I know if you’re a parent, you have lived and breathed these words! I say this as my “baby” just turned four, and has just as quickly let me know that he wants a big boy haircut. So, soon I will be tearfully saying goodbye to those golden baby curls! Pray for me.
As moms, we know that days filled with whining and messes and hitting siblings (or us, ask me how I know this happens), and constantly looking for semi-healthy snacks, and missing shoes, and… all of the things that fill our days with littles, sometimes makes us feel like bedtime is so far away! But we love our little crazy people with all our hearts and know that we are to cherish this time, because before we know it, they’re old enough to tell us how they want to style their own hair. Lord help us.
But even on the days that feel very long, sometimes I get to bedtime and wonder where on Earth my day went. I barely managed to keep everyone fed and “mostly” clean, let alone get anything productive checked off my very long todo list. I tend to be a planner, but I also require the flexibility to fly by the seat of my pants. So I am constantly searching for that balance in my days. Housekeeping routines, meal planning, daily schedule, reading goals, outside hours goals… you get it. I need that structure to get anything done, but how do we actually do it all while enjoying ourselves and our families?
Have you ever gotten hit with the same idea from multiple places at once? It’s kind of like when you get a new car, you start noticing that lots of other people on your route have one, too. Over the last week or so, I’ve gotten the same theme repeated to me multiple times from a Hallmark movie, a podcast, and a blog post. I figure it’s worth sharing, so here it goes. We have to find systems that make things easier for us, so we have time to do the things that matter (spending time with family, making time for friends, and enjoying nature are some of my top ones, but you get to pick your own goal here).
The Hallmark movie I watched was called The 27 Hour Day, and the main character was a woman who was constantly busy, had no work/life balance, and had made it her life’s work to help people be more efficient with time-saving hacks for everything. She did this to make more time to be more productive, but in the end discovers that making time for other things might be a better plan. The Lazy Genius helps systemize things, being “a genius about what matters and lazy about what doesn’t”. Similarly, the FLYLady gives housekeeping missions in small, doable chunks. She says we can make a huge dent in just 15 minutes. She also says on the weekends to rush through the morning routine, throw something in the crockpot, and go enjoy our families. I absolutely love this and have been doing it as much as possible!
I think we could all benefit from finding systems that work for us, especially those that purposefully include putting down that checklist and enjoying ourselves and our families.
I’ve shared a few of my favorites, and I’d love to hear yours! Please comment or message me if you have a great life hack that frees up your days for fun, and I’ll share it on my IG stories. 🫶
These are a few of my favorite things…
Playing in the leaves.
Pumpkin patch visits.
Halloween!
Live Like A Daylily 
Leave a Reply