Hi, I’m Ashley!
I’m a wife to my hard-working husband of 17 years, mother to nine genuinely interesting people, blogger/business owner, but most importantly, I find my identity in Christ.
I’m also a recovering perfectionist, still reaching and growing towards the best version of myself.
How It All Began…
I started my first venture into online business during the spring of 2012 as a freelance writer. This quickly transformed into an author promotion company where I helped independent authors promote their books on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.
Turns out, my perfection-driven personality really LOVES business, and I found myself working all the time (even though I had six children at the time, and was pregnant with my seventh).
Every spare moment I had, I was working. I stayed up way too late, woke up way too early, when I actually did lie down, I could barely sleep because I always had a million ideas in my head. It was a recipe for disaster. Burnout was inevitable!
I spent the last half of my seventh pregnancy sick with virus after virus that I couldn’t shake (I even spent Christmas morning in the ER for breathing treatments). When the baby finally arrived, I still couldn’t slow down, I just kept going. Finally, three months after he was born, I realized something had to give, and it couldn’t be my family.
So I started backing off, little by little, until before I knew it, I was mostly *just* a wife and mom again, with barely any business left. And I was okay with that, totally okay.
I turned my focus back to my home.
I’ve always home-schooled our children, so I worked on getting better at it. I worked on getting better at laundry systems, cooking for a large family, staying within my food budget (bless my heart, this is still a struggle, which I am determined to conquer! I absolutely refuse to let Ryan increase the food budget!), cleaning better—teaching the children to clean better, attempting better organization (this is still a HUGE work in progress). I’ve also added two more children to the mix for a total of nine.
This site is really not about me though, it’s about You, Your family, and Your Household, and how you might benefit from what I’ve learned…
What Large Family Management is All About
Large Family Management is a website dedicated to reaching for your best in life while simultaneously being content and happy with the circumstances of your current situation. This means, always learning, improving and tweaking what’s on the inside which in turn fashions a more beautiful and efficient life on the outside.
There is going to be a lot of information here. I want to grow this site into an incredible resource for large family moms! If it’s your first-time here, let me break down the site, and what you’ll be able to find.
I LOVE to cook. The kitchen has always been my favorite room of the house. I have learned a lot of efficiency practices, developed many original recipes, and of course, some food philosophies that I’d love to share with you. All of these recipes are going to be super-sized for the large family. Because when you have an army to feed, you can’t be messing around with recipes that serve 4! 😉
Home Management and Organization
As a mother of nine, I’ve had to work my tail off to figure out how to keep my household running, as a matter of survival. My methods aren’t perfect, and my home will never appear in a Good Housekeeping, but it works pretty well, and gets the job done.
This section will be heavy on philosophy with some how-to thrown in as well. Anything I write about here, you may be assured, will have been tested on at least three or four children already, but maybe even more! I just finished potty training my seventh child, and it took just a few hours. I’ve got that one down-pat!
I’ve learned a lot about beauty and style over the past five years, and built my own philosophy around it. Here you’ll find advice, tips and tricks geared towards helping you build your own beauty and style philosophy.
Let’s Connect!
The best way to stay in touch with me is through my free email newsletter, (and get my free Large Family Management printable pack while you’re at it!) which will provide links to all new blog posts, as well as additional encouragement geared exclusively to subscribers.
You can also find me on Pinterest and Facebook, or feel free to send me an email, I’d love to hear from you!
