With the addition of having to oversee Eliana’s schooling this fall, all of my normal rhythms have been thrown off. I’ve got to tend to Ivy and do the cooking and cleaning and it is all so much. I feel like I am ten steps behind, all the time. This frustration has bled out into shortness of temper and a generalized sense of failure to get a handle on things.

To get out of my head, wrote a list of all the tasks that are associated with the home and estimated the weekly time needed to accomplish each one. To organize it, I made categories, food, cleaning, schooling, laundry. Added up it’s 6 days, 13 hours and 19 minutes per week. It’s literally impossible if I also want to eat, sleep or bathe.

Kind of like in California when the demand for power exceeds the production. What I need to do is introduce a program like rolling blackouts. Some things have been sitting undone all summer because other things have been a lot louder. You have to do laundry or everyone is naked– and you have to feed people or you’ll have a riot. And by the end of the day or week, I’m just too beat to get the other stuff.

Believe it or not, it’s a relief to see the standard I set for myself is not workable. So now I am trying to be a little more intentional. I hope if I spend a little less on some of the regular stuff and maybe everything else gets hit at least once a month or at least once a quarter. That way, I know that even though I didn’t get to something this week, it will get done next week and I don’t have to carry it all in my head or stress myself about it. Wish me luck.