How do you "get it all done?"
It seems there are just never enough hours in the day. It seems that when I go to bed at night, I still have a to-do list from around the house that never gets shorter. When I wake in the morning my mind is on overdrive with everything that I need to get done that day both personally and professionally.
When I was a kid both my parents worked outside the house. My memory may be flawed, but I don't remember my parents spending their weekend running around getting "stuff" done, nor do I remember them working as many hours as I seem to work.
How do you get it all done? What do you no longer do? Where can we realistically delegate tasks to others (yes, I realize this costs money) and where can we just save time? What am I doing that I should just stop doing?
I confess that I pay someone to plow the snow from my driveway. I get the kids to do regular chores around the house (and no, they don't like it), they also cut the grass. Warren and I share tasks around the house, both inside and out, so this isn't a case of me trying to do everything myself.
What do you do?
When I was a kid both my parents worked outside the house. My memory may be flawed, but I don't remember my parents spending their weekend running around getting "stuff" done, nor do I remember them working as many hours as I seem to work.
How do you get it all done? What do you no longer do? Where can we realistically delegate tasks to others (yes, I realize this costs money) and where can we just save time? What am I doing that I should just stop doing?
I confess that I pay someone to plow the snow from my driveway. I get the kids to do regular chores around the house (and no, they don't like it), they also cut the grass. Warren and I share tasks around the house, both inside and out, so this isn't a case of me trying to do everything myself.
What do you do?
posted by Rhonda! @ 2:29 PM
3 Comments:
At 12:42 PM,
Anonymous said…
I have not arrived at the answer to that question as of yet, however one thing I must say is that I had a moment of clarity last week.
I just re-married this past July and it has been an adjustment for me, the kids, and my new husband. I have been trying to do everything and make everything perfect. During a possible melt down due to absolute exhaustion, it came to me. I can't do this alone. I immediately put my children's chores back in place, I asked my husband and kids to alternate with the pets, and I scheduled a beauty appointment for myself.
I also realized that I'm an earlybird and that is the best time for me to have a cup of coffee and read one of my favortite magazines. I don't need much. A little goes a long way.
Another thing I do is take 30-45 minutes for myself everyday after work. During this time, I change clothes watch the news for a few minutes and regroup before starting dinner.
Trying to be SuperWoman was making me rather unhappy, stressed, and overall, not fun to be around. I plan to contiunue with my beauty appointments and quiet moments.I'm even thinking about creating a dinner schedule where my husband and kids will be responsible for preparing dinner once a month.
At 5:55 PM,
Crafty Lady said…
The simple answer is...I don't.
I have perfectionist tendencies...this does not make life easy when you want to get it all done and get it all done "your way" so that it's "done right." I've learned to delegate, at work and at home, and to realize that not everything has to be perfect to the nth degree. Just getting it finished is what is needed.
For those things that I can't trim down, like paying bills and so forth, I do as much as possible online. Getting an email of my bill saves paper and saves me the time of opening it, writing a cheque and filing it. Digital filing on the computer is much quicker and I can still print out a copy later on if I need to.
Lunch hours while I'm chatting with the girls at work is the time to flip through catalogues and mark what I'm interested in. If there isn't anything then it gets pitched...otherwise it's too tempting to go through again and there's much more to do then repeat myself.
Reminders are my other key. My new Samsung Jack phone practically lives on my hip. With built in Outlook and appointment book I put everything in there, no matter how small. I have a rule that I must do what I'm reminded of right away and if it can't be done right at that time then I reschedule it.
In the end I decided that I'd rather be happy instead of having the "pefect" house. If that means I skip dusting the knickknacks one weekend so I can spend some extra time relaxing with the puppy...then so be it. It may not all be done but the important stuff, like spending quality time with my loved ones, gets done.
At 3:40 PM,
Anonymous said…
I don't get it all done and there is only me and my significant other at home. I have someone come in every 3 weeks to clean the condo. We don't food shop on a regular basis, nor do we cook every night, although my sig-other enjoys cooking for us. We moved recently and we don't have the same amount of space for our clothes and other things as before. One of my biggest demotivators is ironing his clothes; I dislike it. At this stage in life, I prefer to have him take his pants and shirts to be laundered so I don't have to do them. I just want to take care of my own ironing. Selfish? I really don't think so. There are just not enough hours in the day. We both still work fulltime, and I want to spend my free time now on what I want to do; not cook, clean or iron. He still hasn't found a laundramat yet but that's coming soon.
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