Instead of a New Year’s Resolution I’ve loosely planned some simple changes for the year ahead. It’s only a few weeks in yet the changes have been successful so far. My husband would like to lose some weight so I’ve adjusted our dinner meals. I ask my husband for his input on dinners for the week and plan my list. We go grocery shopping as a family (with three kids 3 and under!) so that also helps with my second simple change- more family time.
Since I work from home while my husband works away from home I have found it really hard to balance work, household tasks and spending time with the kids. I started making a daily task list as well as a weekly task list. This really helps keep me on track. I have a To Do pad that breaks things down into 4 sections. I use these sections to break up my lists into household chores, work tasks and more. I also have a plan for dinner each day of the week so that dinner doesn’t sneak up on me and catch me with unthawed meat or a missing ingredient.
After dinner, since I’ve gotten most of my daily tasks/chores out of the way, we are able to spend time as a family. Sometimes we play the Kinect to burn off some of our dinner but many nights we just play what our kids call “tackle” Basically we just roll around with them on the floor but they love it!
Before I got more organized with my lists, I was frazzled and felt I never had any extra time to read my kids a story or any other activity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still frazzled many days but I know that since I’ve broken my work down into daily chunks that I can easily catch up and still make time for what’s important.
I don’t color code anything or do anything fancy but my system works for me. My advice to anyone is to break down tasks into smaller, manageable chunks so you won’t feel as overwhelmed. This has really helped me! Whatever your goals are, whether they are simple or drastic, can be achieved if you put your mind to it!
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