Stepping Into Motherhood: Planning, Organizing, and Delegating the Chaos of Motherhood

Week 2, or Week 1 with students, went well. I did develop a nasty cold the first night of school and fell asleep one night before the kids, in which I woke up the next morning to find the baby’s crib moved to the center of her room and all her furniture rearranged again. According to Nate he heard a bunch of thumping and banging and went up to find Averi hanging out in her sister’s room. Maybe she’ll be an interior designer when she grows up? Averi when asked to hold blood red nail polish for literally five seconds while I painted Kenz's nails somehow managed to drip it on my couch, all down the hallway, and then it looks like the mass kill occurred in the bathroom. It looked like somehow butchered a small animal in my bathroom. Do you know how hard it is to get nail polish out of things? Let me tell you, almost impossible.

Other than the cold, the bathroom massacre, and rearranged furntiure, we only had Averi’s gymnastics class this past week rather than gymnastics and dance, it was an off week for Nate’s grad classes so that keeps the stress level down, and I totally slacked on the working out to prepare for this 5K in November. And I’m pretty sure I was washing dishes a few days old yesterday after discovering that spaghetti noodles do some fairly odd things after sitting in the bottom of a dirty dish. I’m sure there’s a week coming where it’s all going to hit and I’m going to think it’s just as crazy and chaotic as ever, but for this week it was very organized chaos. The way I like it. I'm realisitc; in my life mishaps are just going to happen so for us this was a great week. Because it went well in our little Glenn world and this might seriously be the only week that happens I thought I’d share what helped it go smoothly.

I am a planner. My family kids me sooo much about what a planner I am. Last year, I did not feel like that planner at all. Last year was just straight chaos with no organization. My husband is a little reluctant to my strict schedule I have set for us. He likes to ask me if I wrote down when we’re allowed to use the bathroom. No, I didn’t go that far, but I maybe did go a little overhead. I have a day to day schedule on the fridge for Sunday-Sunday. It includes routines, chores, activities. The message on the top reads, " Stick to it or suffer." This is as much a message to myself as a warning to all of them.

Part of that planning involved how to manage all the household chores. One thing I’ve started doing at the suggestion of my super sister is how I tackle laundry. Every night while Nate’s cooking dinner between 6-7 I am doing a load of laundry, as well as a daily house clean up. This one load a day makes it feel like I’m always kept up on laundry! Okay, minus the basket with folded clothes that permanently sits in our bedroom. I did not spend my weekend catching up on laundry for once. With cleaning, I wait until right before dinner during that 6-7 hours to go around and do a quick tidy up because after dinner all that is left is the kitchen and the girls are headed to the bathtub and then off to bed from there so it’s a safe time to clean up so I don’t feel like that’s all I’m doing when I’m home with the girls after work.

The other thing that I started doing is meal planning. I hear moms recommend this all the time. Why did I wait so long? First, it keeps us from running to the store every day because we need something for dinner so it’s smarter grocery shopping and probably saves me money. I always spend a good $10 or more than I plan whenever I walk into a store. Plus I’m hoping besides our gymnastics pizza night and maybe one dinner out on the weekend, we won’t have all those unplanned take out nights, which runs into a bunch of money. Twice now too we’ve been making something that creates lots of leftovers on the weekend. I bought a bunch of Tupperware last year, and it has come in real handy lately. We’ve frozen chili, spaghetti sauce, and now lasagna because there’s so much leftover to put in the fridge for lunches and one night of leftovers, but we didn’t want to eat it all week or waste it, so freezing it to take it back out weeks later has worked great.

As for house cleaning, I’ve decided instead of cleaning (mopping, dusting, scrubbing bathrooms) every stinkin Saturday, I’m only doing it every other and that’s on the Saturday Nate doesn’t have class so he can entertain the girls so I’ll get it done by noon rather than feeling like it takes the whole day. I’m thinking with the daily sweeping, pick up, and occasional wipe down in the bathroom twice a month for a good cleaning should be good enough. Nate’s dropped a few hints here and there about things being dirty, but when you’re a working mom something has to go at the bottom of the list and to me housecleaning has to be it. What else is there? I guess there’s my me time, but we can survive a dirty bathroom, we can’t survive a bitchy, on the warpath momma.

I see having a slightly A type personality as a blessing and a curse. In some ways it is nice to be organized and well planned but sometimes I feel it doesn’t allow me to just turn my brain off and relax. Nate gets irritated with me sometimes because I just won’t stop, sit down, and veg out. Blogging has become my veg out. Social networking whether it’s writing silly, stupid random post like I do on here or playing on facebook is the only way I “relax”. I will also sit down with him on some nights and watch TV if there’s something good on, but I am not a big TV person so vegging out in front of the TV is not how I want to relax every night.

My life is busy, busy, and I am the one in charge of keeping this household running and afloat with my trusting partner in crime, aka Daddy. Just as he excels in some areas of running our family life, I’m the one everyone counts on to keep everything organized so we can all succeed at whatever our latest endeavors may be. So everything has it’s place and everyone has their responsibilities. When my mom was going back to work after staying home with my sisters and me for ten years, I always remember her using managing a household as a skill set. It does take skill. You have to know how to plan, organize, delegate, and make it all happen. My husband knows I’m not the super clean neat freak that some still think I am. I let that go long, long ago, which is obvious by the dirty bathrooms and science experiment spaghetti that sat unkown at the bottom of the sauce pan that held the dirty dishes I kept putting off until the end of the week, but I still like to be organized and have a plan, even if it’s a faulty one. We’ve been living this life as parents for almost five years, and it’s a hard balance sometimes. There’s the house, there’s the job responsibilities which have usually included coaching, and there’s always been grad school, and family life with the kids and each other. I’ve always just made it happen, but last year was like an unsteady balancing act where I felt ready to topple over at any second. I want this year to be a much more successful mental balancing act. The doubtful, unconfident, negative person that I was last year wasn’t me, and I want the confident again, less doubtful, and more energized and positive me back. Sometimes the first step to wearing all these hats is just saying I know I can.

If you’re a busy mom how do you make it all happen? What’s your game plan? How do you plan, organize, and delegate to survive the chaos of motherhood?

If interested in Tupperware please check my friend, Megan's Tupperware site. Volunteer to host an online party and win some free tupperware like I did and start freezing some meals to make family life easier.

My four year old is pretty darn good dishwasher.