What brings me joy? I have been asking myself that very question for a while now. For those of you who know me you know how crazy life has been for a while now. For those of you who don't here's a short background of me.
I'm a 25-year-old wife and mom to 2 wonderful kids. Ari is 21 1/2 months and Eli is 3 1/2 months. I work part-time for a local ministry, Mr. Man goes to school full time and works just about full time. To make life even crazier we just bought our first house! Needless to say life is crazy.
Now back to joy. After Eli was born I started to have postpartum depression. I had some with Ari but it wasn't any worse that what I've dealt with since high school so for her I didn't need to do anything. Not this time. I was getting to the point of not being able to function so I'm now on a very low dose of Zoloft and it has made a world of difference. I am slowly starting to feel like a real person again.
Though the Zoloft helps, I am still in a funk. Part of it has to do with the disaster that is our house. Granted some of the disorganization is from moving, but let's just be real and the majority of it is because of me. I am not good at cleaning. I am not good at organizing. I like having things clean and organized but I cannot get my brain to begin the process.
I tend to look at the whole picture instead of breaking things up. I see the whole house in shambles and get so overwhelmed that I can't get anything done. My thought process is, "If I can't clean the whole thing how/why should I start?" Not logical I know, but that's my mind. I am also very good at starting a million projects at once and never getting any of them done. All of this drives my semi-OCD husband crazy.
So, what brings me joy? Spending quality time with my husband, spending quality time with the kids, spending time with God, doing craft projects, spending time with friends, sleep, exercise, baking, blogging, reading, journaling, watching the sunset, spending time outside, and I know the list can go on. Sadly hardly any of these things happen in my life. Many of them do to some degree but not to a point where I would like. Part of the reason is life circumstances, but another is that everything here is a mess and it takes 3 times longer to get things done because nothing has a home and things don't stay organized.
I would love to get this house, my work office, the cars, and anywhere else I am regularly neat and organized. I'm slowly learning more about how to get this done and any tool that is proven to work I would be happy to try.
This is how I "organize". Please help!!
4 comments:
Believe it or not, that is organized. You have like things grouped together, it just does not look Martha Stewart "spiffy".
You can do it, don't be so hard on yourself. You eat an elephant one bite at a time. (gross)(it makes a good point though)
flylady.com just like Jenn said and you said it yourself today. They hold your hand and take baby steps towards clean house. Yay! Your house did NOT look that messy today.
Thanks so much for the kind words! Our house isn't looking that bad, but it's still an overwhelming chaos for me. I hope to have things set by Christmas when my family comes. Mr. Man's dad and step-mom will be here for Labor Day. I hope to have it more liveable for guests by then at least.
I focus on only one area/room at a time and completely ignore everything else. For example, if I'm cleaning one of the kids' rooms and I come across something that goes to the kitchen, or someone else's room or laundry then I toss it in the pile. I do nothing with that pile until I am done with that room. Then I walk around the house with the pile and drop things where they belong. This doesn't mean that I put it away, it just gets put in the room it belongs in. When I get to that room then the item gets taken care of. Not allowing myself to get distracted by the greater mess of the house helps me get small bits accomplished.
Don't be so hard on yourself. It's just plain difficult to get it all done when you have small kids in the house. They demand so much. You aren't superwoman.
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