Am I Too Busy or Too Unorganized?
I think my whole life needs an organizational overhaul.
Besides the fact that my house is a disaster (other than the rooms visible to last night’s dinner guests), I am running around with a constant to-do list, with hardly enough time to eat dinner.
Here’s what I have to look forward to tonight:
- Call my stepson right before I leave work (since I left my cell phone at home) and tell him to find something to eat for dinner, brush his teeth, get dressed for football practice and get his school supplies and football equipment by the door and ready to go when I get home
- Get home around 6:15 or 6:30, change out of my work clothes and finish filling out all the school enrollment forms we need to bring to Meet the Teacher Night
- Go to Meet the Teacher Night, which ends at 7:00, and turn in forms/drop off school supplies
- Drive across town and drop stepson off at football practice, which starts at 7:00
- Go find something to eat for myself at a nearby fast food place and get gas, even though I’m supposed to be sitting there watching practice the whole time
- Go back to football practice and sit there until 9:00 or whenever the coach decides they’re done (often after 9:00)
- Drive back home and put stepson to bed, get eBay order ready to ship, get Amazon.com order ready to ship, get the coupons for tomorrow’s grocery runs, get the check to take to the bank tomorrow, get the Walgreens receipt to figure out if I messed up my rebate so I can buy/return something tomorrow night as necessary
- Watch the gymnastics portion of the Olympics and go to bed
EVERY DAY is like this, and I’m starting to go crazy!
My husband is working 12-hour days and weekends for some important project, and I’ve been left to pick up the pieces. My sister asked us a month ago to go to the state fair with her for her birthday on Saturday, and now my husband has to work and says my stepson can’t miss football practice on Saturday. I am FUMING!
I’m about to institute a family calendar for the refrigerator since none of us ever have any idea what’s going on.
What do you do when you’re this busy/stressed? Is it just a function of having two people who both work full-time? Working so late and far away from home? Argh!
Illustration Credit: Ripping Hair Out by Dan4th, used under Creative Commons licensing.
3 responses so far
I have just started using Google Calendar. You can set up separate calendars for each person in your home and view all of them on the same calendar. you can get notifications by email and text messages. It has a lot of very cool features that may help you keep organized.
everybody runs into times like this. we do have a big desk-size calendar up on our kitchen wall. i put appointments, my photo shoots and what’s for dinner on it. but the best organizational tool for me is a simple word doc that lists out my day, with times attached:
6a - get up and shower
6:15 - get family up
- make breakfast
- make lunches
7:10 - make husband and daughters get out the door
etc.
i try to update it the night before and print it out. i am one of those people who love crossing things off a list. and i feel less frazzled when i have the list.
i hope life calms down for you soon, and that you let us know what methods work for you.
Thanks! I like the idea of keeping an electronic version and printing it out for the fridge. I might try the Google one, or I also found one on Cozi.com that has potential.