Overwhelm

I shared the state of our school room/art area/”Big room” last post…That actually hasn’t changed yet.

So today I want to talk about overwhelm.

You know the feeling. I know you do. You can’t be a mom in America and not be intimate with the feeling.

But I feel like homeschoolers in particular are familiar with this feeling because the weight of our children’s futures are weighing on us. More so than those that trust others to educate their children.

We know that WE are it.

And therefore we cannot screw this up. And lest we forget (we never, ever do), there’s usually plenty of friends and family that will point this fact out to us. Kindly or otherwise. Indirectly or straight out. It’s never far from our thoughts, like it or not.

And don’t forget that there’s still the house to deal with, the finances (directly or indirectly, depending on your family…in ours my husband brings in primary income but I supplement, as many of us do…and we both worry over things getting paid), the responsibilities of social activities and enrichment activities for kids (and hopefully you too!) and all the other things that come up in life you don’t plan for.

It’s a LOT.

Overwhelm is just kind of a given. And it’s ridiculous.

I just don’t accept this. Life just doesn’t have to be this way. I reject this lifestyle. I deliberately do not over schedule my children. I deliberately do not do a zillion activities…and yet the few things I do insist we do to enrich our lives keep encroaching on our happiness and making me feel like I can’t breathe!

Should I drop them all? No, I don’t think so.

I do continue to look for ways to drop things I can and I say no constantly to new things (mostly because we cannot afford them, but also to not add more to our plates)…but I really think my problem is more mismanagement.
I suck at planning and follow through. Seriously.

My Great Summer Purge and Clean is the only area in my life I seem to plan and implement well. Why is that?

Probably because over the summer I have no other commitments. I can focus entirely on just the Purge & Clean. But that’s just not possible the rest of the year.

So I will have to find a way to pull what works for me from the Purge & Clean and tweak it to fit my life the rest of the year. And make a working plan.

Areas for focus (no particular order):

• Mealtimes–need a plan for planning and prep, since I detest every aspect of meals. Delegate where possible. Kids like to help. Just need to plan ahead.
• Homeschooling–My Experience-Based Learning system works well for us but needs me to make time for planning and I just haven’t made time for this this year so it’s been seriously half-assed. Time to find a way to simplify and fix this. There has to be a way I can make this work better with how my life currently is.
• Family Time–I am so busy trying to accomplish all the need-to-dos, that I just don’t make time for quality time together…just the 4 of us. This has to change.
• Work time for me–this is getting better because of my time during the kids’ enrichment classes…but those are ending soon and time will need to be carved out again from our regular home days.
• Kids’ play time with friends–classes ending means I will have to figure out a way for them to still have friend time
• Podcast time–this has been a bottom priority for far too long
• Adam and me time–need more time spent focusing on quality time for just the 2 of us
• House management–not as bad as it used to be…kids help a lot more, but I need to delegate more kitchen duties and we need more general tidy up times and weekend deep cleans as a whole family. Schedule it in. That’s the hard part. We suck at schedules.
• Money management–huge source of stress…don’t even want to go into this, but managing what we have better is a start…and then making time for me to be able to bring more in would be huge. And necessary.

I’m sure there’s more I’m missing right now, but I am neglecting things I should be doing this morning by writing this post. So I’ll stop there.

I think pretty much everyone can relate to all of the above. Seems pretty standard complaints among American parents…definitely homeschoolers.

If you are feeling the overwhelm too…I’d love for you to join me in my quest to make a plan to get a handle on the overwhelm and wrestle it to the ground.

The holiday season is coming…and as we all know, that usually brings with it its own overwhelm. Let’s see if we can’t get a handle on our lives beforehand and face the holiday season, whatever you celebrate, or don’t, with more enjoyment than perhaps we’ve been able to in awhile.

I know that’s MY goal! I made it through my daughter’s birthday…Thanksgiving is coming next…I want to look forward to December, not dread it like I usually do.

I can’t do that if I’m going into the season already behind…already completely overwhelmed.

Join me, and lets get things “good enough” to experience some happiness and contentment again, shall we? Let’s give our kids back their moms and pack up the drill seargant basket case they’ve become far too accustomed to.

I want to enjoy my kids, my husband and my house again…don’t you?

Let’s do it!!

Start writing out your plan today of how you can make that happen and put your ideas in the comments below. I sure could use the moral support…I’m sure you could too!