Get the weekly rites right

Homelab Notebook #06

The Homelab Notebook series is a recurring section where I consolidate some of our learnings and lessons from the past month for paid subscribers. (I’m still experimenting with the naming and formats, so bear with me.) The paywall is in place primarily to create a cozier conversational space, not to monetize the newsletter. If you’d like to participate, message me, and I’ll comp you a subscription.

This post includes:

1. Administrivia: Get the weekly rites right

2. Content Spotlight: The Middle Ages

3. Book Bin

4. Resource Directory

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1. Administrivia: Get the weekly rites right

Of all the time periods—hours and days, months and years—I’ve come to think weeks are the most powerful. Annual traditions make great memories; daily rituals form habits and keep me grounded. Weekly rhythms, though, are what build communities.

Case in point: Child 1 has become known at the library. Like in Matilda, the librarians have become conspirators that funnel books to him—have you tried Oliver Twist?—and steer him to coveted new releases. It started as a transaction, with Child 1 asking for help; it’s become a relationship. He’s a "regular.”

That relationship is a function not of talent or drive but of consistency. Trips to the library have become a weekly pilgrimage, complete with frantic house-searching rituals. Showing up, week after week, creates a space for friendship, like moistening a houseplant’s soil. It’s less the water and more the timing.

I’ve found that weekly activities determine the texture of each week: soccer practices, movie nights, church services, library trips, friend hangs, coffee dates, music lessons, writing goals, and Sabbath dinners. They create harmony when performed week after week and disharmony in their absence.

Parents have 936 weeks to influence their children—eighteen years, more or less, in which they’re under your roof. We’ve already spent around 450 of those weeks with our oldest.

If each day has three slots for a weekly activity (morning, afternoon, evening), then a traditional work week leaves only eleven slots to fill. Leave a few open for resting, and only a handful of slots are available to commit.

One perk of homeschooling is that it expands the time available for these relationships. Counterintuitively, our family has built more relationships outside of school than we have inside of it precisely because the ones we invest in are repeated weekly.

Regardless, weekly investments compound. It’s not just Child 1, the avid reader, who is known at the library. The other children, even those who can’t read, inherit the relationships, start further along, and enjoy the warmth of that friendship. Child 2 gets help finding books his brother has not read yet. The pre-readers get board books and stickers.

Community happens when people consistently show up. It can happen at a bus stop, a card shop, a playground, or anywhere else, but I recommend the library. Just make sure to return the books on time.