In July of 2012, my husband and I decided I should leave my job to stay at home. You see, we had a lot going on. We had a 6 year old in school, and depended on our mothers to trade off pick up duty and childcare during the day. Unfortunately, earlier that year, both of our fathers began experiencing health problems. My father had had declining, but manageable health for a while, but was becoming less manageable, and my father-in-law found out he had lung cancer. Due to their respective health problems, it was becoming harder to manage who would pick our son up from school and care for him until we got home. Add to it, my husband was in the latter stages of opening a new business and we were nearing completion on a house we were building. Individually, we could have managed, but with everything together we decided it was better if we had someone to manage the home. As an added bonus I could help my husband with his new business and start my own if I left my 9 to 5.
I was pretty excited to get all that extra time back in my day. Between the 1 1/2 hour round trip commute and an 8 hour work day, I would have all the time in the world to get the new house organized, work on my clothing line, help my mom and mother-in-law, work on my hobby, get back in shape, help my husband with his new business, join the PTA, plant a vegetable garden, cook gourmet meals, come up with a plan for world peace and cure hunger.
Skip ahead 6 months and the new house was only slightly less disorganized than the old house, there was still tons of take out served on my table, no time for hobbies, and I had no progress on my business. I couldn't understand it. I had all this time now! But yet, I still had piles of dirty laundry and dishes greeting me each morning, I was angry at my husband and son for not picking up behind themselves when I did manage to get something done, still overweight and out of shape, and generally felt like I was spinning my wheels in neutral. I kept telling myself I would get the house cleaned and organized from top to bottom "tomorrow". Only "tomorrow" never came because I would get so exhausted and stressed from the least little thing I had to do. There didn't seem to be enough hours in the day.
Then I had my a-ha moment.
You know that moment where you can see everything you are doing wrong
and suddenly, or, not so suddenly as the case is, right it. Chances are, if you have a kid, you know the
feeling. You know when you first brought
the baby home and the house was a mess, the baby wouldn't go to sleep, you couldn't remember the last time you had a shower and you felt like the biggest
Mom-failure ever? Then one day things
just seemed better-easier and you couldn't remember when it happened but you
knew you were actually pretty good at this mom thing? Yeah, it was sort of like that. Only I knew when it happened.
Everything was different now. I was at home, and I was expecting my home to
run on auto pilot just because I didn't work outside of the home anymore. I had more time and that’s all I really
needed to begin with, right? WRONG! What I needed, then and now, was a
system. I just had an excuse when I
worked as to why the house was a disorganized mess. Take the excuse out of the equation and what
you are left with is the truth. My
laundry wasn't done because I didn't do it.
I didn't do it because I figured I could just do it tomorrow. The dishes weren't done because I figured I’d
just do them while I made the breakfast I didn't cook because the kitchen was
still a mess from dinner. My husband and
kid didn't pick up behind themselves because I never taught them how and the
house was already a mess they didn't figure it mattered. So I began to put my system in place and
accepted, hard as it was, that it would never happen overnight. I would just have to start from where I was
and get better as I went along, through good old fashioned trial and error. Then, I decided I was going to write it all
down and do what I could to help someone else.
While I will include lists, this blog won't be JUST lists. You can find lists anywhere on the internet with a simple Google search. No, I'm going to outline how to take the lists and put it into practice. Now a quick disclaimer: Everyone has a different situation. You may be a work outside of the home mom, or have multiple kids and different ages, a single parent, etc. I am writing this from the perspective of a stay at home mom with a school aged child because that's my situation. You may need to alter things a bit to fit your unique situation, but it doesn't mean you need to throw it all away. I also recommend not doing a whole lot more than what is outlined each day. It is too easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated. Yes, these are small steps each day, but you will see results right away, and the other stuff you want to do, you will get around to when things are more manageable. So don't worry about the baseboards, the cobwebs and the disorganization of your drawers and cabinets...we will get to. Just be patient, I promise it will get better!
No comments:
Post a Comment