Ahhhh, Bliss

I have this counter. It has become my everything counter and it's where everything gets dumped. About 3 years ago I had it completely cleaned off and it stayed that way the entire time my husband was away on a business trip.  He came home. It became our dumping ground. Again. It's been driving me nuts for 3 years. I finally cleaned it off again.

Bliss=having a clean counter

Unfortunately, I found a new dumping ground. I cleaned off the dining table the other day so I put all the junk from the counter on it. It's the papers. I am buried in papers.  I just want to chuck the whole thing in the garbage. But I probably shouldn't, right? But I am determined to get it cleaned off this weekend. Well by Thanksgiving!

Temporary dumping ground :(

Procrastination

I used to be the queen of procrastination.  I would wait until the last minute to do just about anything. It's not that I did not want to do whatever task was at hand...I just always had something else that I thought needed my time and attention.

I am notorious for my to-do lists. Just ask my husband. I have paper lists, I have an app for lists. I have lists everywhere! Except my lists keep getting longer, and my time keeps getting shorter.  I have found what works best for me is to just slog through "the List." I stay focused, I stay on task, and I actually accomplish more than I had hoped.  Staying focused is not my strong suit.

Around Christmas time and into the new year, instead of hitting my to-do list regularly, I ignored it, almost entirely and enjoyed the time my husband was home on vacation. We played with the kids, we visited with friends, and we relaxed.  I am now paying for it, in the sense that I am out of practice of sticking with my tasks for the day.  In the last week, I hit it with renewed vigor and I am once again getting tasks accomplished.

I have found that having kids makes me more organized. Nothing brings on heart palpitations like trying to find your keys, loading up the car with snacks, etc that you forgot to prepare for the next outing, and being sidelined by 3 kids who all had to poop at the same time. Yeah, the last part happened to me once. It took us forever to get out of the house, which made us 15 minutes late for a class.

I now find myself creating my daily to-do list the night before. I have my gym bag packed for the next day along with snacks for the little kids while they are in childcare.  I have in my head what needs to be done and where I need to go for my errands.  I create my route for the day in order to be most efficient in getting out of the house, hit as many errands as possible in order to get the kids home before they collapse into a hot mess before lunch/nap time.  I am even going so far as to prep dinner during nap time so that at 5pm all I have to do is pop it into the oven instead of trying to prep while the baby falls apart because he is done for the day.

I am also fed up with the way my house looks and I am spending 30 minutes a day just trying to maintain the front hall, the family room, and the kitchen. Forget about everything else. I'll just have to tackle them on my cleaning days. But at least when Hubby or an unexpected guest walks in the door I no longer feel as embarrassed by the craziness of coats, boots, toys, and whatnot that they would have had to slog through in order to walk in.

I am not the most organized and of all the talents my mom possesses, I wish I had inherited her gene for getting things clean, organized, and done! My mom is a whirlwind and can make a house look sparkling in what appears to be minutes, while I find it very laborious and overwhelming and can take hours. Well, maybe someday I'll master her talent.

How do you keep on top of the housework? How do you stay motivated to accomplish your tasks? For me, this will always be my quest ;)

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

Benjamin Franklin
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790)

Plan to Eat

If you've been following along, you know that I'm not the most organized person, hence the many times-lost keys, the mixed up dates for preschool enrollment, the pile of papers on my kitchen counter (that I swear breed when I'm not looking!)  Organization is something I have to work at and towards.  Sometimes I would love to throw in the towel and say "Fine! You win!" to all the stuff that accumulates (it's really just papers!), but I don't and over time I have become more organized. I'm better than I was 10 years ago and definitely better since I've became a SAHM two years ago.

Being a SAHM, I have taken over the cooking and I've already mentioned that family dinner time is important to us. Two years ago, this was a daunting task and not one that I relished. My husband is a fabulous cook and I'm thrilled when he takes over.  But again, over time I have learned to like it, to learn to go with the flow, and now venture into new recipes. One of the things that used to throw me for a loop was the ageless question: "What's for dinner?" It takes so much planning! Do you need to defrost anything? Do you have the right ingredients for what you want to make?  Did you just have chicken last night? Do you want it again tonight?

If you've ever been to my house you may have seen the calendar on the side of the fridge that has a meal written down for each night.  I keep in mind dates that I know we won't be eating at home because we are at a celebration, nights for leftovers, and at least one night for a slowcooker meal.  My friends were impressed but then I shared my secret, I have a cookbook called "The One-Armed Cook" than I love. The meals are simple and can all be done while holding a baby in one arm if needed.  I also use the calendar to help me with my shopping list and to know "What's for dinner?" every night of the month. It totally helped when I made the transition of having one kid to two kids.  I shop at two places for food, the local grocery store and the local superstore. I get my dry goods and frozen ingredients at the superstore and my fresh produce at the grocery store (only because I'm afraid that I can't eat all of the fresh stuff before it would go bad if I buy it in bulk.)  However, my planning can take up to over an hour for planning for the month, including writing grocery lists (one for the local grocery store and one for my bulk items at a superstore).

On my birthday I received an e-mail for a contest I had entered for a year's subscription to Plan to Eat.   I was informed I won and I am so excited! What a great inadvertent birthday present! It's an electronic version of my pen & paper method of planning meals for the month and writing out grocery lists.  I've only had it a few days and have only logged on a couple of times because of it being Easter weekend and being terribly busy. I'm still learning to use it to my full benefit. So far, really easy! I type in my recipes, drop them into the days of the calendar, and the site helps me to create shopping lists from the ingredients I'm using (read: it actually creates the lists for me! I don't have to go back to my recipes and write down my shopping list on a separate sheet of paper), gives me a place to add non-food items (diapers, wipes, etc) to my list, and then I can drop my items into a shopping list for any of the stores I use. It took way less time to create a shopping list than it usually does. How about mere minutes versus 30+ minutes to an hour!!  I'm looking forward to how this will help me save money too! With me not working I am really conscientious about how much money I spend everywhere. One place that I can cut costs without making sacrifices is the grocery store. It just means shopping better.  With the lists I think I can do that.  I'll let you know how it goes!

p.s.  I am not receiving any compensation for writing about this. I am just really excited I won this. I really got into using it last night and I'm shocked how it is already saving me time. The longest part is writing in all my recipes. But once I'm done with that I won't have to do it again! No more lost recipes I snipped out of magazines.  As the Discombobulated Mommy I am happy to pass along anything that will  help us find more time to spend with our kids and less time on the "chores" of the house, while still maintaining our sanity.  If you join Plan to Eat, friend me and let's share recipes!

Catch Up Week

I've posting about the craziness of my weeks. It seemed to just become more chaotic the closer we got to my son's birthday.  Between all the sports activities and prepping for the party, we were on the move an awful lot.  One of our routines is to go to the gym on a daily basis. Last week I was informed that the childcare for the gym would be closed this week due to some remodeling.  Well, huh...

I was given suggestions about going to other facilities that were near by and part of the same chain. But I'm particular about who watches my kids and I'd rather wait it out. My kids love the ladies that currently watch them at the gym, so forget it, I'm not going anywhere new for the week.  It was also suggested that I come at night when my husband comes home from work. He doesn't get home until 6:30. By the time dinner is over and the kids are in bed, I'm ready to be in my jammies and spend time with my husband, reviewing the day or watching a favorite television show.

So I did what any sane person would do in this instance, I signed up for a 5:30am Spin class this week. That's right, you read it right. I signed up for a 5:30 AM Spin Class.  I figured I could go and be back before my husband left for work.  Yesterday I didn't hear my alarm go off, but I made it this morning. Not bad, I must say. I could do this and make it work. I've already been to the gym, showered, had my morning devotional, and now I'm blogging. I feel like my day is already half over. But we all know that it's just beginning because the kids will wake up any minute now. I might actually get to do some of things we can do during the day because we're at the gym.

I feel like the gym takes up a lot of our time. And it does. It's probably a two hour process: prepping for the gym, going to the gym, leaving the gym, coming home and getting lunch, etc.

Yesterday, I didn't wake up in time so we ended up not going anywhere. I planned to clean and straighten the house yesterday and I actually got to do it! Granted the kids and I stayed in our jammies all day, but that's fine! My son had time to play with a lot of his new birthday presents. I was able to get everything checked off my cleaning "to do" list and I had time to play games with the kids, read to them, and just spend time with them without any pressures to go anywhere or do anything. It was really nice! Today we will run errands after the kids are up for the day, but we won't have to cram everything in. We'll get done what we get done. This is a nice reprieve from our usually chaotic schedule. We'll do this all week!  Ahhhh, 5:30am Spin Class...this might work!

Lost Keys Provide Cleaning and Organizing Opportunity

This blog is so aptly named. I really am the epitome of the Discombobulated Mommy. I work really hard to be organized and for me it is hard work. It is not something that comes naturally to me.

Yesterday, I lost my keys...again.  We have a key hook and I thought that I always put them there. That's where they usually are when I find them. When I lost my keys several weeks ago and I called my husband at work to ask if he'd seen them I told him that they weren't in their usual place and that I put them on the key hook about 90% of the time. How about 50% of the time? My wonderful husband often finds them on the counter, on a side table, on the kitchen table or on our bed and puts them on the key hook for me so that I can find them in the morning.  That morning I happened to find them between the footboard and our mattress. They had fallen out of my jeans pocket and fallen there. Go figure!

I lost them again, yesterday. I had already fed and dressed the kids and they were ready for us to go to the gym. I started looking for my keys and after a few minutes realized they were not in any of the usual places.  My 3 year old followed me around the house giving me advice about what I should do: "Mommy, you should really put away your keys in the right place.  Mommy, you should always put away your things. Mommy, you should really clean up the stuff around the house."  Sage advice, not helpful when you are trying to find your lost item. He followed me around the house spouting suggestions and advice.  I finally turned on the tv and asked him to watch television so that I could look for my keys in peace.

 I eventually did find them. I called my husband again and he had accidentally taken them to work. He saw them on the kitchen table and picked them up to put them on the key hook and accidentally put them in his pocket and walked out the door.

Nonetheless, the lost keys encouraged me to organize the house. We couldn't go anywhere and I went on a cleaning frenzy. I, of course, avoided the pile of papers on the kitchen counter that I need to go through to recycle and put away. I just don't have the time to do it. I also need to be less frenzied when I do it...or do I? However, the bathrooms and my bedroom look great!

Balancing Act

I feel like since I have been a SAHM mom for two years now that I should have a perfect system worked out to balance the household chores, errands, and activities with the kids.  I don't have a perfect system. I have a system and it works for us, sort of, but every now and again I start to feel overwhelmed with all of the chores and things that need to get done.

I'm also so tired. I don't drink coffee, but I'll drink tea. I tend to stay away from caffeine because anything after 2 or 4 seems to keep me up all night. A light nap in the day means that I've lost some time to get things done. How do you keep energized or motivated to get things done throughout the day?

I'm a last-minute girl.  I hate buying Christmas presents early in the year, because there might be something better closer to Christmas...or more than likely I've forgotten that I already bought something and I go out and buy something new for someone.  I don't pack early for trips because what if I need that shirt or those pants before the trip?  I don't pack early because I also need to do the laundry, but who has time to do several loads of laundry in a day?  So things don't get put away or bought, or done in a timely fashion because what if I still need it, what if I don't need it yet, or how can I do x when I haven't done y yet?  You get the point.

So for anyone out there reading this, how do you do it? How do you stay on top of the chores, errands, and to do list, while still being there for your family?  Suggestions, tips, "this is how I do it," I would love to hear from you.