I thought I would pop in here and say hello today before I sign off tomorrow for Good Friday and the weekend that follows (we all know there is a happy ending!).
Hello.
This Holy Week has been such a great one for me.
After a slow and steady decline of my household and time management over the past few weeks, things finally hit rock bottom. This past weekend I was feeling like a big fat failure. I felt like everything I usually have under control (even if barely) had slowly piled up to a mountain of “unfinished business” (laundry, bills, garden, kids rooms, my room, for that matter pretty much everything in the house, kids school, healthy eats for the family). When the house is a mess, I always feel like before I do anything in it, I need to clean it. When the kitchen is a huge mess, I have no space or motivation to bake our bread for the week. And then when I want to throw together PB+Js for a quick lunch I am wishing I just bought the bread at the store, but then I feel guilty doing that when I can make fresh, healthy bread for MUCH less than $4 a loaf….and on and on. Do you see the spiral here? Am I crazy or does this happen to anyone else? And when I am overwhelmed and guilt-ridden like this, I lose the ability to be productive in any way. While the kids are out playing and the baby is asleep, I wander around folding 3 shirts, washing 5 dishes, rewashing that load of laundry that sat wet in the washer overnight, sweeping a floor, then the baby wakes up and I sit there nursing him and looking around. It looks like nothing got done even though I was moving around working for 30 straight minutes. But the work isn’t productive because it is unfocused and I never get one single task completely finished…..
I woke up Monday morning feeling motivated and determined to pull myself out of this rut and I sat down in front of google and started creating. We now have a family calendar (that Dash and I can both access remotely since he doesn’t have an iphone), a weekly meal plan spreadsheet and a daily schedule. It has already made such a huge difference in our day to day living! When I know I have a block of time to do xyz, I can decide on a task to take on and finish it completely. I also forgot how much of a difference an hour or two of quiet time in the afternoon makes- especially since both of the big kids have given up naps. Now that the house is coming back together, our meals are planned and healthy for us and our school time is back on track, I am planning other changes that will help us live(and sleep) a bit better in this our home. I think that Asher and Amelia will soon be sharing a bedroom…..
I have also gotten back into my much loved habit of photographing our days and all of the moments in them that make me grateful. There is a difference in my photos right now though- most of them are on instagram! I keep the big camera around to grab and shoot like usual, but with an 8 week old in my arms a lot of the times, my phone is just so easy and convenient to use. It is definitely just the tool for my photojournaling tendencies.
So here it is, a productive Holy Week at Casa Ballarta. Complete with lots of clean rooms, clean clothes, school completed, prayers said, books read and healthy meals eaten.
How has your Holy Week been?
by mamabrit
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