On my fridge, I have a list of things that I would like to get done on a daily basis. I thought it would be a short list, but once I sat down to work everything out that I need to do, and estimated the time each task would take, my time is taken from from 6 – 11 am and from 5:30 – 11 pm just on these tasks – and that doesn’t include any interaction with the kids. You can guess that I don’t get all of it done. EVER! But it is a nice reminder so when that free moment comes when the kids are happy and I can breathe, I don’t have to think about how to spend the time.
On this list are my daily “chores” – I break up cleaning the house throughout the week since finding 3 hours to clean is impossible. One of my chores is to decide what we are going to eat the next week and make a grocery list. One of my sister-in-laws was over a few weeks ago and I guess she noticed this because she asked, “Do you REALLY plan your meals out a week in advanced?” I can just imagine she was thinking I was a total anal freak. But the answer is yes! If I don’t, we end up eating fast food because I can’t think of what to eat and I don’t have the supplies even if I do think of something. Planning in advance has helped our budget, our waistlines, and my sanity. All I have to do is look at my list, and cook it. (Even DH can cook it if I’m wrapped up in other stuff).
To be honest, planning is fun for me. Planning and taxes (yeah – I’m THAT interesting!). I’ve got my kids on a schedule. I plan out where furniture is going to go by making graphic representations of the room (scaled to size, of course!). I’ve got our budget projected out 1-2 years in advance. We’ve planned which home improvements come first and how we are going to save for them. But I come from a family of planners. We plan things out 6-12 months in advance (especially when getting together because we are so scattered). DH’s family are not planners, at least not like my family. They like to get together with a few hours notice. If someone is coming to town, we’ll find out that day whether they are staying with us, whether there is get-together, etc.
You would think that this would really bug me. But it doesn’t at all. Even though I’m a planner, I don’t always stick to my plans. Dinner menus get changed. Kids stay up past their bedtimes. The budget gets broken all the time! And my list on the fridge is never completed. I just like the comfort of knowing what comes next. It doesn’t stress me out when my plans don’t work out – usually that is when a lot of fun happens.
So I’m writing this in my defense. I am not an anal freak. I do not have my kids on such a tight schedule that we can’t improvise. I don’t mind changing the plans. I do not follow all my plans to the tee. I simply like to plan – it’s in my genes.
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