Goo goo g'joob

Today it's been four weeks since my fortieth birthday and I have slumped. Slumpity slumpity slump, like a lazy walrus soaking up the August sun. In the cornfields. A Midwestern kind of walrus.

My list of stuff to get done by July 19 was a little too ambitious, and I was glad not to have it hanging over my head for the past four weeks. HOWEVER. Things fall apart rapidly when I impersonate a Midwestern walrus, not least because my children complain that those whiskers tickle and my husband dislikes the way that the tusks get in his way when he is kissing me. There's the PAPER. The LAUNDRY. The GENERALLY UNRELENTING nature of managing a home occupied by five children.

One of the big successes of the spring for me was getting consistent about doing the morning tasks promptly every morning. I also have other task lists for myself (Flylady would call them routines but I'm riding a wave of anti-Flylady sentiment at the moment) and I am going to work on getting those done more consistently. If I fold a basket of laundry every day, it doesn't pile up. If I deal with a little bit of paper every day, the sight of my desk doesn't make me curl into a heap of blubbering blubber. (Sing it to the tune of Beautiful Dreamer, all you Judy Blume fans.) It's a cinch by the inch but hard by the yard, as somebody's grandpa once intoned.

The hardest part for me is the evenings. I am tired by the time dinner is on the table, and I cannot always muster the discipline to get those evening tasks done swiftly. But hey-- if I can get into the groove of getting the bathrooms wiped down six mornings a week, surely I can get into the groove of working with the boys to get the kitchen cleaned promptly after dinner. Right?

Comments

[Lilian]

Good luck with that -- I'm not good with any of these things. :-(

I was actually wondering about the birthday and the list, etc. & I already promised myself not to have any lists for my 40th next year. It's bad enough that I have to leave the 30s behind. :-(

[rachel]

Don't I know it. I have five loud, hungry and messy distractions myself. I can't imagine adding PAPERWORK to my list of tasks. It is true, though, that keeping up with the daily routines is much simpler than letting it go all week and having to bust @$$ all weekend trying to get it all done. I know it's true, but it doesn't always happen that way here. I'm only 35, though. I still have five years to catch up on laundry, right?

[Sarah]

Yeah, I'm lazy by nature so if there's something I don't want to do, I work on training someone else to do it. For example, I dislike making the kids' beds (ages 6 & 4) so I taught them to do it. Every so often we have lessons to increase the quality of the bed-making to improve the product, but usually I just remind them and they go and do. I'm always looking for jobs I can farm out to someone else. I just taught my 6 year old to empty the garbage. And bring the bins back from the end of the driveway.

SO! My question is this--are there any jobs you can simply hand off to someone else or resign yourself to a supervisory role? Isn't that the benefit to having kids? Getting them to do all the work under the guise of teaching them to be functioning adults? :)

[Jamie]

Sarah, the boys all have jobs. One of my goals is to teach them how to get the kitchen clean without adult supervision, and that means front-loading the work. It will require a number of (additional) evenings in which I say patiently, "No, that pot is still not clean. Try again." It's easier in the short term to do it myself at 10pm.

Another goal is to have some kind of regular family prayer in the evening, but I have to muster the necessary patience with wiggly kids while it's becoming a habit.

[Tracy]

ha, I am slumping all day, all night... but in my defense we are in the midst of potty training, so that is my number one priority all day long...

but the house refuses to clean itself, so must find some energy and crack a whip over myself and the teens...