If I have learned anything about running a household with a baby on my hip, low energy and an always anxious brain, it is that even the most free style of personalities must have a routine, a regula, a schedule of sorts. I consider myself extremely flexible and free style, very go with the flow when it comes to scheduling or just life in general. It’s part of my choleric/melancholic personality.

However, like I said, even the freest style of people must have some sort of guidelines, especially when it comes to this area of life. After 6 months of chaotic waking up randomly, hit or miss day by day schedules, and my mental health sliding and me becoming buried under dishes, laundry and a needy baby, I realized something needed to change. Looking around, I realized I was just an overwhelmed rabid squirrel dashing madly about from one nut pile to the next, ending up escaping down the abyss of doom scrolling for breaks. As soon as the baby went down, exhausted me retreated to the couch for a few minutes of social media time. Or was it a few minutes? Because two hours later, I was still scrolling, and in dismay to hear the baby waking up. Where was the time going? Why was I not feeling rested? And now I was still stuck with the dirty dishes. I was a tired, anxious,disorganized mama.

With my husband coming home permanently from his sea job, I knew something had to give. Dinners weren’t acceptable at 8 pm anymore, laundry MUST be kept up on, and I wanted to stop feeling as though I was spinning my tires and having no time for personal hobbies.

The first thing I realized, thanks be to God, was that I was struggling with a screen addiction. I tried to simply delete social media, but that only worked for a small amount of time. I tried monthly paid web blocker apps, but those got too expensive and again, didn’t work for my full-blown addiction. I ended up confiding about my addiction in a friend, who told me about the Brick, a small device that was a one-time cost that when paired with its respective app, was foolproof for screen addicts. I bought it, we “bricked” my phone, which meant all the harmful and addictive apps were restricted, and then I gave the Brick to my friend. She keeps it and holds me accountable. If I need to “unbrick” the phone, she brings it to me, I do what I need to do, and then we Brick it again. For two weeks now I have been “bricked”, and I ended up deleting my social media accounts permanently from my laptop. I am two weeks clean from social media binging, and now my phone is reduced to a camera, texting, calling, maps, and a few other useful shopping/cycle tracking apps which are not addictive. The first 5-7 days were difficult as I felt like I was going through withdrawal, but it slowly got better as I searched for new ways to find dopamine and make my own serotonin.

With the social media out of the way, I couldn’t pick it up first thing in the morning to doom scroll. I chose to go to the library and find some new books to read in my quiet times. I started reading pre-existing books, and prayer was not quite so hard to arouse myself to in the wee small hours of the morning. I also noticed myself interacting more cheerfully and more often with my little snuggle bug, which made both of us happier.

That lead me to realize that my days might not be as full as I thought they were. Maybe it was because I was spending 30+ hours a week doom scrolling (these are rookie numbers by the way for screen addicts) and still being aghast at the laundry pile. Maybe I actually had a lot of extra time.

I started looking at the times I was waking up at. I was waking up as the baby was waking up and heading straight into parenting for the day without my prayer time, breakfast or coffee. THEN after she was settled, I attended to my needs. Which is technically fine, but maybe there was a more efficient way to provide for our needs without me feeling drained by 10 am?

The answer was to get up before the baby did. If she wakes up at 730 every day, I need to wake up at 6 and nourish myself and provide for my needs before hers. While this sounds selfish, we cannot pour from an empty cup. It is proven that by providing and taking good care of us will lead to more cheerful, thorough and efficient care of our families. So, I don’t feel guilty knowing that she is going to get my best version of myself because of this.

My anxiety had also been holding me back. I struggle with the lie that I must be worthy to accept anything good, and guilt from the past often weighs me down and keeps me anxious and away from prayer. Resisting the urge to pridefully wallow in my sins (or what I thought were sins) started helping me enjoy my life more. I can tend to focus on the negative things of life, and I started intentionally reminding myself of the good in everything. My attitude started getting more grateful and cheerful, and I started putting an effort in to supporting my nervous system.

So, at the bottom line, the first thing that needed to be done was to examine my life and look at the areas that technically could change. Running a family and home brings with it a good deal of things that can’t change. We can’t make the laundry, mess, or dishes stop. The day cannot have more time added to it. But there are always ways we can utilize time better and do things more efficiently.

I do wish the dishes would disappear. I wish the laundry was self-folding, and that our house was designed a bit better so that we could have more space to store laundry and have bigger dressers. Our master bedroom and bathroom are VERY tiny. Some of the solutions I’ve come to for these are:

We realized we kind of really need a dishwasher. Not because we aren’t physically capable of doing dishes, but it takes a massive load off of meal prep and after meal mess. It cuts out at least an hour of dish work every day. We started looking around for sales on dishwashers. We didn’t need a fancy expensive one, but rather just one that would clean the dishes well. It’s totally okay to admit there are things that have you over a barrel, and that you would like help. Being a homemaker doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself, and I really feel like having a dishwasher eases up more areas of my life than just the cereal bowls.

Laundry is not yet figured out, but I did realize a few more laundry hampers would help the piles that accumulate, and I bought some floor mats to go around the washing machine and dryer which are in the garage. Laundry going from washer to dryer often fell on the floor, which was dirty, as are most garage floors, so the floor mats are going to help with me not feeling like laundry is so stressful. I also have come to the conclusion laundry cannot be limited to one day a week, and that it needs done every other day. It also needs folded when it comes out of the dryer and put away asap, or else it sits in baskets for days. Maybe weeks. Again, I HATE laundry so much. I don’t know why, but ever since I got married, I struggled with it. I’ve just never had a good system for it, I suppose.

So, sit down and write out what parts of the home are high priority, what are the areas that we really need to focus on to make the home flow better?

What job always is hated and delayed?

What task gets left undone the most?

What task is not done WELL because you don’t have the means to do it efficiently?

What tasks can be delegated and handed off? Kids, dishwasher, etc.

What undone task causes the most angst in the household or the most dysfunction?

This is a good start to determine where to begin with figuring out how to run the house a teeny bit more efficiently. As always, pray for guidance!