Taking Advantage of the Chaos – UPDATED

housewife schedule Last week was a hard week for me. I started the week off after traveling 1000 miles with three kids and a dog, spending 4 days in a hotel, and 2 days totaling 21 hours in the car, then arriving home Saturday and taking Kaylee to Toby Mac’s Winter Wonder Slam concert Sunday night 90 miles away and returning home at midnight Sunday night. Johnathan, bless his soul, decided to cry from 1am to 3am, then Scott woke for the day at 5 am. And I miss my husband with a tangible ache in my soul.

So, Monday was a wash. I maybe changed out of pajamas right before Kaylee got home from school.

Tuesday was spent frantically baking Gregg’s birthday cookies to get them in the mail, packaging a box to go to my mom’s, sending off a writing contest entry, rushing to the grocery store because we hadn’t been home in a week, then rushing to the post office in order to get home in time to meet the babysitter so that Kaylee and I could go do volunteer work. We got home at 10pm.

Wednesday morning at 3am, I woke up with a migraine. I was able to function about 4pm.

Thursday I had Christmas shopping I had to do, because I wanted to get the stuff to get the December Giveaway posted. I had to drive about 30 miles one way to go to the stores I needed to go to.

Friday I cleaned my living room for the first time and took diapers out of the dryer that I had put in there the day before I left on our Thanksgiving trip. I also pulled out four bins of Christmas decorations from the basement and now it looks like the North Pole threw up in my dining room, the room I’m using as a staging area.

Throughout all of this, I wrote about half a chapter in my current book and blogged regularly every day. We did no homeschooling, no housework, no laundry. I cooked all of my meals and stuck to my menu, did all of my baking, and cleaned the kitchen every night. I finished reading the Book of Numbers. That’s the extent of what I could accomplish.

Homemaking: Mom I realize as I’m facing a disastrous house where every single room is begging for attention, laundry that hasn’t been done since before Thanksgiving, and a new week that now is the perfect time to adjust my daily and weekly schedule.

I love this blog. I’m so happy I started it. But, the work on my blog takes hours and hours a week, so I’ve been needing to go back into the mindset I had when I worked full time. Deep cleaning a room or two on a rotating basis all week so that I work through my house isn’t conducive to what I need to accomplish on a daily basis right now. The boys need school, the house needs to be cleaned, I need to work on my book, laundry needs to be done, I need to cook and bake, this blog needs to happen, and I need time every day to read my Bible spend in prayer with God. And as important as any of it, I need to spend time with my husband which requires me to be parked in front of my computer either having an instant message conversation or a video conference.

I figure that as long as I’m so far out of order from all of the unforeseen events of the last week, now’s as good a time as any to start with something new.

So, I’m going to play around with how I do things in my home, shift things around, bring homeschool down to three days a week, and see what I can do so that everything still gets done and I can still write as much as I need to and still give this blog all of the focus it needs.

And when I’ve worked through it all and figured it all out, I’ll let you know what the new schedule looks like. I’m actually very excited about it. I’ve taken pencil to pad and worked out a few scribbles. On paper, I’ve just freed up quite a bit of time for myself. I just need to implement it and see what works and what doesn’t.

UPDATE: Stomach flu hit our house this week. As I type this, I’m lying in bed sipping ginger ale praying that it doesn’t do bad things to me while a feverish and exhausted 3-year-old lays next to me. I’m listening to the 18-month old breathe deeply in sleep and prays that he (1) sleeps just a little bit longer and (2) doesn’t throw up upon awakening. I think all adjustments to our schedule will have to happen next week, because this week is looking like it’s a wash.