How do you Spend your time? Have you ever sat down and actually calculated how your spending your time? The older my children have become, the more I've had to learn to better manage my time. Between dance class, basketball games, football, Awanas and list can go on and on. Then there's all the other things. Like commitments that I have taken on with my church, homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, and sewing and whatever else I'm leaving out. These things all require my time. I say I don't have time to exercise or I don't have time to volunteer at church or play a game with the kids. Is that the truth? I've found in my own experience that the time for those things can be found. It's just a matter of sitting down and figuring out where I'm waisting my time. So here are some ideas that might help you if your having trouble in this area too.
1. Sit down and write out all things that you want to be able to accomplish for the day. sometimes is helps to see it all down on paper. I like visuals.
2. Make a schedule for yourself. I'm not a live by the book kinda of person but I do find that having some type of schedule is helpful. It doesn't have to be a by the hour kind of schedule. Mine is more like a list of things to do. I put things in order of their priority. For example: I need to teach my kids before I can sit down and sew something. Both are important to me but the one is more important than the other. I'll put a time on it but I don't always stick to it. I also added things that would make my day go smoother the following day. Like for example: I set my kids clothes out for the following day the night before or I pack there swim bag on Monday night for Tuesday morning. It just helps my day go by a little smoother.
3. Limit your time spent doing less important things. I know this is like one of those dah.. things but I had to force myself to be more aware of the time I was spending on these things. My biggest time sucker upper is the computer. I would find myself getting on to check my email and then an hour and a half later I'm looking at the time in shock. So I gave myself a certain amount of time to work with. Even if you have to set a timer. It sounds funny but it works. I use a timer for my son when he plays the Wii for the same purpose.
4. Make a cleaning list. This might be a bit much for some of you, but it helps me. Go through each room of your house with a pencil and paper and write down everything that needs to be cleaned or straightened up in each room. Not just the daily things. Write down the things that you might only do once a year too. After you've done every room in the house, go through the list and put a D next to the things you want done daily, W for weekly, M for monthly, Y for yearly, you can even do BW for bi-weekly or BM for bi-monthly. Depending on how much time you want to spend on this. When your done with that, make yourself a daily chore list or add the daily chores to your daily schedule. You can then make a monthly cleaning list and a yearly list an so on. Then pick things from those lists that you want to do every day. For instance If you have 20 things on your monthly list and pick one thing each day to do, you'll complete the list in 20 days. I write the date that I did it in pencil next to the chore so that I can keep track of which things I did and when it was done last.
5. Make a weekly menu. This will eliminate the guess work out of making dinner every night and make grocery shopping go smoother. I also post my menu where the kids and my hubby can see it. That way they're not asking me what's for dinner every night.
I'm not always consistent with these things, but I have found that when I am my life goes a lot smoother and my family is happier. I'm not screaming at my kids to hurry up and get dressed to walk out the door because I decided to waist too much time on the computer instead of getting them ready. After all if Mamma's happy everyone is happy. :)
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