Prioritize!

Remember my Housewife Challenges?  Last week, I found myself  thinking about writing a new one, but I couldn’t bring myself to commit to it given the fact that I haven’t written a report card in weeks.  Part of the challenges is holding myself accountable and, well, I just haven’t been doing that lately.  Instead, I’ve been swimming through the past weeks mostly in the moment.  Should I really be throwing another thing in the mix?

Problem is, I’m a “do-er.”  I have this vision of myself as a mama who spends lots of quality time with her little one and hubby, but who also sews, gardens, cooks, bakes, reads, is really good at keeping in touch with family and friends, does yoga, earns a little bit of money to help the budget out, has a clean (if not spotless) house, and still finds time to blog about it.  Whew.  When I put it that way, it seems like a lot…and a little bit like I might be  crazy.  I’m not the only one; some moms do all that and work full-time too.

Working full-time, I can’t do.  But the rest of it?  I have a harder time saying no to myself.  I like projects.  I like to blame genetics; my mom was one of those moms who did it all from scratch or on her sewing machine, who crafts and stencils and cross stitches, and who also likes to start ten projects all at once. There’s just something about starting something new that gets me excited…which is why I have three half finished cross stitch projects and a half read book, and why I’ve been staying up until two AM nearly every night last week working on a writing project (I’ll share soon).  I’m also a bit of a miser and I have the “do-it-yourself” disease; I love to look at stuff on Etsy, but I rarely buy anything because I always think to myself, “I could make that.”  I could.  If I had all the time in the world…

I even found myself inspecting the dragon rocker that I got for Nora off the REX ($20!) and thinking, that I could have made it. I totally could have if I had the right tools (dude, I built a bookcase!).But then I realized how ridiculous that sounds.  I’m not living a subsistence lifestyle on a farm in the middle of nowhere (even though that sounds sort of appealing).  Sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense to make or do everything on your own.  There’s only so much time in the day…and if I fill it all up with projects, I start to slack on things that I don’t like so much, such as washing the dishes and sweeping the floors.

Which brought me back to the new, potential Housewife Challenge, and the decision not to write about it.  To spend more time thinking about it and focusing on the ones I already have.  And, instead, making the seventh challenge:

Prioritize and be realistic in expectations for myself.

So now I just have to follow through on prioritizing my life.  Check back Sunday for a report on how that’s going…prioritizing will have to wait; right now, I’m baking Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.