Can't Keep up with the Demands of Life

I have a few strategies , depending on the situation.

I have taken a personal day just to get caught up. It's amazing. I can get more done by 10am when I'm home by myself than all day on a weekend.

I am also a big list maker. Sometimes I can make progress by making a priority list. Having a written list helps to keep me from getting so overwhelmed that I give up. It also gives me a sense of accomplishment as I cross things off. Finally, it gives me something to take to my DH and I ask him to take some of the things off my list.

If my list is getting long because there are a few things I keep procrastinating because I really just don't want to do those things, I just bite the bullet and tell myself that I can make myself do just one thing per day that I don't want to do. Or I give myself a time limit and a reward (eg, if I do this unpleasant thing for just 15 min, I then give myself permission to do something else without guilt). Then, in a week, I can have all those unpleasant thing done.

Then there is the straight up going to DH and telling him I'm feeling overwhelmed and asking for help.

Different strategies work for me in different circumstances. Maybe one of them will help you!

First and foremost I don't sweat the little stuff, most of the medium sized stuff and focus on the big.

Still when I must reign in the nightmare I take a half day off work.

I can not tell you what *I* did.

I CAN tell you what I wish I did (and my mom offered).

That was a cleaning service. My mom offered to pay for one. I turned her down.

IF there is ANY way you can do this, it will be a gift to you, and your family.

I have very few regrets in my life.

I allowed MY pride to get in the way of this.

Hoping you do not do the same (if it is in ANY way workable for you).

Best!

I suggest taking 2 vacation days if possible. One to do the errands, housework, schedule appts., etc. And the 2nd one as a day just for you, to rest, read, manicure, a what-ever you want kind of day..things that you can't normally do.

I also suggest not telling extended family, friends, etc. your 2 day plan so you won't be interrupted with the "since you are off, can you...." Sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Is your husband overwhelmed with the housework, errands, scheduling appointments, working full time, kids, etc? If not, you guys are not sharing fairly and that is a great place to start. He shouldn't 'help', you are a team and he needs to pull his fair share. AND a cleaning person - absolutely worth it.

When I was in your shoes, I only did what absolutely had to be done in the house. Then I'd get my husband to take the kids on a weekend, get them out of the house (maybe down at the inlaws) and I'd get work done then.

If I were you, I'd employ that tactic.

I'd save that vacation day for appointments - schedule them from morning to evening. Get your husband to pick up some of the workload too.

If you can get the dishes washed, the clothes clean and put away and the toilets cleaned at least every other week, you're doing good.

Do you have a husband? If so it's different advice than if not.. I'm a single mom of three: Schedule! And don't expect a spotless house EVER. And don't expect to catch up ever. But just do your best and try not to beat yourself up.

When you work full time your and you are a mom and like to spend time with your kids your house will not be clean. There are full time moms with immaculate homes - they either have a cleaning lady, or they dont' spend a lot of time with their kids - or their kids are now teens or older.

YOu need a cleaning lady every other week. Give her a list of things to do (my list was: clean the bathrooms, clean kitchen floor & microwave, dust and vacuum living areas - and then each time she came I'd include one or two different things like: clean the oven, ironing, windows, etc.) Some people like the cleaning lady to change bed sheets or do laundry - but I don't mind doing that stuff. Having a cleaning lady a couple times a month is a huge help and I used to LOVE coming home the days she had been there.

You can also order a lot of things online. I've just learned the wonder of amazon prime - for about $100 a year I get 2 day shipping on just about everything. All those errands? Done with amazon.

But seriously - the other errands - you have to write a list. We are so easily distracted - with smart phones our brains are re-wiring themselves to increased distraction. it is awful. Make a list in the order of your neighborhood: On Saturday I had to make a list = this was the order: Before I leave the house - put meal in the car, 1 - get homemade bread from the bakery, 2 - drop off shoes at the shoe repair guy 3- Pick up dry cleaning 4 - Home depot for a new snow shovel 5 - Costco for water, paper towels, detergent flowers for my late mom's elderly friend who has been very sick. 5 - stop at mom's best firend's house and deliver meal, bresh bakery bread and flowers. 6 - Feel happy to have seen little old lady who is one of my mom's last friends still living, 7 - stop at grocery store to get cat food and fresh fruit.

I definitely suffer from ADD - I was never able to really focus well - and list making saves my life over and over. It improves efficiency to an outstanding level.

Cleaning lady & list making. I work part time now so I don't have a cleaning lady right now and boy do I miss that !!!!

what's the partner situation? if you've got one, sit down with him (or her) and divide and conquer.
get the kids involved. if everyone in the family pitches in, you can have a relatively neat house in under an hour. it may not be as clean as you like and a lot of it may be cosmetic, but don't underestimate the psychic soothing that simply 'neat' can give an overwhelmed mom. train yourself not to look at baseboards or under beds for a while.
prioritize. then tackle 1 (or 2, whatever you can manage) of the most urgent per day. maybe it's taking 10 minutes of your lunch hour to make appointments. but it's amazing what the power of writing down and then prioritizing the lists can do for you. we think we've got it all there in our short-term memories, but it gets boggled up in there. write it down.
get housekeeping help if you can remotely afford it. seriously. don't buy into the mega-mom myth.
don't short-circuit your family time for housework, at least not too much. weekends should be spent together having adventures.
after that hour of family clean-up, that is.
someone wrote on another question here today 'the years are short but the days are long.' that sums it up perfectly. it's hard to believe when you're in this insanely crazy-busy phase that you'll ever miss it, and a lot of it you won't. but some of it you will. try and smile through some of the frenzy and keep your sense of humor. one day you won't be behind any more, your days will cruise along smoothly, and your house will be just as immaculate as you want it to be. and you'll be missing your little people.
:) khairete
S.

Take the day off. It's worth your sanity.

I took 1/2 day today, needed to take the kiddo to an appointment and right now I have the house all to myself. I have picked up, dusted, watered the plants and have done two loads of laundry. I actually took a few minutes to check in on Mamapedia and I'm getting ready to head back to work in a few minutes. I feel great and ready for my week! (Wish I could do this EVERY Monday!)

I don't know about you, but when I feel as overwhelmed as you seem to feel, I need to accomplish a chunk of what needs to be done in order get out from under being so behind, not just do a few things here and there. Therefore, I would take a day off, make a list and prioritize it. Then stick to the list! (That's the hardest part!!)

Whatever does not get done, divide it up and accomplish one or two of them per night. Many posters have asked about your husband- yes, he should help, but my husband has had to travel much more than usual lately, so it isn't that he won't help, he simply can't. Therefore, it falls to me.

Take the day off. Get caught up. You'll feel better!

My best friend is a full time working mom of two very busy school age kids. She sometimes takes a vacation day to get stuff done. She also has a housecleaner come twice a month which is SO worth it to her. And of course her husband does his share as well, including most of the grocery shopping and cooking.
It's not possible to "do it all" so make sure you're not trying to!

First, give yourself a break. Everyone deserves some slack. :)
-can you run errands on your lunch hour?
-make a list (things to do, groceries to pick up etc.)
-set reminders on your phone if you have a smart phone
-try a grocery delivery service
-I keep a calendar in a visible place for the family to see
-I make lists
-can hubby help run an errand?
-take your lunch hour to eat & schedule appts (doctor, cable etc.)
-on weekends, I get up early & put in a load of laundry. I run the dishwasher
-I multi task as much as possible. Watch a show & fold laundry.
-make easy dinner dishes. Use a crock pot. On the weekend, make a dish
and freeze it to pull out during the week
-sometimes I dust the entertainment center while I watch a show
-I sweep the kictchen while I help the kids w/their homework
-I do online banking while I watch a show

I don't know how old your kids are but sign them a chore. Even if they are at least 4 they can do something like picking up toys and keeping their room clean. It does get overwhelming. One thing you have to do is stop being so hard on yourself. You can't do everything. The important thing is to keep up on appointments. As long as your house isn't dirty just do surface cleaning. You are only one person and can only do so much so stop trying.

A friend of mine had to tell me to stop trying, I used to drive myself crazy trying to keep the house clean and being what I thought was the perfect Mommy. My friend told me as long as my house doesn't look like a hurricane hit it and as long as my daughter is happy that's all I had to worry about. I have learned to relax more. Like I said don't be hard on yourself. You can only do what you can do. Good luck!!

I make a list, and I divide up as much as I can between the family members. We have a large family, I have a disability, and we prioritize.

If you can get your kids to take on some of the cleaning, I would - make it part of their allowance. Get your husband to take on more if he can. If you really have a hard time with the cleaning, there's always cleaning services.

It's definitely a juggling act. If you have a schedule of some type it works well. I just do the bare minimum every day - throw a load on in the morning, do some cleaning here and there, and then I lowered my expectations by a ton.

My house is the messy house. We are running from one thing to another. We eat well some nights, some nights .. not so much.

We let a lot of things go. As long as the big things get done, that's what's important. We have tons of appointments and my kids are all in activities. There are times when my health means - nothing is getting done this weekend. We all just change plans and go into look after mom mode.

For us, we have a lot of house projects. Sometimes they really seem to just grow (that list on the fridge). Once in a while we just take a whole weekend off. This past weekend, that's what we did. Just focused instead on the kids and being outdoors.

Priority: Health care appointments--doctor, dentist, etc. Errands and housework have to take a back seat to those, partly because if you put off doctor appointments, then the next year's appointment gets later and later into that next year, due to the fact most insurers make you wait at least 365 days between appointments like annual checkups, basic mammograms, etc. So focus first on getting vital medical appointments scheduled and done.

I don't believe in taking time off work to do housework and errands unless things are so intensely backed up it's collapsing on you. Your vacation days are time to spend with your kids, not time to spend on sorting out the house. I have to remind my husband: He should not take vacation days to do errands but to actually vacation. Now, if the "errands" are actually things like meeting with someone at the bank about banking issues, or going to a tax preparer to work on a tax issue, or meeting with a teacher at your child's school, etc. -- yes, absolutely you might need to take vacation time off to do that! But if it means housecleaning, I wouldn't blow precious time off on that instead of spending it with kids. Can you set a schedule for several weekends to come and tackle house chore 1 on Saturday morning, chore 2 on Sunday afternoon, and so on?

Do you have a husband or significant other? As someone said below, that is a big factor here. If you do have a significant other in the household, it's time for some of the appointments, cleaning, errands to fall on him. Sit down and really assess what the priorities are; what you are trying to do that's too much; and what he must take on. If you have an SO who isn't engaged in all these day to day life details -- time for a talk and a schedule. If he says his work keeps him too busy or he's too tired -- time to reassess what your weekends are like. I wouldn't spend all day of every weekend on chores either, but divide things up and schedule as much as possible in terms of "Saturday we'll work on the garage clean-up until 12 and after that it's family time." Still go and do fun things with your kids on weekends!

Make a list.
Prioritize the list.
Do the top 2-3 things on the list every day.

Good luck!

Quit trying to do it all yourself.

Ask your family for help. When I was a single mom, I explained to my boys that I simply cannot manage it all. I asked for their help and gave them each reasonable, age appropriate responsibilities. Family work shouldn't all be done by mom. We have to work together.

My husband is also very involved. We share the same philosophy when it comes to family. All hands on deck. If work needs doing, NOBODY should be playing or being lazy until it's done. Once the work is done, we can all enjoy some rest and relaxation, and have pride as a family for what we've accomplished together.

Get a cleaning lady and really look closely at these "errands" they are a huge time suck. Unless you consider grocery shopping an errand, I rarely have errands bc I do almost everything on line. That said it is still hard to have a career and kids. Hang in there!

The best way not to have to clean is not to allow dirt in. Invest in great door mats, hooks on the entry wall for coats, trays for shoes and boots. Give each kid a laundry mesh basket and teach them how to do a small load in cold water so all colors can be washed together. We bought divided mesh baskets (3 spaces) and they simply separate pants from tops from undies/socks and wear clothes straight out of the basket. De-clutter. Invest in bins after getting rid of as much as possible. Don't leave toys out but store them in bins in the basement and let each child choose a bin or two to play with - no new stuff comes up unless something gets put away. Remember this is a phase, once the kids are teens they can do more themselves and you will miss the early years. Don't let the stress keep you from enjoying these early years.

I just had somewhat of a breakthrough in prioritizing my life last weekend (I hope it lasts!). It seemed like I was always running around playing whack-a-mole with all the little must-dos that always need tending, and never finding time to do things that matter to me - personal projects, rearranging the house, etc. So I read about a different way of organizing your to-do list.

First, make a list of all the things you would like to get done, from the needs to the "I hope so if I have time"s. Then, go through and label each item with either a "U" for "urgent", or an "I" for "important" (and yes, most of those personal would-like-to projects should be given "I" status). Then, do all the Important items first. Seems counter-intuitive, but the reasoning is that you *will* still manage to get the urgent things done, because you have to (they are urgent after all...), but now you are finally going to get to those things you never feel you have time for. And then you will feel AMAZING, like you can take on the world.

So far so good in my world. In the last week, I've managed to rearrange all the furniture in our house, organize stacks of crapola that have been piling up forever, read half a book that's been collecting dust on my nightstand, and start real outlines for a personal website I've wanted to do for a while. And incredibly, there is still food in the house, bills have been paid and the sky hasn't fallen. Try it out, and good luck! :)

Husband should pitch in if that's the situation, if not thrn he should get you a maid biweekly to help clean. Not sure how old your kids are if older can they help with some chores, cleaning , cooking.. .
Can you do some errands in the evening if husband is home so your entire weekend isn't spent doing that? Need to organize and have a list, and schedule of stuff to do.

If you have some time to take, do it! If not, can your husband take the kids for a full weekend day out of the house so you can get things done once a month? That's all I can offer, I stay "home" and frequently say I don't have time for a job haha! I don't know how the working moms do it :) good luck!

U could have written this..I personally eat alot of chocolate and sleep less...hide alot of junk in storage tubs and beg hubs not to schedule us any more nonessential weekend plans. I usually cry and have a break down and wait for the weekend.