I’m especially feeling it today. The Monday after Thanksgiving break. Although, I enjoyed time with my family and eating entirely too much – I fell out of routine. For us busy moms, routine is crucial! How else can we get 12,563 things done in 12 hours with only 2 hands?
Not only do I feel out of routine, I feel overwhelmed and guilty! I feel guilty for not getting things done, for not being prepared for this week, and for not spending my extra time wisely. I feel overwhelmed with the fact that I now have to squeeze two weeks worth of work into one. The kids are tired from traveling and I’m just mentally tired in general.
Now that we have all soaked in our pity and found other mothers who understand, what do we do about it? How do we dig ourselves out of this quiscksand feeling of procrastination and overwhelming to do lists?
Four things we MUST do to get our heads above water:
- We must climb out from underneath our need to have someone or everyone sit with us in our own pity. We are moms and this world is full of moms. Knowing that, we can be confident in knowing that SOMEONE understands what we are going through! If you still need to satisfy that need, then hop on the Mama Knows Mess blog and read away! 🙂 This is a place FULL of imperfection and messiness!
- We must attack this a little at a time. Everything can not and will not be done in a day. If your house has to stay a disaster for a day (or week) so that you can focus on completing your budget, stocking your fridge, running errands, catching up on projects or making those phone calls, then so be it! If you have to do one load less of laundry in order to sit in silence with your coffee while the kids nap. DO IT. We are only one woman, despite what society wants us to believe.
- We must track and celebrate our success! And by success I mean remembering to thaw the meat in time for dinner. Write down 3 things you want to accomplish today and be specific. Clean the house is not specific. Run errands is not specific. Clean the kids bathroom or mail a bill is specific. Put them in an order that works for you. If it works better to plan to make a call during naptime while its quiet and then mail a letter while you are already in town picking up kids then do that. If your schedule isn’t too limiting and you can put the ones that take the least amount of time first down to the more time consuming ones, then do that. No matter how you organize your list, refer back to it multiple times throughout the day. Here’s where I find that changing my thought process really counts. If I don’t get those 3 things done, I write down everything I DID get done and cross it off as if it were part of my original plan! I need to know that I was productive. If at the end of the day your list is full of crossed off things that read: got out of bed, drank coffee, watched a sappy movie and cried my eyes out, that’s OK! You WERE productive, because clearly you needed a mental break. Now you got the tears out, you relaxed a bit and you can tackle tomorrow with more mental clarity! The only thing I urge you not to do is have several days of this. This takes you to a dangerous place of added negative emotions including guilt. Even more guilt than you already felt.
- Vigor. Tackle life with vigor! The more chunks you bite off, the more you will realize you are making progress and it’s starting to FEEL GOOD! Because you wake up earlier and take a walk, you start to see pounds falling off. Because you ask your husband for an hour away to be by yourself, you are starting to see mental weight falling off! Not only can you make yourself create lists and accomplish things, but you are now finding you ENJOY it!
Mama Knows Mess 