Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Frustrated!

Yes. I'm frustrated.

The type A in me is really raring it's head. My house is a MESS. It's no one's fault but my own. My household paperwork is an absolute rat's nest of random piles. My desk is 10 inches high of paperwork that needs to be filed that there is no room to file it in because I haven't been able to rotate the old out.

My dilemma is working 40 hours a week. From 8-5. Yes, I work from home and yes Elisa is at home with me. It doesn't mean that I get to spend any quality time with her during that time period. So by the time work is over, I just want to play with her. By the time she's down in bed, I'm so exhausted from working and playing with her that the last thing I want to do is organize all that crap. When the weekend comes, there is always something going on to keep one very active 18 month old occupied and more family time.

My family is my priority! How do I balance my family life, work life and still get all that household maintenance done? Saturday mornings used to be my clean the house time. Not anymore.

I know if I just kept on top of it it would not be such an un-surmountable task but I have yet to figure out HOW. Part of me goes, I don't have the space. The other part of me thinks I don't have the right tools. I've changed to an electronic filing/organization system for my work items but I can't do that for my home items because I don't have a personal computer.

We have a good split of tasks between Andrew and I, but Andrew is not the organized one. That's me. And it is frustrating me to no end that this is so far behind. I feel like I need just a whole week to just really go through and get this all DONE. But WHEN will I EVER have time for that.

*sigh* Ok rant over. For now I guess. If any of my busy mom friends reading this have any suggestions, I'm all ears. Literally. That's all you can see of me from all this crap piled up.

5 comments:

Michelle said...

I understand your pain. I am not a Type A...but having a messy house just makes me feel anxious. Flylady really works for me.. when I actually do it. I hope you find your balance and don't lose your sanity in the process! ;)

Anonymous said...

I was going to recomment flylady as well (http://flylady.net/index.asp) - I know a lot of my friends speak very highly of her techniques. I wish I had some advice but I don't. I COMPLETELY understand what you are saying. Being a full time working mom myself, there just isn't any time. I just think we all have different seasons in life... and having a baby is when other things fall back to the wayside... I have a messy house as well.. I tend to just shove stuff in boxes especially paperwork and just tell myself i'll get to later.. i'm still waiting for later. :)

Beth said...

I really struggle with this one, as I am beyond normal on the clean and organized bit. A few pointer I have though are: 1) Spend 15 minutes cleaning straightening before bed. No more really but just enough to get all the toys out of the way, the planner set out with to-do list, etc. 2) I make a list of five things I most do that day besides enjoying the kiddo and give myself two days off a week (put laundry away etc). I do my list first thing in the morning before I get Kate up. 3) I assign certain days to certain tasks. I only do laundry on Wednesday, I clean my desk on Sunday night (gives me a little control over the mounting piles and keeps me from feeling like I am doing it constantly). I have more but I won't bore you... even with that I still go crazy with it all.

kryss said...

First thing take a deep breath... This is perfectly normal! Next thing see if you can get some one to help you get the bulk of it done up front. And then try to break tasks up into small (15 min) increments to try and get it done through out the week... Third remember it is going to be OK... no mater what.

Anonymous said...

this is my world too. I'm going to check out flylady because I've never heard of it. One thing we did was hire a cleaning person once a month.
sheryl