Schedules

(I wrote this post on Friday, I just didn't get it published til now.)

I had a rough day yesterday, as far as accoumplishing anything around the house goes.  Now Thursdays are my knitting days, a day that I have allowed myself to knit most of the day, snd not worry sbout getting house things done. However, yesterday the fact that the house was in disorder, and had been for most of the week really bothered me.

D's first week back to school was great. He and I had worked really hard on getting the house cleaned & organised the week before classes started - it wasn't perfect, but it was in really good shape. Every day D was at school by 8:00 am, and came home sometime that evening to a clean & tidy office, a clean kitchen with supper ready to go on the table, and most time I had the living room clean as well. I was excited about how well I was doing. I even had time to work on cards, and a few other things that have been long overdue, important but not urgent, things.

Then come a couple of days when D's schedule starts getting out of wack- he needs to get classwork done, so he stays up late, then comes home right after classes the next day cause he's tired & sleeps, waking up in the evening, and then needing to study all night to stay caught up for the next day. I'd have his office clean when he came home, but then I'd ue it while he slept, and it would get messy again. I started dyeing yarn for Chtistmas presents ( that's the next post) which tied up the Kitchen. When D came home before lunch, it was hard to justify getting up @ 6:30 to pack a lunch when I could make him one when he got home. When he slept through lunch or supper hour, it was hard to go ahead and make the meal when I knew I'd be eating alone... and then when he did wake up, the food wasn't ready and I was often too tired & hungry to take the time at that point to make a heathy meal- opting for quick to prepare nachos or something along those lines.

I finally finished the yarn dyeing last Monday, so I figured I'd be able to get the kitchen back to my standard of tidy on Tuesday. However it had been easy to stay up late working on the yarn, seeing how D was up studying too...then during the day, it was hard to be motivated to work. I'd want to take a nap when D got home and wanted to sleep. So yesterday, the kitchen still wasn't near where I wanted it to be.

I know that with a baby, it is perfectly impossible to get all the work done that you want to, so the to-do list that I had for myself beyond the simple everyday household chores that wasn't getting done was understandable. However, I had been managing to both keep things tidy, & get something on that list done each day, just a few short weeks ago- and getting back to that place shopuldn't have taken me this long. Once it's clean & tidy, it doesn't take much to keep it there. Getting it there has been the problem.

D & I had a good talk last night, and we talked through some of the causes of why I was feeling frusterated, and today I've been thinking through some solutions. I was reminded of what my mom does for meals during seeding & harvest, when my dad's schedule gets wacky. She makes lots of bread, and always has one or two sandwiches per worker that she's feeding in the fridge at all times. That way my dad can grab a sandwich on the way to the feild, but if he ends up coming home for lunch, he can either eat the sandwich, or eat the soup or whatever mom had made for those at home.


As I mentioned, I wrote the above post yesterday, in bits & pieces throughout the day while feeding DJ, and I am happy to say that the kitchen got tidied to 100%, and D stayed up when he got home from classes in an atemp to normalize his sleeping pattern. I know this is still a work in progress, and if you have any suggestions for me of things I can do to motivate me to stay on task, even when those close to me have wacky schedules, I'm all ears!