[amazon_image id=”1400206464″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Say Goodbye to Survival Mode: 9 Simple Strategies to Stress Less, Sleep More, and Restore Your Passion for Life[/amazon_image]

Read about the first chapter here.

Read about the second chapter here.

Read about chapter three here.

Read about chapter four here.

Read about the fifth chapter here.

Her sixth chapter is called;

Manage the Home Front

This is one area I feel like I struggle with, although I was blown away just the other day when a couple of my friends mentioned that they thought I was organized.  I don’t feel that I am, but I guess that’s just me comparing myself to my mother and some of my other friends who always have immaculate homes.  Growing up, my mom did home daycare, so our house always needed to be clean.  I remember spending a couple of hours on the weekends doing chores.  I wasn’t a fan, but looking back, I remember my mom always doing chores.  Now that I have five children, I totally understand why she did this, however, I’m not willing to sacrifice all that time with my kids (and my health) in order to have an immaculate house.  (Not dogging on you if your house is immaculate, just stating it’s not my highest priority.)  I am not a natural organizer, so organizing things is difficult for me and takes a lot of mental energy.  On the other hand, I do get very frustrated when I cannot find something.  I’ve had to try and find the balance, some days I’m better at it than others, I’ve just learned that this is probably something that I might always struggle with, and that’s OK!

This is one area where setting goals has helped me immensely, however, I’m not always good with the discipline and follow through!  I have learned that having the older three kids (the fourth is getting very close) do 3-5 chores a night and me doing 1 full load of laundry a day, usually keeps the house somewhat manageable for me.  No it’s not as pretty as I’d like it to be, and yes, I still get stressed and freak out when he have people over, but I’ve also learned that most people understand.  I think I will always (at least while kids are in the house) have a couple of boxes (if not more) of paperwork that needs to be filed and sorted through.  I am so bad with paperwork.

I have a system for papers that come home from school.  As soon as we walk in the door, the kids are supposed to put their folders on the counter and then hang their backpacks on their hooks.  Unless the baby is screaming, I usually go through the folders right then and there.  I put activities on the calendar, sign what I need to sign and try to take care of as much stuff as possible.  I recycle what I no longer need and then stack the papers that need to be dealt with by the laptop in the kitchen.  My goal is to go through this stack every weekend, however, that doesn’t happen as often as it should.  I need to go through my filing cabinet, it’s overflowing and I can barely fit another thing in it!

As far as meals go, I think I do a pretty good job of this.  Usually Friday night or Saturday morning, I try and make a tentative meal plan.  If there happens to be a Farmer’s Market that weekend, I usually will meal plan after I go to the Farmer’s Market.  I usually just list 7 meals, make sure we have all the ingredients and try to remember to put any meat that we need in the refrigerator to defrost.  Other than that, I just see what we are in the mood for that night and how much time and energy I have and go from there.  On a really good weekend, I usually put together a few meal packets and chop and bake as much as I can for the week.  My week goes so much smoother when I get a chance to do this, but let’s be honest, it’s not realistic for us to accomplish all of this every weekend!  🙂

Quotes

My favorite quotes from this chapter were:

• “Give yourself grace to let some stuff go and keep it simple.  Figure out the level of orderliness and cleanliness that works for you and your family, and don’t worry if it’s not the same as someone else’s.”
• “It takes a lot less time to double a recipe than it does to make it two separate times.”
• “Don’t beat yourself up over what you’re not doing.”
• “Either you control the clutter or the clutter will control you.”
• “Something’s always going to be somewhat out of balance.”

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