rhythm into the family. Along the way, you will adjust the rhythm to fit your family and also the season you are in. Once you feel like one rhythm is running smoothly, then intentionally develop another rhythm!

A peaceful home life is attainable no matter how chaotic your current situation is. It won’t happen overnight, but small, consistent baby steps of building home rhythms that you love will lead you to a peaceful Home M.O.

And the best part? If you work to establish these rhythms now, then when hardship, storms, or chaos does come along, you have solid systems to help maintain your peace along the way.