I've got too much (clap clap)...

Recently I went to our church’s Mom-to-Mom get together to get out of the house and accomplish #1 and #2 on my Resolutions post. Make new friends and try new things. I had a good time. I got a break from the kids for about an hour and a half. I got to have conversations with adults of like minds and overall it was just what I needed to break up the week. If you have a chance to do this at your church or at my church, Praise Cathedral, I would highly recommend it. (Check out Prasieladies.org for details) Even if you don’t think you can get anything out of the topic being discussed, force yourself to do it anyway. I promise it will feed your soul.

Which is kind of the situation I found myself in at the meeting. The topic was Organization. Going in I thought, “I’m pretty organized, but I’m always open to suggestions, so, eh, I’ll give it a shot.” Oh man, I had no idea what I would learn about myself after it was all said and done. 

I have way too much time on my hands. I never thought I would say that. In fact I almost don’t even want to write it because I’m afraid all my free time will disappear. Gals (and Husband), I had done almost everything in each area of organization plus some. 

Just an example, one suggestion was to set aside time each week to do your meal planning and shopping and write out your grocery list. I was so embarrassed at how much free time I have I didn’t even tell anyone that I have 5 rotating grocery lists that I edit once every TWO weeks every other Friday afternoon. That is 10 weeks worth of meal planning I don’t even have to worry about. I know, amazing, right?

Another example under the “General Home Organization,” category suggests routinely getting rid of clutter about every 6 months to a year. Go through your home and get rid of anything you don’t use any more. I didn’t speak up on this one either. Every month I go through an area of our home (a drawer, a closet, under the bed, the storage building, the toys, the kids rooms, etc.) and purge, reorganize and group similar items into their own special container of some sort. EVERY MONTH. 

The last example involves cleaning. One suggestion was to tackle one cleaning task each day. You know, laundry on Mondays, dust on Tuesdays, vacuum on Wednesdays. Things like that. First of all, I don’t know who wrote the book we were studying from, but she must have been single because if I waited to do laundry once a week everyone would be running around naked and that would be about the only thing I’d have time for that day. On an average week I do 8 loads of laundry.  If it is an especially dirty or cold week (i.e. snow) you can bet I’m gonna do 10 to 12 loads of laundry a week. And thank God I don’t have to do diaper laundry anymore because that was 3 loads a week by itself. 

Second of all, I could not imagine cleaning my bathroom or dusting or vacuuming every week. I guess I should probably mention here that I hate to clean. So here is what I do. I have a reminder app on my phone and when I clean something for the fist time (since I downloaded the app) I insert what I did into the app and tell it to remind me to do that thing again in 2 weeks, a month, 3 months, 6 months, whenever I feel like it will need to be done again. For example in my phone it is telling me that it is time to cut Rosy’s nails. Saturday I need to vacuum. In 2 months it will be time to clean my washing machine. Everything I’ve ever cleaned is in their with a reminder to do it again sometime in the future. The only thing that isn’t in there is a reminder to clean the windows because I haven’t been able to force myself to do that yet. Obsessive much?

And then with all that over the top organization I still have time to sit outside in the sun and write this. I realized walking away from that meeting that I have a lot to be thankful for. I am truly blessed and that the reason I’ve been so stir crazy is because I really do have too much time on my hands and I am bored. 

So what am I to do? Nothing. I’m happy with being bored. It’s when I find the time to think, spend some time to myself, read, pray, write, whatever I feel like doing or not doing at that time. I’m okay with that. When it warms up I'll be spending more time out of the house and doing more things wIth my family so my time will eventually be filled up soon. 

Sure there is still a ton of stuff I could do right now, but I’ve learned I CANNOT be the perfect mother, wife, friend, person no matter how much extra time I have or what I try to accomplish. I accept my strengths like organizing, planning and teaching my kids life skills. I also accept my weaknesses like cleaning, being awkward in group discussions, and being an emotional wreck sometimes. I am happy to excel in the areas I’m good at and ask for help in areas I suck at. 

I encourage you to do the same. We can’t do it all. But everything we do can be done well. We can’t be perfect but each one of us is a beloved child of God and he can help us with our weaknesses.

In my case that would be getting off my butt and finally cleaning that thing my phone has been reminding to do for 2 weeks. 

Or maybe not.   :)