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This post is the first in a series of picking your battles post.
I want to help you think about all the things you do and show you how as a homemaker you can make it feel more manageable and not so overwhelming.
Let’s just start this off with me sharing my life with you and what my days as a full time working mother of four looks like.
I work full-time away from home, forty hours a week. Thankfully I am able to work only four days, although they are long ten hour days. I do enjoy my job and it feels good to be financially contributing to our household.
Although most days my mom’s guilt is so strong and I really would love to be a full time homemaker and fully be with my kids. We’ll get there, it just takes time.
The days I am not working, I am fully engrossed in motherhood and homemaking. I use those days to fill in the gaps of the online curriculum as our kids also home school.
I also use my off days to clean the house, meal plan and prep, grocery shop, organize and declutter and do laundry. We try to squeeze in fun trips, park days, and of course pool days in the summer.
Every day working or not, I cook dinner, wash dishes, and make sure the laundry is staying manageable.
I also love the space I am creating here, so I work to keep creating posts that I am passionate about and that I enjoy and hope you all enjoy as well.
I do the majority of these things myself. Yes, I have a husband, and yes I have four capable children.
The honest truth tho is I enjoy doing these things myself. All of them. And just let me be clear for a minute. When I say do them all myself, I say this also knowing that when I’m at my wits end, my husband is with me at the sink helping do the dishes or load the dishwasher. He helps me do the laundry. I know I can go to him for anything. Even to just sit and cry when I feel overwhelmed.
We have fallen into a nice nightly reset routine where I pick up the house and he loads the dishwasher.
I don’t actually want to hand any of my responsibilities over to him, because I love doing them and the good days, the days I feel like I’m managing it all and more feel so so good.
We are both very traditional people. Even though I grew up in a single mom household and he grew up with two wonderfully in love parents who loved him and his siblings so much, we both just had this unspoken agreement of how our household would run.
Growing up my mom did it all. She was mom and dad. There were no jobs for him or jobs for her. They were all on her. Looking back I realize how hard that must have been for her. The hardest part being that she didn’t have support. She didn’t have anyone encouraging or cheering her on. She didn’t have a strong shoulder to cry on.
In our marriage, I worry about the house and kids and all that entails. He worries about our spiritual health, making enough money where I can be home full-time, working a full time job, and running a farm and all that entails. He has found enjoyment is creating as well and puts time and effort into his space on YouTube, which you can check out here if you’re interested.
He also does things I don’t even think about. Repairing the house. Remodeling said house. Car repairs, lawn mowing, spider killing, opening those dang ol jars with lids that feel like they have been welded on. That’s all on him.
When he needs help, I help. When I need help, he helps. It’s that simple.
The mental load of the household management falls on me just like the mental load of providing falls on him.
So how do I do it all?
Well, if you notice from the list I broke out above, I don’t actually do it all. When we say this it’s more of a mindset. A negative one, in my opinion.
However, my list is pretty long, so if I insist on doing all of this mostly myself, then I have to be ok with not doing it all well.
So here’s what that looks like for me and hopefully it will give you some ideas as well.
Here’s where picking your battles comes into play.
Throughout the years, I’ve realized what triggers me. What makes me immediately turn into Oscar the Grouch as soon as I walk into our home. The answer for me is clutter. Visual clutter and mind clutter.
I aim everyday to just take care of the clutter and do what I can when I can with the rest.
If you stop by for a surprise visit to my house, you will find clear countertops and everything mostly in its place. There will be food in the pantry, and the dishes will be washed and hiding in the dishwasher. However, you will also see dust on furniture, dirt on the floor, grimy baseboards and bathrooms that need a good scrubbing.
I also focus on the things they keep us running somewhat smoothly everyday. Dishes and laundry. It’s extremely stressful trying to cook and having to wash a dish before you can use it. It’s also frustrating trying to find clean clothes digging through piles of laundry that hasn’t been put away.
The kids put away their laundry and tidy up their toys every night. I made sure the dishes are washed and put away every night. These two simple things make the house run so much smoother.
The rest I do as I can get to it.
Tackling mind clutter.
The other thing I have had to put aside for in picking my battles is cooking from scratch all the time. This is a big one for me as I have fallen in love with cooking from scratch. I jumped into it like I do everything, with both feet and no give. It took about six months of that for me to realize I need to give a little as I was quickly burning out.
This one decision has cleared so much mind clutter for me. I now am able to give other areas a little more attention.
In my season of life, I just cannot cook everything from scratch. I was staying up till eleven thirty at night in the kitchen trying to prep from scratch meals and snacks for the kids to have while I was at work. I would worry so much about their food, it was so stressful.
I have decided to continue cooking from scratch where I can but snacks and lunches I just have to give over to easy prepared meals and packaged snacks right now. And that’s ok.
The point is to take a deep breath and do what you can, focus on the parts of your home that create stress and deal with those, letting the rest go if you have to. When I say letting it go, I mean maybe not doing it the way you want but letting it be good enough.
For example maybe you vacuum the floor to get rid of the dirt but instead of mopping like you would like to, let that go until you have time another day to do it.
Our home and our families are ours and should bring us joy and be calming. It’s a blessing to be able to take care of them. Don’t let your mindset and not having everything perfect ruin that.
Thank you for spending this time with me today!