Remembering how to house-wife

Tags

Babies, Blogging, Family, Home, Housework, Motherhood, Mothering, Parenting, Work

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been on here. Being a full-time worker, a something time mum and not-so-organised, meant various things fell away – blogging; fitness; house-wifing – all the important stuff.

So a quick summary of the past year.

• Chublet went on her first overseas holiday when I had a conference in NZ.
• B got a full time job in a new industry (and is doing really well)
• I opened multiple new exhibitions at work, organised some big changes (rebranding, new light system, new website etc) and got two new staff after several months of being two staff down.
• Lots of gardening, crafting, music making (Chublet is now learning the violin), occasional trips to Sydney, Port Macquarie and South Australia
• We gained a family member.

Yep, that’s right, we are now a family of 4. After an early miscarriage in the middle of last year, we got pregnant again before we knew it and almost 4 months ago Little Hippo joined us. So I’m now back to being a full time mum, at home with Hippo and Chublet and trying to remember how to be a bit more organised than usual and balance the days between avoiding boredom, giving Hippo the space to learn to sleep and dividing my days into a 2.5 hourly repeat cycle.

You never know, if I succeed in the above this blog might just get regular attention again.

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‘To do’ lists

Tags

Babies, Blogging, Housework, Husband

I love a good ‘to do’ list, it lets me feel like I have some control over the chaos that is my house and life.  Chublet is at childcare two days a week at present, a little part of me feels slightly guilty that this happens despite me not being back at work yet, but most of me revels in the freedom to actually achieve something on those days.  I always have a huge ‘to do’ list prepared for those two days.

The list always contains a large swath of basic housework that has been pushed aside through the rest of the week; wash dishes, mop floors, vacuum (wade through the piles of clean washing, toys, craft projects and assorted other things to find carpet again), change sheets etc etc.  At present the list usually also has on it the rather depressing ‘finish job applications’, and if I need a little mood lift I’ll also include the things I know I’ll get done that day ‘have a shower’ and ‘eat breakfast / lunch’.

B can usually tell what sort of week I’ve had by whether or not there is a ‘to do’ list prepared for him on a Friday night ready for the weekend.  Those weeks when I’ve had it with the state of our lives and am feeling the need for a refresh are the weeks he gets hit with a list.  Strangely enough those weeks also seem to coincide with the times that B is frantically busy with study / work / other plans and needs to be away from the house for long periods.

I tried to bring my love of a list into our regular lives in an attempt to stave off the encroaching chaos.  I did up a lovely table of daily, weekly and fortnightly jobs and stuck it on the fridge.  B was meant to be able to reference this list and pick up the things I hadn’t managed to achieve; I was meant to see it several times a day and get a swift quick up the behind and get motivated.  It worked for all of about a week, then we got used to seeing it there, it got covered in other things and our home settled back into a state of comfortable chaos.

Writing this post wasn’t on my list for today.  Better go and add it so I can cross something off.