Do you ever feel like you work all day and, by evening, it’s like nothing got done? Why does it feel like we never have enough time to do everything?
If you are anything like me, you are always feeling like you never have enough time in your day to accomplish all that you have to do.
That’s just life as a mom. Endless chores, meals to prep, errands to run, toys to play, cleaning up… the list goes on, and on, and on.
I used to think that the hardest part of parenting would be raising children, in the sense of figuring out how to help them be the best people they possibly can.
And that is, in fact, hard to do. But for me, one of the most difficult things in motherhood is managing and finding time to finish all of my tasks while still living a life that is joyful.
A couple of weeks ago I was talking to my sister in law who is pregnant with her first baby and having the same worries I did back when I was expecting for the first time.
We were discussing the things that, as a mom, will not be so easy to do as it was before.
Things like running a quick errand to the grocery store become a little more difficult when you have to check the diaper bag, pack the baby, carry it all to the car, strap them to the car seat, then get the stroller out of the trunk, get them out of the car seat and into the stroller…
Or, more precisely, simply going to the gym is a much more difficult thing to do, especially if you don’t have childcare available. Which are mine and her cases.
The 5 categories of motherhood
I was telling her that, for me, motherhood is divided into 5 categories.
- Parenting
- Household Chores/Work
- Managing
- Husbands
- Self-care
I wish I could say that I manage all 5 perfectly every day. That would be the dream, right?
Sadly, I don’t. I can usually perform 2 very well, 1 modestly well, 1 poorly… and then the 1 category left gets neglected. That’s just my reality, as much as I hate it.
And that is without even talking about work that is done outside of the home, which is the case for many working moms out there.
I work from home so I include that into my household chores category, even though it’s double the amount of work (if that is even possible).
- Parenting
That for me is the simple fact of raising children: nurturing them, feeding them, cleaning them up, playing with them, teaching them… all that we do all day long, right?
It’s a full-time job in itself, and there is never an ending to what we need to do as far as raising our kids.
- Household Chores
How. To. Deal. with cleaning up mess after mess all day long, only to turn around and it’s messy again?! I would do basically anything to be able to live in an organized, clean room for a full 24 hours. Would you too?
Household chores involves more than just cleaning, though. It’s organizing, cooking 7 meals a day…
Doing laundry, re-doing the laundry because you got so busy you forgot to transfer them to the dryer in an acceptable amount of time and now they need to be washed again because they smell like a wet umbrella.
It’s also, for me, working 40 hours a week (or more!) on my computer while wrangling both kids wanting constant attention, breastfeeding, and for me to simply not be working.
- Managing
That’s honestly the part I enjoy the least in my stay-at-home mom attribute.
It’s making grocery lists fit our budget, deciding what activities I’m willing to drive to, what lunches I’ll pack for my husband, what we still need to buy for the household, and what we should get rid of, anything that involves planning and decision.
I’m really good at executing tasks I’m given… but I’m not so good at actually deciding what needs to be done.
- Husbands
That’s an important category in our journey, and one I’m so sad to say is what usually gets poorly done by me. See here how I found out my husband missed me.
It’s all about the men in our lives needing love, affection, and attention – and usually not getting enough.
Caring for them as well as taking care of them. It’s helping them, supporting them, and point-blank spending time with them.
We don’t always realize how much our husbands actually need us, because, well, they are grown men, right? They are more than capable of taking care of themselves.
It’s true, they are, and they can. But that doesn’t mean they need us any less.
- Self-care
This is for SURE the one category that gets neglected 99.9% of the time for me and every other mom I personally know.
We spend so much time caring for our kids, our homes and our husbands that we completely forget to take care of ourselves.
And that can be with anything: whether it’s taking some time alone or exercising, doing our hair or taking a bubble bath. It seems like we can never find time for ourselves as we once did.
Leaning to go easy (or, at least, easier) on ourselves and accepting it is okay to never have enough time to do it all.
At some point, something’s gotta give. There is just no possible way to do and be everything 100% of the time.
Not to mention, if you are a mom, you are probably lacking sleep in some shape or form, am I right?!
It’s difficult for us to not be so hard on ourselves and not always feel like we are lacking in some area or another. More so, it’s impossible to actually feel like we are succeeding at anything whatsoever.
Whether you have help or are doing it mostly alone, it’s important to realize that, most likely, not every day will go according to the plan. And that’s okay.
My very favorite poem from Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, “Casa Arrumada” (Tidy House), sums it up perfectly. It is about the never-ending job of keeping your house clean but can be metaphorically applied to all aspects of motherhood.
Tidy House (Carlos Drummond de Andrade)
A tidy house is like this:
It’s a clean, organized space with free space for roaming and good lighting.
But a house, for me, needs to be a house and not an operating room, or a soap opera scenario.
There are people that spend so much time cleaning, sterilizing, straightening the furniture, fluffing the pillows…
No, I rather live in a house where, when I look at it, I immediately realize: there’s life here.
A house with life, for me, is one in which books come off the shelves, and ornaments dance while changing display spots.
A house with life has a stove that has been worn out by the use and abuse of large meals, which calls everyone to the kitchen table.
A sofa without any stains? A table without glass rings? A rug without any pulled strings? It’s obvious that this is a house without any parties.
And if the floor doesn’t have any scratches, it’s because in this house nobody dances.
A house with life, for me, has a bathroom with fragrant steam in the middle of the afternoon. It has a rubble drawer, the kind where we store strings, birthday candles, and passports altogether.
A house with life is the one where we come in and immediately feel welcome.
Where we are always ready for our friends, our kids, our grandkids, our neighbors…
And in the bedrooms, if possible, there are sheets turned by people that love or play at any hour of the day.
A house with life is the one that we decorate to look like us.
Clean your house every day. But do so in a way that allows you enough time to live in it. And recognize your place in it.”
Enjoy the days, mom. They go by too, too fast. Yes, get your to-do list done, but not in a way that gets you so stressed out that you can’t even focus on your own family.
Your kids will not remember the one day of the week that you didn’t make the bed. But they just might remember the day that you took an extra hour playing hide-and-seek with them.