I almost threw in the towel. The laundry was overflowing. The kids were non-stop bickering. One of my kids had way too many cavities when we went to the dentist despite my constant nagging about getting rid of the "sugar bugs." The dishes were piling up on the counter and I was sporting sweatpants almost everyday. The diapers I bought at the store did not absorb as much as they promised, and my mattress got soaked...more than once...by our sweet baby.
Each and every day, I would wake up and say to myself, "Today, I am going to get on top of this place." As if I could do that in one day. In my mind, I envisioned a candle burning, me sitting on the couch reading a book with a well-deserved glass of wine in the midst of my gleaming house. Of course, all of the laundry in the house would be folded and put away and my children would magically skip in to bed and say, "Thank you, dear mother, for making us go to bed early. We wish you would just relax and know how much we appreciate all you do for us. And no, I do not need a drink of water. Nor do I want you to rub my back or turn my light up just a little bit more. I have used the bathroom as much as I possibly could in a day and will not use that as an excuse to get out of my bed no less than four times. That gate?? You don't even need that, mom. I will not try to catapult over that tonight. I am obedient and long to please you." Wait...where in the heck was I going with all of that? I got kind of caught up in my blissful thinking...
Ahhh, yes. I was trying to get my head above water and was failing miserably. I would make unrealistic expectations for myself, and then be disappointed when I didn't meet them: "You sluggard. Why can't you wash/dry/fold/put away eight loads of laundry in a single day. You are a worthless piece of crap." Or, how about that attic that took years to get as disorganized as it is...why shouldn't I be able to make it tip-top in a couple of hours filled with countless interruptions?
And so I began saying things like, "I just can't keep up." "I'm not even going to try." "This is just a stage in my life where I can't get anything done and I need to accept it." And did this way of thinking make the chaos okay? No, it just made me feel like I had lost the fight. And so, I committed to get back in the ring.
I often feel that chore charts, allowance, cleaning schedules, etc. just give me one more thing to do. The thought of them overwhelm me and I can't keep up anyway. What I'm finding is that, if I take the time to implement these things, my days are much smoother. All of the time that I sit on Facebook (how I have a love/hate relationship with that site), I could be printing off charts or setting my timer for fifteen minutes to do a quick-clean.
Here are a few of the sites that have really helped me:
www.flylady.com- for the cleaning
www.onethousandgifts.com- for gratitude
www.aholyexperience.com- for the soul
www.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com- for the kids
Don't try to do it all in one day. One thing at a time. And be gentle with yourself. If you have any questions about things we're implementing here, feel free to ask. We don't have it all figured out by any means, but is empowering to be on the right path. My husband said to me last week, "It actually feels like more organized chaos." Hey, that's a beginning!
No comments:
Post a Comment