Organization

Basket with food for husband. Popcorn, chips, yogurt, granola bars, root beer, Izze, and cashews.

There comes a time every so often when a woman just needs to get away. Sometimes it is business, but other times it can be for fun.  Taking some time for yourself to be whole, reflect, and just relax are important. They are what help to make you a better mom. I had the opportunity to do this for a weekend. It was amazing!

Now onto the scary part, or for me it is scary: Leaving your family and just going.  Here’s the thing. I have an amazing husband, who could keep things running well without me, but I still sometimes feel guilty about leaving.  I have all these worries. I decided though before I left this time, I would step into teacher mode for a moment. I never left my students without a lesson plan or list of things they could do while I was gone.  So why would I leave the little people and the wonderful husband with nothing and say, “Wing it, good luck and I will be back Sunday.” I could, and they would be just fine, but I would worry.

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Children's Books for bedtime routine: Bedtime routine items include pjs, books, toothbrush, and stuffed animal

When we first brought our oldest son home, we did not have any routines established. It took us a while to come out of the fog of newborn life. As we wanted to establish routines for our family, especially at bedtime, we asked ourselves what we wanted that to look like. Then we looked to children books, to help set up these simple but powerful routines for our family.

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The ball has dropped and people are excited about the new year. Social media is inundated with posts for a healthier and better you, and one of the big topics for January is organization. I wish the word “organization” conjured up positive mental images in my head, of a perfectly organized home or the newest organization item I was adding to our home. However, organization for me is a word of anger, resentment, frustration — a trigger word if you will. While for anyone else it is simply a word, for me it is a strong word, and it has been wrecking my life.

BACKGROUND

How did I get here? Why is this such a strong negative word for me? Here’s the root of my problem: I am a creative person who wants to be organized, who at times keeps up the appearance of being organized (especially as a teacher and now as a mom), who wants organized structures in place, but is terrible at follow-through. For example, when I was little my mom would ask me to clean my room.  I couldn’t just do a clean sweep of the room though; I had to go through and turn out drawers and “organize” everything into groups or parts. It would take forever. But the problem was that two days later, after I had “organized” everything, I would have turned it into a total disaster.

As a student, I wasn’t really organized at school either. I would find myself many times taking a binder and reorganizing it, because I had papers stuffed everywhere.

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Well, OK, how to admit this–I haven’t been particularly motivated to write any more posts.  It’s not that I don’t have lots more to say, or that I don’t want to say it, but that I feel like I should be able to briefly summarize the large topics of my life into a few paragraphs, type that up, and call it a day.  But that would be stupid, and completely waste this blog, so I’m going to try something just as crazy as I am.

Starting with this post, I’m going to share something that I’m working on or have done:  It may be cooking, baking, building something, or just assembling something with the kiddo.  That’s my hook for me to keep writing.  Then, I’ll communicate my topic, which is what perhaps someone would desire to read once they’ve reached the end of the Internet and gone, “I wonder if I missed something–oh, look, a blog.”

RECENT PROJECT

This week’s project was baking snickerdoodles.  Yes, of course, thousands upon thousands of people have done it before me, but I haven’t done it myself, so why not try it?  The recipe I used was Allrecipes.com’s “Mrs. Sigg’s Snickerdoodles”.  How were the cookies?  Both the Wife and her friend who was over enjoyed them, and my son called them “delicious”, so I’d say that’s a thumbs up. It’s still weird to me that you pull the snickerdoodles out when the center is a bit moist, because I certainly don’t want to underbake something, but who am I to argue with the results.

TOPIC FOR TODAY

So what do you think about when you’re baking snickerdoodles?  What grand plans of the universe might be revealed amidst cream of tartar, cinnamon, and sugar?  I discovered the phone screen I was using automatically locked on me way more than I thought it would while reading the recipe.  As for revelations, they were small-scale, but one that I had was this:  I’m really locked into my daily lists of things to do.

I don’t even remember what book or article it was I was reading a long time ago that had a summary that went something like this:  “People who write down their activities for the day get more done.”  OK, I thought, this works for me.  I love making lists, checking things off, and proving how amazing an amount of things I can get done in one day.  With this in mind, I got a notebook, started writing a list (numbered, of course) of all the things I should do each day, and it worked–I was getting lots done, including the small things that might normally slip my mind.  Years have gone by where I’ve done this, and I’ve filled up multiple notebooks with my tasks for each day.

Here’s what leads to the problem, though:  99.9% of the time I’ve listed out my tasks, they have been things like:

  • Take out the trash
  • Fold the laundry
  • Clean up the table
  • Caulk the windows

And on and on, specific activities meant to take care of the basic needs of life.  It’s awesome if they’re all things I can get done within a half hour of getting home.  Yet most often the tasks are things that I only get completely done shortly before I go to bed, or <gasp!> I don’t even sometimes get done at all.  This leaves little to no time for quality time with my son or my wife, and there’s never really time for friends or events outside of this.  The really bad thing is that I feel guilty when I don’t get the things I’ve listed done, which makes me stress out, which makes me a terrible person to be around.

Wait a minute–these task lists were supposed to let me get more things done, so that I could have more time for the good stuff that fills me and my family up with happiness.  Did I miss something?  Where did I go wrong?

If you’re someone who likes everything wrapped up neatly, here’s where you’re going to be disappointed:  I don’t know what’s going wrong with using lists.  A lot of the things I write are things that really need done.  Do I need to just trim off a couple things and acknowledge that I can’t get them done?  Or do I need to add the happy tasks to my list too?  I’m going to try one or both of these things, and I’ll share how it works in a future post.  For now, I’ve got some weatherstripping to do . . . oh, and vacuuming . . . the cat litter needs changed again?  Dang it . . .

 

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