Mod Apron

All the hours in the day

Lately, we’ve been experiencing some scheduling challenges here at Chez Apron. More accurately, our schedule has been in flux and I’m having some difficulty managing our time.

I am one of those mothers who firmly believes that kids thrive when they’re kept to a solid, predictable daily schedule. I’m not so militant that we can’t roll with the surprises that come up along the way, but I am pretty strict when I can be.

Henry is at an odd stage where he probably should be taking two naps a day, but will often take only one. The result is a kid with a seriously cranky disposition for much of the afternoon and evening. And, after a whole summer of attending day camp from 9:00am to 1:00pm every day, Maya is starting her second year of preschool at the end of the month and her new school schedule will be 1:15pm to 4:15pm. Basically, her day is turned upside down. We are a family in transition.

To top it all off, I’ve been making it a point to get to the gym almost daily. Which is great for my ass, but bad for our schedule. This means that somehow, I’ve got to fit an entire hour of gym time into a day that never feels quite long enough to get everything done in the first place. This has resulted in my dropping the ball somewhere - typically the laundry, the chores, my photography practice, or my blogging.

What’s a busy mama to do?

I wrote out a daily schedule today, which has helped to give me a picture of what an ideal day should look like. It goes something like this:

—————

6:30am - Mama wakes up, makes breakfast for Dennis

7:00am - Mama showers, gets dressed

7:30am - Mama wakes up the kiddos, gets them washed and dressed for the day

8:00am - Breakfast time for the kiddos (and coffee for mama)

9:00am - Kiddo activity (i.e. trip to the park, playdate, library, walk, or project at home)

9:45am - Kiddo snack time

10:00am - Henry’s first nap (approx. 1.5 hours)

12:00pm - Lunch time for mama and the kiddos

1:10pm - Walk Maya to school

2:15pm - Henry’s snack time

2:30pm - Henry’s second nap (approx. 1 hour) / Mama cleans, household chores

4:10pm - Pick Maya up from school

4:30pm - Prep dinner

5:30pm - Dennis arrives home; Family dinner time

6:30pm - Mama cleans up from dinner, Dennis plays with kids

7:00pm - Henry’s bath time, bedtime routine

7:30pm - Maya’s bathtime, bedrime routine

8:00pm - Adult time (reading, blogging, gym time, movie, etc.)

10:00pm - Bedtime

—————

I’d like to start implementing this schedule as soon as Monday. I hope it works as well in reality as it does on paper. The kids really need it. I really need it. Family life is so much easier (and everyone’s so much calmer and happier) when our time is well managed.

Cleaning up this one horse town

You may have noticed a distinct lack of blogging happening over here. Don’t worry, I still love you.

I’ve been really focused on some projects at home and I’m in the midst of doing a major Spring Summer cleaning. I’m going as minimalist as I possibly can (in other words, practicing “rational minimalism” to the best of my child-addled abilities) and I’m looking at every room and asking: “How can I downsize all this stuff”?

You should see my closet. It’s a thing of beauty. I’ve got everything paired down to only stuff that I wear, fit me well, and that I actually like. Seems simple enough, but I was amazed by how many pieces of clothing I had that didn’t fit within that criteria. (As a delightful aside, I’ve also trimmed most of my wardrobe to about 3 colors - blues, greens and yellows - which, Ayurvedically speaking, are supposed to be the best for me to wear.)

I’m cleaning up this one horse town as well as turning some of the attention to myself. I’ve been going to the gym almost every day and I’ve finally lost a bit of my baby weight, thank goodness. I still have a bit more to go, but I’m definitely making headway. I’m rewarding myself with a much needed haircut this weekend. I’ve been growing my hair out over the last 7 or so months and it’s currently in an awfully shaggy in-between state. I don’t know what I’m going to do to it yet, but something must be done. Dennis is begging me to cut it short-short again but I don’t think I’m going to go there. I haven’t decided. All I know is that I’m overdue for a haircut something fierce.

I stayed up until 4am last night working on our budget. Puzzling it out. Crunching the numbers. We have our property tax bills coming due soon and it’s causing me some anxiety. California is not kind to the homeowner. We’re on spending lockdown until I can figure it all out.

Apologies for not delivering my weekly meal plan last week. As I mentioned, my focus has been elsewhere (there’s only so much mama to go around!). But, my meal plan inspiration is renewed and I should have one for you guys on Monday morning. I’ve got an interesting week coming up and those are the weeks that for me, are the most fun to plan out. I don’t know why; I guess I like the challenge.

Stay with me folks, and stay tuned. I’m still here. And more good stuff is on the way.

Change is good

Last week was a blur of disorganization, chaos and imbalance. Apologies for disappearing on you guys, I guess I just needed bit of a break; a week off to “sharpen the saw” as they say. 

I know a few of you kinda rely on my weekly meal plans for inspiration, and I’m sorry I didn’t deliver. Rest assured, I’ve got a new meal plan coming your way tomorrow morning. Stay tuned!

I’ve also been thinking about some of the features of my blog over the last few days. And I’ve decided that one of them - my weekly grocery shopping debriefing - will be discontinued. Believe it or not, it’s a lot of work, especially with 2 little kiddos afoot, to set up all my groceries for a photo and blog about the details after. I’ve kinda lost my zest for the process and I’m just not confident that anybody out there is truly benefitting from all that minutiae anyway. So, going forward, if you have any questions about my groceries, food budget, or how much I’ve spent, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime. I just don’t think I’m going to keep featuring my grocery shopping details on the blog anymore. That’s the bad news.

Here’s the good stuff:

• My meal plans will have a new and improved design, and a much healthier direction!
• You’ll see more recipes and food photography here, and on Mod Glo too!
• Henry is totally walking now! My baby is now officially a toddler.
• Hooray! We ordered a sofa* which is the first step to finally furnishing our currently empty living room. Who wants to see some homespun decorating, craft ideas and before and after room makeover pics? You do!

I’ve got lots of groovy stuff in the works. Stick around, guys! The fun is just beginning!

*Our sofa is set to arrive mid-September. We paid cash and are currently saving to purchase some more pieces for the living room. Slowly but surely, our dream house is becoming a dream home. 

Homebody

After creating last week’s new housekeeping schedule, I decided to start things off on the right foot by doing a whole-house general cleaning and decluttering. My timing couldn’t be better because the donation truck is rolling through our neighborhood on Monday morning and I will be ready!

Yes, this does go against my declaration of having claiming weekend’s off. But hopefully, this will be the last chore-filled weekend for a long while. Means to an end, people. Plus, I’m feeling especially “nesty” right now and when the urge to clean strikes, you’ve gotta seize the moment!

Yesterday, I deep cleaned the whole kitchen. Man, that felt so good. I loved getting all those little areas clean that rarely get touched. Today, I’m going to work on the master bedroom and the kids’ bedrooms. Oh, and I want to move our holiday stuff down to our new storage locker in the garage. Lots to do! All while hopefully fitting in an hour at the gym this afternoon.

In other housey news, after a search spanning many months, I found the perfect runners for our long hallway and ordered the rugs. I LOVE them and I can’t wait to see them in our space. I placed the order right before bed last night and I was so giddy about the whole thing that I fell asleep and literally dreamed about rugs all night. How sad is it that I am this excited about my new rugs? (Answer: Quite sad, actually.)

Anyway, the best part is that we paid cash (as we ALWAYS do these days because we are credit card FREE) and we got a smokin’ deal on some pieces for the house that I am really in love with. We’ve got our whole lives to get this place exactly how we want it, so I refuse to settle. Nothing is coming through our front door unless I really love it. And these rugs definitely fit the bill!

I’ll do a before and after hallway post in mid-August once our new runners have arrived!

It’s a beautiful sunny San Francisco morning and I’m really looking forward to enjoying a quiet Sunday puttering around at home. Puttering Sundays are THE BEST.

On keeping house

Now that Henry is old enough to join his big sister in destroying order around the house, I really need to step up my game to maximize efficiency. Some days I feel like I could literally clean morning, noon and night and never feel caught up.

At one point a few months ago, I came up with a “chores schedule”. It worked - sort of - but it was kinda complicated. I had everything divided up into daily, weekly, monthly, and “as needed” tasks, and it was loosely based on this method. My intentions were honorable, but admittedly, I found this housekeeping routine to be slightly too laborious. That, plus our variable schedule and my littlest one suddenly becoming super mobile, has forced me to rethink how I should spend my cleaning time.

When it was just little Maya (long before Henry came along), I would bomb around the house first thing in the morning, doing all my chores before she woke up. This worked well, and it was lovely to have everything completed before the day really got started. Flash forward a few years and another kid later, and now I feel like I can barely keep up. I swear on all that is holy that my kids seem to follow me around, immediately undoing at least 85% of my cleaning progress as I complete it. So I run around in circles re-doing chores whilst constantly trying to keep on top of the scattered Cheerios on the kitchen floor before somebody steps on them.

Efficiency? Uh, not so much.

I think at this stage of my life (and the kids’ lives), there will always be some element of constant clean-up. I will likely never get to sit back and bask in the glory of my perfectly clean house, at least not for more than 5-10 minutes at best. The laundry never ends. The dishes never stop. And oh, the Cheerios. Please don’t get me started on the Cheerios.

Currently, I run around cleaning up little messes all day, and then I do a major clean-up on the weekend when Dennis is home to help wrangle the kiddos. Yes, this approach gets the job done, but it means that I’m ALWAYS cleaning. Every single day. And in my opinion, that’s just not fair!

So how does a busy mama manage?

Simplicity. And acceptance. I’m realizing these concepts go hand-in-hand, are the keys to keeping an organized home. Simplicity and acceptance are paramount for survival.

THEREFORE.

I have divided my chores into very general categories, based on each room/area. For each room listed, I will complete a basic, no-frills clean-up. This means declutter, wipe, dust, polish, mop, sweep, vacuum, etc. I will also choose ONE drawer, cabinet, closet, etc. at my discretion, from that room, to thoroughly clean.

For example, if it’s Monday and “Kitchen” is my room for the day, then I will likely:

• remove any toys, books, mail, etc. from countertops
• wipe counters, stove, windowsills, windows
• polish stainless steel appliances
• mop floor
• and ALSO perhaps clean out the cutlery drawer

The idea is that each room/area gets my attention once a week, and most long-term cleaning projects will be negated as they are always constantly, slowly in progress. So something like a major kitchen cupboard re-org will happen, but probably take several weeks to fully complete. Make sense?

Also, I have one rule: When my room of the day is complete, I AM NOT ALLOWED TO CLEAN ANYTHING FURTHER. No exceptions. I’m all done for the day (except for the ongoing daily chores listed below, no escaping those, I’m afraid.)

So this is what my housekeeping schedule will look like going forward:

• Mondays: Kitchen
• Tuesdays: Bathrooms
• Wednesdays: Kids’ Bedrooms
• Thursdays: Master Bedroom
• Fridays: Dining Room/Living Room/Hallway
• Saturdays & Sundays: Weekends OFF!
• Ongoing Daily Chores: Make beds, laundry, dishes, toy clean-up, garbage/recycling/compost, Cheerio management.

I like this cleaning schedule. It’ll keep each room looking tidy while simultaneously allowing for the completion of larger-scale tasks. Plus, I get weekends off from cleaning! Sounds awesome to me!

Likely there will always be a few chores that I will need to schedule separate time for. These will probably be “one-offs” and I’ll have to tackle them as needed. For example, at some point, I’d like to organize our storage locker down in the garage and this might just have to be a weekend thing.

As for acceptance, I’ve just come to the realization that messes are a part of my life right now. We don’t live in a museum. We have real lives and little kids. My inner neat freak just has to let go and unclench. Some days are just going to be messy and that’s OK. Years from now, I probably won’t remember that the Toy Story toys got mixed in with the Barbies, or the night I left some dishes in the sink. But time with my young family is precious, fleeting and indelible.

Transplendent

Productivity report

So how’d I do with the ol’ to-do list today?

Well, in case you’re wondering, not too bad. Here’s what we’re lookin’ at as of 7:30pm on Sunday evening:

• climb Mount Laundry (laundry = dominated)
• clean kitchen (sparkling!)
• clean out aquarium (the fishes say thank you)
• make meal plan/shopping list for next week (I’ll do this first thing in the morning…actually, second thing…coffee will be first)
• deep clean blue bathroom (nope, didn’t happen)
• clean off [my mess from] Dennis’ desk(Den’s desk: she is tidy once again)
• sort through and file miscellaneous paperwork
• go through backlog of HOA emails
• pay a couple of bills (paid! feels so good!)
• general cleaning
• dust
• vacuum bedrooms
• attack the box of ironing
• re-org cabinet in blue bathroom
• pack up box for donation pick up on May 30th
• vacuum under dining room table
• posterboard project (I’ll post on this soon)
• make a large batch of granola
• make a large pot of soup
• bake some bread (will do tomorrow AM)
• bake some banana bread

Honestly, not bad for an eclipsy sorta Sunday. I swear if I’d not spent so much time trying (and failing) to get a picture of this celestial event, I might have actually got more done! Ha!

On to-do listing

I really am a list maker extraordinaire. And lately, I’ve given my to-do listing a whole new direction - I’ve been separating what I’d like to complete immediately and what can wait. The reason for this is purely emotional; if I put too much stuff on my to-do list and I don’t complete it all, then I feel sad and disappointed in myself. And the things I actually did accomplish somehow lose a bit of their glory.

The key to to-do list satisfaction is to keep the items for immediate completion to a minimum. Maybe 3 or 4 things per day, at most. This might seem way too easy and it’s tempting to add a few more items, but I have learned this practice is a grave mistake. I can always dip into the lower-priority tasks if I’m feeling jaunty, but I can never regain the self-empowerment earned from completing the things I set out to complete today.

Yes, this is without a doubt, a silly little game I play with myself. But striking tasks off of a never-ending to-do list affords no sense of accomplishment. It’s like throwing pebbles into a lake; it’s nice to throw them in but no matter how many you throw, it’s not ever really going to decrease the number of pebbles on the shore, nor will it shrink the size of the lake. In other words: The laundry never, ever ends.

I like to feel happy. I like to feel productive. Therefore, to save myself from frustration and the sheer immobility that comes from feeling totally daunted, I can’t look at my never-ending to-do list in its entirety. Marking and aiming to complete a few achievable items is the only way to go. Complete them, cross them off the list, and move on.

So without further ado, here is the my current running to-do list:

(The bolded items are the things I’d like to complete today - Sunday May 20th. Note that some of the items have been carried over from last week’s to-do list. As I say, it never ends.) 

• climb Mount Laundry
• clean kitchen
• clean out aquarium
• make meal plan/shopping list for next week
• deep clean blue bathroom
• clean off [my mess from] Dennis’ desk
• sort through and file miscellaneous paperwork
• go through backlog of HOA emails
• pay a couple of bills
• general cleaning
• dust
• vacuum bedrooms
• attack the box of ironing
• re-org cabinet in blue bathroom
• pack up box for donation pick up on May 30th
• vacuum under dining room table
• posterboard project (I’ll post on this soon)
• make a large batch of granola
• make a large pot of soup
• bake some bread
• bake some banana bread

The 5 bolded items above make for some pretty ambitious marching orders. That said, it’s a beautiful sunny Sunday and we have no deadlines and no place to be, so I’m confident I can get it all done.

It should be noted that just as I typed that last sentence, Henry knocked over Maya’s cereal and now soggy Cheerios and milk grace my kitchen floor. Additionally, Maya has run into her room to change her milk-soaked pants with such haste that she’s tripped over a stack of baby books in the hallway on her way and is now weeping over a stubbed toe. Henry followed Maya into her room and now she’s yelling that he’s spit up his applesauce and brown rice breakfast all over her bedroom floor. And I just noticed a discrepancy on one of our utility accounts that I have to look into. Oh, and I just heard the condensing pump on our furnace trigger on but it didn’t sound quite right and I think it might be acting up again (which means I’ve got to climb up into the crawl space and have a look). And Hen needs a big-time diaper change. Ug, and I just stepped on a wet Cheerio. This is why I aim low when it comes to getting things done around here.

#mamaneedsacuppateanowplease #canigobacktobed? #everydayisanewadventure