What Doesn’t Work: Winging It

Try as I might, I am not great at winging it. This whole full-time job, part-time homemaker thing requires far more planning than I tend to give it credit. I can’t sit back and expect it to make orderly sense without my input.

Once I began approaching my “real” life with the same focused planning as I do my job, I started to feel like a sane woman. To-do lists! Schedules! Calendars! Goals! Ahh, how the basics of organization make my heart sing. Applying workplace principles (obvious when sitting at a desk) to my kitchen and laundry brought them into focus. Instead of hoping for the best, I began to plan the best.

Having a plan is like having a map. (Deep, right?) There’s still a chance of running off course or of the trip being changed entirely, but at least you have a rough estimate of where you’re headed and how long it’s going to take to get there before you pull out of the driveway. Instead of a jumbled head of floating ideas, I know what Tuesday and Wednesday will look like. I know that I need to defrost ground turkey for tomorrow’s dinner and that if I do two loads of laundry tonight, I’ll be good through the week. I’m able to enjoy my time more because it is purposefully spent instead of frittered away- even if I am purposefully watching TV in my jammies all evening!

For the next couple of days, I’ll be opening my House & Home Binder and letting you snoop around. We’ll be looking at the basics (daily agendas and meal plans) tomorrow and then breezing through my over-the-top sections in Part 2. Be prepared to be challenged in your own household management and to mock mine. It’ll be a good time.