Elizabeth Enlightened

On any given day I have a list of projects running through my head that I would like to accomplish. Writing stories, working on blog entries, craft projects, and reading are just a few of them. Coming up with the ideas is the easy part, finding the time to work on them can be challenging.

My daily routine consists of getting the girls up, eating breakfast, going downstairs to work, coming back up for lunch with the family, and then trying to work until 5:00 while the girls nap. Then it is playing with kids, making dinner, baths, some cleaning (if I can manage it), more playing, and putting the girls to bed. If I’m lucky this all gets done by 9:00 pm. By this time I am tired, feel guilty because I should exercise when I really want to watch reruns of Grey’s Anatomy, and figure by the time I get into doing anything I want to it will be time for me to go to sleep. See the rut?

So I am making some minor changes in the routine to make time for the things I want to do. Here is a small list I came up with that should make my life easier and give me some breathing room:

1. Taking breaks during work hours.  I can’t really do anything about work since it is a fact of life. However, I am taking designated, guilt free breaks to read personal emails, blogs, catch up on the ever growing piles of magazines, or something to have a little time for myself.
2. Exercising as soon as I am done with work. This might sound difficult with a 3 and 1 ½ year old running around but that is why gates were invented and I happen to have one that fits nicely around our treadmill.
3. Multitasking. While I am fixing dinner I start a load of dishes to soak and do them as I go. It saves time with less scrubbing. This same concept works for bathrooms. While the girls are romping in the tub I keep an eye on them while I scrub down everything else.
4. Cleaning one room a day. I figure by picking one room of the house a day to focus on, the whole cleaning process will be less overwhelming. I will let you know how that works.
5. Breaking projects into chunks.  I know I will never write a novel in a night or finish a craft project from beginning to end in the couple of hours of free time I have. So I am seeing how I can make an idea manageable by working on them in pieces. Seeing a little progress at the end of the night is better then continuing to dream about ideas that never come to fruition.

So this is where I am. Is this a fool proof formula? Probably not, but any plan is open for tweaks along the way. That is the only way to make it better, right?

Posted in: on Monday, April 26, 2010 at at 2:29 PM