Managing It All

Finding a balance can be very tricky for me. I really have to work at it because I am an all or nothing kinda girl. I am pretty sure that I am not alone in this boat. Whether you are a mama and work full time or are a mama and own a business or a mama who is taking care of someone who is ill or are a mama who homeschools, etc...life can be one great big balancing act.

For me, what I am struggling to balance is homeschooling, food, and housework. All three of those things combined would take more hours than I have in a day to do them the way that  would like to. This week we have been focusing hard on school and housework which means that food has gone by the wayside. This means that I haven't been tracking our expenses which means that I have probably spent more than I should have these first two weeks of August. I will write a post about that in the next couple of days once I am brave enough to see the damage done to my bank account.

One thing that I am trying to work very hard on (and am having some success with this week) is just trying to slow down and remember that I can accomplish everything that I want to just not all at one time. Because school work is a priority in this house that comes first. The order this week has then been housework and finally food. (We are still eating healthy I am just not paying attention to cost like I should.)

Instead of cleaning my house like a nut I try to make sure that it is picked up each day. Then I have decided that the kids and I are going to tackle a housework job each day. For example, this week every morning after the kids have gotten up they had to go outside and pick 10 weeds from the yard. I also did/do this after my morning walk with the dogs. (I decided last weekend that I was going to start walking again in order to slowly try and get myself healthier. Wednesday and Sunday are my rest days, but every other day I have been /will be outside taking a brisk walk with the four legged beasts in my home.) I also assigned each of the kids 3 windows to wash (inside and outside) each day. I included myself in that assignment as well. The kids and I were able to accomplish these tasks in a minimal amount of time over the course of the week and it didn't cause me any stress at all. It was much different than my normal approach at deep cleaning or weeding which is to go balls to the wall by myself until I get the whole job done which usually takes me a couple of days from the time I get up to the time I go to bed. This makes me an exhausted and irritable mama and wife.

Housework is cyclical. It is just going to get dirty again once I clean it up, so why go crazy cleaning  it like a mad woman? Why not just do a little bit each day and keep my stress levels low and just know that I will be doing this every day for the foreseeable future?

Now I just need to figure out how to get the food thing figured out. Shopping for two weeks didn't really work for me. I think (and again I will have to check the numbers) that I ended up spending more than I wanted to by running to get the fruits and veggies that I needed during the course of those two weeks. I am going to give it another try though because I think that part of the problem is that my dedication to the project was not where it should have been.

I am not going to stress out about finding a balance with my three big focal points. I am just going to pray each morning that God will lead me in wisdom and serenity. It has worked so far this week, and I trust that it will continue to do so.