Not managing | Imamother

zaq

Tue, Dec 19 2023, 8:55 pm

Flower25 wrote:

wow, wow thank you... love the way you wrote down everything so clear. can you give me another example of a day? that doesn't include an appointment. wanna get the hang of it.

This is a fictitious schedule, just for illustration, not a custom blueprint for your life. You will see immediately that I left out a lot of things like making beds, cooking supper and lunch for most of the week, self-care activities like exercise, and so on. Use this as a very rough model and modify to suit your needs and priorities. You may need to grocery shop and take out the trash more often, dust less often, and wash the kitchen floor every other day. Or you may be able to get away with spot-cleaning spills and wash the floor less often.

This is hard to do when you have children under three who don't understand the meaning of "wait a minute," but cleaning up spills right away really does save you a ton of work. Fresh spills mop up easily without scrubbing. Let them dry on the floor, table, stove, high chair or what have you, and they make themselves at home and refuse to budge without a fight.

Sunday:
Wash, dry linens from Friday and put away
Write weekly menu
Grocery shopping
Mending
Pay bills
Call Granny Happy Bday
Confirm Monday carpool
Evening general cleanup living room, 5 minutes; kitchen, 10 minutes

Monday:
One load laundry
Dust
Trash and recycling out
Cook supper main dish and soup, freeze half of each
Carpool
Evening general cleanup living room, 5 minutes; kitchen, 10 minutes

Tuesday:
One load laundry
Errands: pharmacy pick up rx, shoemaker pick up Dani’s shoes, post office buy stamps and mail Mom & Dad anniversary card (because they’re all in the same direction from home)
Water plants
Purge kids’ art work
Bake cake and kugel for 2 or 3 weeks, freeze
Evening general cleanup living room, 5 minutes; kitchen, 10 minutes

Wednesday:
Two loads laundry
Buy produce
Errands: Bank get cash, library return books, cleaners drop off Sam’s suit (because they’re all in the opposite direction from Tuesday’s errands)
Iron Shabbat clothes if needed
Polish shoes if needed
Evening general cleanup living room, 5 minutes; kitchen, 10 minutes

Thursday:
measure ingredients for challah
Empty wastebaskets, trash, recycling
Vacuum and wash floors
Clean bathroom, polish mirror
Cook chicken, soup, prep cholent ingredients
Set Shabbat table
Set up candles
Evening general cleanup living room, 5 minutes; kitchen, 10 minutes

Friday:
Change all linens
Bake or buy challah
Defrost cake and kugel
Cook cholent 2 hours before licht
Make salads
Boil water or fill and plug in urn
Reheat food on blech
Showers
Set timers

Flower25

Wed, Dec 20 2023, 1:56 am

zaq wrote:

WOOOW! love this! would love to meet you, you look like a very organized person! wonder a few things, when do you fold and pack away laundry? iron?

zaq

Wed, Dec 20 2023, 7:49 pm

Flower25 wrote:

WOOOW! love this! would love to meet you, you look like a very organized person! wonder a few things, when do you fold and pack away laundry? iron?

I had to become insanely organized when I was a full-time-employed mother of young children. With no dryer and no space to install one, I use collapsible racks and fold and pack away laundry as soon as it's dry. I have enough laundry baskets for each family member, and once the kids were old enough, I'd put each one's clothes in a separate basket and give it to them to fold and put away.

I iron very little. You have to set priorities, and for a full-time-employed mother of young children, other things were more important. I ironed my own shirts for work but that was about it. The kids' clothes had to be clean and in good condition--I sewed on plenty of buttons in my day-- but the softer look of permanent press that has not been ironed didn't bother me. When they were old enough to care and wanted a sharp, crisp look, I taught the kids how to iron their own. Yes, I admired kids who showed up to school looking as if they stepped out of the pages of GQ Kids, but one can only do so much. I wasn't going to kill myself to iron clothes for a six-year-old. Rest assured, no shadchan ever asked me if they wore ironed shirts in elementary school.

We never had enough space to store a whole lot of clothes, so nobody had enough to get away with doing laundry just once a week. Therefore, I had to do at least one load every day and never had to spend a whole day doing back-to-back loads. No wonder some people never get around to putting the laundry away, when there's so much of it! (BTW, running a washer continuously for hours shortens the life expectancy of the machine because the motor and other parts overheat. It's better to give the machine a rest to cool down every so often, even after every load if you run a long cycle. A tip from my washer repair pro.)

TIPS:
1. If you have a washer and dryer, you can wash and dry bedding and then put it right back on the bed. That eliminates the job of folding it and putting it away--a timesaver and a blessing if you have trouble folding fitted sheets.
2. If you divide dresser drawers or storage bins into compartments, you can get away with not folding items like underwear and pajamas. Just drop the whole bundle of undershirts or underpants into its assigned bin. If you buy each person multiple pairs of identical socks, you don't have to sort or fold those, either.

zaq

Wed, Dec 20 2023, 8:08 pm

Flower25 wrote:

sorry, just realized ironing you put in on Wednesday. My husband wears white shirts daily and he likes them starched and nicely ironed so that's a weekly task for me that takes a lot of time. I might be giving it to a cleaning lady

No, that was an invented schedule. IRL I hardly ever iron, and when I do, it's on an as-needed basis. If dh wants his shirts starched and ironed, either he does them himself or he takes them to the cleaners. (I never carpooled, either. Or called my grandmother to wish her happy bday, since she died over 50 years ago.)

Mothers, have rachmones on your future dils. Teach your sons as well as your daughters basic domestic skills. They'll pretend to be incompetent but when they're on their own they'll be able to do what needs to be done.

naomi2

Thu, Dec 21 2023, 12:23 pm

zaq wrote:

Listmaking helps a lot, by giving structure to your day and being a visible reminder of what you need to do. Ideally, you'd prep a list each night of tasks you want to do the next day. That way you have your plan all ready the next morning.

If you have certain things that must be done at a certain time, say a dentist checkup at 10.00 and school pickup at 3.00, mark those down first as "anchors" around which you work everything else. As an example, you may need to do two loads of laundry, mail some envelopes, wash the kitchen floor, pay several bills, cook supper and shop for groceries. Working around your "anchors," you might write Laundry, wash kitchen floor before 10.00 -Dentist. Since you know you'll pass a letter box on the way to the dentist, you write "mail letters" just before "dentist."

Then you figure you'll grocery shop on the way back from the dentists, so you write that just after "dentist." Between putting away the groceries and picking the kids up, you'll work in another load of laundry and paying the bills. After pickup, you'll write "cook supper"--see how clever you were, you already shopped for groceries so you don't need to go out again to buy ingredients. And after the kids are in bed, you'll sit down to make your list for the next day.

Your list may look something like this:
8.30 Laundry, wash kitchen floor
10.00 dentist
KosherKorner groceries
Laundry
3.00 pickup
Cook supper
Wash dishes

That night you may see that you forgot to put "mail letters" on the list before "dentist," so on the list for tomorrow, you'll write "mail letters" before, say, 3.00 pickup, because you pass a letterbox on the way to school also.

Eventually you can make a weekly master list of jobs and figure out which days are best to do them so you can write them on your daily lists.

Many jobs can be delegated to your dh and your kids. Kids six and up (and often younger) can and should make their own beds, put their own dirty clothes in the hamper, put their playthings away, and tidy their rooms in a general way. They won't necessarily do the greatest job but this is part of their chinuch. Consider it an apprenticeship for the occupation called "living." As they get older they can and should be assigned harder and more complicated jobs.

You decide how detailed you want the list to be. You may want to add things like exercise, shower, make your bed, daven, eat breakfast or lunch, or you may do those things automatically and not need a reminder. I find my day goes better when I write down everything, right down to taking out the trash and returning bottles to the grocery, because if I don't, I'll forget and then kick myself when I get to the grocery and realize I forgot the bottles yet again. Also when I write it all down, I can plan the most efficient order of operations. Why make special trips to take out the trash and mail a letter if I can dump the trash on my way out of the house and then pass a letter box on the way to the grocery? So I look at my list of tasks and then number them in the order I want to do them.

It will take you a few weeks to work out what jobs you need to do when, but once you get in the listmaking habit, you'll find it much easier to manage your time and your household. Keep in mind that unexpected glitches will happen: someone gets sick and you can't leave them home alone, the dentist visit takes two hours instead of the half hour you expected, yadda yadda. Your lists are there as a guide and not a straitjacket, so if you don't accomplish everything you wanted to, well, tomorrow is another day.

This is a fantastic post