Mar 20, 2017

Workin It Wednesdays: Balancing Work and Home Life

Linking up with Erika and Shay


This is a perfect topic for me right now. In fact, I just recently had a melt down about this very subject!

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Here's a little back story....When Brad and I married, I was a nursing assistant, I LOVED that job.  It will probably always be my favorite job.  When Rachel was born, I worked until she was almost a year and then decided to stay home and do daycare.  I quickly learned that staying home is HARD and staying home and doing daycare was HARDER!!

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I did daycare for 11 years, and as hard as it was, it really was the best decision for our family.  I loved being able to do the preschool stuff, crafts, celebrating any and all holidays, etc.  I do wonder how that affected my kids, because lets be real, at the end of the day I was freaking exhausted and crabby!

When Alayna started 1st grade, I decided to hang the daycare hat.  11 years was enough for me.  I found a great office job that was only 3 days/week 10 minutes from our house.  It was the perfect job to transition away from being home!  I worked there for 4 years and loved it.  Just this past August I accepted a position at a different job only 10 minutes from our house and love it!  The only downside is that it is a fulltime gig.

So that's where my struggle is.  I feel like I still need to do all the things I did when I was home, but I'm quickly learning that I just can't.  For me, it feels like I'm failing at being a mom and I need to transition my head away from that.

With volleyball tourneys almost every weekend, I tend to feel even more crazy, haha!  So here is what I do to try and keep my sanity:

MEAL PLAN!!  Seriously.  it doesn't take a huge amount of time, but it will save your sanity.  I wrote a post here  about how I do it.  We don't always stick to the meal plan 100%, but just having some things prepped and ready to go is a time saver.

If I know our weekend is going to be super crazy, I will so one load of laundry everyday to keep up with it.  I am lucky that I work 10 minutes from home, so I can put a load in before work and switch and fold when I come home for lunch.

My girls are 16, 13 and 10, they are MORE than capable of helping.  I will leave them notes of things they need to do like clean out and fill up dishwasher, fold laundry, clean bathrooms, etc.  Helps me out so much!

I am also an early riser, I am usually up by 4:30-500.  This is MY time.  I do my daily devotions and read blogs/do a blog post.  I need this time with Jesus and coffee to get my day going!

I also enjoy working out and this one is crucial for me.  With our basement in shambles right now, we had packed up my treadmill.  Brad helped me set it back up and I ran yesterday for the first time in 2 months and it felt glorious!  I need that for my mental health.

So, those are a few things I do to keep me sane, I can't wait to read what everyone else has done!!















2 comments:

Laura Darling said...

I'd love to be able to wake up earlier, but I don't know if I have it in me! People are so productive in the morning and I'd love to see if I can implement that in my own life! And I totally agree, I don't know where I would be without meal planning!

A Gal Named Al said...

As a teacher, I praise you for staying home for so long! Summer break with my two kids sometimes has me praying for school to start up sooner- it's exhausting! And I don't know if I love you or hate you for telling me about Mel's Kitchen Cafe! I'm sucked in, down the rabbit hole, and I want to cook everything! :)