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balance: around the house

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Last night was very proud of myself.  I barely touched the computer!  With today being garbage, recycling and compost day, last night I went through the fridge, composted what could be composted, wiped out the fridge (something seriously gross had spilled in there), did all the dishes and wiped down the counters and stove top.  The garbage and recycling all got organized in the garage. I did 2 more loads of laundry and made Munchkin’s lunch for school.  It was a good night.

I can’t tell you how nice it was to come down to the kitchen this morning and not have yesterday’s mess still lying around.

On my quest of finding balance and focusing on my priories, I’m trying to figure out how to keep the house clean and organized.  I don’t want it all piling up so that one day we have do everything all at once.  If we do a little bit each day, then there will be more time for everything else.

This is also going to involve the kids.  Even at 5 and 3 there are little jobs that they can do around the house to help out.  It is their house as much as ours, so they can help to keep it tidy and organized.

Unfortunately, I’ve talked about this before.

Now I just have to come up with a plan that works.  I have two mind-sets that may or may not work:

  1. Write a big list of the stuff that needs to get done in a week and do a few things per day in no particular order
  2. Figure out what needs to be done and schedule it throughout the week.

I think I’ll start with he big list and see how it goes. I’m guessing that there might start to form some schedule all on it’s own.

For the girls, I think they will have a small list of things that they are responsible for each day:

  • cleaning up toys
  • setting the dinner table
  • brushing their teeth
  • putting clothes in the hamper
  • making the bed (Munchkin)
  • feeding the dog and giving her water (Munchkin)

What works for you?  I need all the help I can get!  Also, when I Google “weekly chores” that is’ very over whelming.  What is your favorite website that you go to for organization tips and adivce?

My house and my family thank you.

balance: motivation

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I truly thought that my first post on my road to balance was going to be about the big plans that we have come up with on how to handle the day-to-day boring house stuff to free up our time for the fun stuff.

Sooooo not the the case.

We haven’t even talked about the plan.  And I don’t really have a reason other than the fact that I have trouble staying motivated with big, life-changing projects. 

Perfect example: our walk-in closet.  We have this grand idea to build a nice closet organizer to maximize the space.  The closet is still piled with stuff.  One time, I took all the stuff out, sorted out some garbage and then put some stuff back in boxes and said that they need to be sorted through later.  Totally not productive.  I don’t think I’m a hoarder but I think I have serious issues with “maybe we can use that later.”

How do I stay motivated to keep these grand ideas rolling?

balance: the final straw

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Yesterday, I posted about the conversation on friendship that helped me to realize that I really do need to look at how I’m doing things in my life.

But that was the last straw.  There were other events leading up to that moment.  And it all erupted into yesterdays post.

It started when I attended a parenting session at Munchkin’s school.

Andrea Ramsay Speers, who I’ve talked about before, is a psychotherapist and parent coach.  She came to the school to talk about “The Crazy Pace of Life: The Effect on Kids and Strategies to Stay Sane.”  With two parents who work outside the home (one with a gigantic commute), we know how crazy life can be.

The biggest thing that I took away from this session was that we have make conscious choices.  Instead of getting caught up in everything we need to stop an evaluate if this is exactly what we want for our life.

There are many times where we are just going through the motions of life, trying to get everything done that life is just crazily going on it way.  I don’t want that.  My kids aren’t going to be little forever.  Now is the time to make sure that we’re raising our family in the way that they will be successful down the road.  Plainly going from task to task, event to event, isn’t going to turn out well in the long run.

Conscious choices.

The first one we made was that we need to focus more on each child, individually.  We’ll take turns doing an activity one-on-one with each child.  Also, we’re going to make family time more engaging rather than passive (ie. board games rather than watching a movie).

Then yesterday, I was asked a bunch of questions and I really didn’t like my answers.

Through the wonders of Twitter, I have met some amazing women.  Many of them are mom-prenuers; women who have started their own businesses.  They are using twitter to network and promote and are doing a fabulous job.  I don’t have my own business so for me Twitter is purely social.  (I do, however, help to promote @BigDaddyKreativ )

One of these amazing women, is @OptiMom. She is a life coach who focuses on helping moms live their “opti-mom” life.  She has different events and seminars to talk about issues that affect moms and to help motivate and inspire moms.  With the start of her Cogeco cable TV show, MomU, she has been asking her members questions about balance.

1. As a mom, do you think you’re living a balanced life?
2. As a mom, how do you prioritize your daily to-do list? Putting out the fires vs planning time for self-care.
3. As a mom, how much time do take for yourself every day?
4. As a mom, do you think you can make a commitment to yourself to do more to achieve a balanced life?

If you’re a mom, Laurel would love it if you could answer these survey questions. Thanks!

Trying to put myself first has never been something I would do.  I have always put others first…hubby, kids, family, friends.  It’s just who I am.

So here I am collecting all this great information and advice to make my family and myself better.  Add that to my whack on the head about friendships and I’m done.  I hit the proverbial brick wall.  How did I let all of this happen?  Unconscious choices.

Things really do need to change. I need time for my family, time for my friends and time for myself. My life needs to be balanced.  My kids and BigDaddy’s lives need to be balanced.

I know BigDaddy feels the exact same way.  We’ll be working at this like we always do: as a team.

My first step is to figure out how to tackle the day-to-day stuff to free up time for the fun stuff.  That will be my next post.

My question for other parents out there, how did you answers the questions? How do you feel after answering those questions?  Have you had to make any conscious choices?

priorities, distraction and procrastination

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Come home from work. Make dinner. Play with the girls. Get them ready for bed. Put them to bed. Sit at the computer. Go to sleep.

Okay, maybe it’s not THAT bad.  But this is what I see when I look at many nights of my life.  This is very hard to talk about.  I’m a bit embarrassed.

It stops now.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about priorities and trying to figure out how do to do the things that need to get done so that I have time for the things I want to do.

My biggest issue is getting distracted and then procrastinating.  Mainly with my computer and social media.  I get distracted by what everyone else is doing.  Who wrote what on their blog. Who’s doing what on Twitter. Who’s chatting it up on this mom’s forum or that.

But there is a bigger issue. One that has always haunted me since, probably, high school.

I have this strange urge to want to be a part of everything and if some is doing something with out me, I feel I’m missing something.

I know. I did say it was strange.  People have friends other than me. I know this.  It would be weird for people to only be friends with me.

This then spurs another issue… not focusing enough on my family and the good friends that I already have.

Last weekend, I met up with a friend and her kids who I haven’t seen in a long.  We were talking about friendships and she said something to me, that really struck a chord:

“How can I be so-and-so’s friend if they don’t ask about me.”

We were talking about how friendships require work from both sides.  But it’s not like I don’t know this.  Relationships, in all forms, require work from both sides.

I have a husband whom I love and we have great communication and a great friendship.  But when you’re living under the same roof there I don’t need to put out a lot effort to talk to him; he’s always there.  His friendship is very easy which is part of the reason I fell in love with hm and why we’re still in love today.

My other friendships aren’t as strong.  This could be partially my fault.  If I have been so distracted by other things, I may have missed the fact that my friends have tried and I just wasn’t reciprocating equally.

So other than completely disconnecting myself with the internet world (that would definitely solve all the problems), I need to cut back on the time I spend trying to know what everyone else is doing. I need to focus on my life…not everyone else’s.

I just hope that I haven’t ruined too many friendships by being so out of touch.