Balancing life activities

[indigoiis]

My DH is very old fashioned / homebody about food. I suppose it is because he was a bachelor for most of his adult life. We grocery shop together (with a list) on the weekend, alternating weeks to pay. We try to buy all the food for dinners for the week. We'll cook something like a chicken early in the week when my (vegetarian) daugher is at her Dad's - that will last three nights in different forms. Or he'll make a killer meatloaf which goes two nights. On vegetarian nights my daughter will cook or I will make a quick stir-fry. But it sure does save time to have everything on hand.
We sit down to dinner as well and try to eat before or at 7:30 because we all go to bed at nine!

I'll make my lunch from leftovers and get my bike bag or other gear ready
before bed.

Routines are key. And if you have kids, delegate stuff for them to do! My kid hates the barn chores so I make her do the dogs and run a load of dishes (we have no dishwasher) when she's at our house.

Here's the big thing:
Don't stress if you can't do it all. Schedules are just suggestions. Sometimes an impromptu trip to the ice cream shack is in order. Or a late night walk without lights with the dogs. Or sitting with your kid while she goes through a hormonal mini breakdown. All more important than getting in that 5 mile run!

[GulfCoastAmy]

Can you cycle early in the morning before work, or extend your commute? Truthfully, my nights sound an awful lot like yours, but at least I have already gotten my ride in for the day.

[Crankin]

Indi, your attitude sounds like my house! My DH and I go grocery shopping together a lot of the time and we laugh that we are the "old people" in the store.
I notice that a lot of people eat the same meal a couple of nights in a row. I couldn't do that! Although I do bring leftovers for lunch at times.
And sometimes, as we say, we decide to "be regular people" and sit on the deck and drink wine instead of going for a ride.

[tulip]

Funny, I was in a workshop today (to get required continuing education credits for a professional credential) and I ended up working up several "schedule scenarios" to try to fit in all that I want and need to do. No, that was not part of the workshop agenda!

I don't want to come up with some schedule that I can't keep and then feel like a failure for not being able to stick to it. So I'm trying to be realistic in balancing it all. There's work, can't let that drop because I need to eat and pay my bills. Then there's cycling, and I'm trying to do MORE of that and not less...there's my house projects, which I only do on the weekends, and then there's my garden, which is my salvation and my peace, so I'm not going to give that up. Oh, and I do have to take my dog out for two long walks per day or he goes apesh-t. And since he's a border collie, I also should teach him a new trick every week and work on it for 15 minutes per day to keep his mind occupied...how about the trick of making me dinner? But I wouldn't give him up.

There's the cleaning and the cooking and the shopping. I love to cook, and you gotta shop if you're going to cook. I don't particularly like cleaning but I do like having a clean and neat house. A house cleaner is not currently in the budget, so I have to do it myself.

Then there are the things that I want to do: play my music, knit, keep up with my French, learn Spanish, and a few other interests.

My solution is to do what's important every day (work, eat well, exercise, walk the dog) and the rest I fit in during the week. Yes, it would be best for my music if I practiced every day, but it ain't happening and I'm not a pro so that's okay. Same for the languages. Sometimes my house is messy. Sometimes my laundry doesn't get folded.

I've come to realize that I don't have to be perfect at everything. It only took 42 years!

[GLC1968]

My solution is to do what's important every day (work, eat well, exercise, walk the dog) and the rest I fit in during the week.

In theory, this makes sense. The problem arises when the things we have to do every day don't fit into a day. Then these tasks flow into the weekend. Then you repeat this for months on end and things not only start to fall apart, but so does the human. How many months can one person go without doing the 'fun' stuff? I love to read, to bead, to fix things, to shop, to hang out with friends, to sight-see, to travel...but who has time for all that? I don't. I try to convince myself that taking a few hours off on the weekend to bike with other people in places we haven't biked before counts as 'travel' and 'hanging with friends'...but in reality, it's not always enough.

And before anyone suggests that some of the other stuff can wait - tell me how I explain to our goats that they don't get to eat tonight because there's this book that I really want to read, hmmmm?

I blame my parents. They always told me I could do anything I set my mind to and I believed them. What they apparently failed to teach me is that I can't do it all AT ONCE.

[tulip]

GLC, you are the exception. If I had to do all that you have taken on, I'd need every day to be 48 hours long.

Any chance one of you can cut down on the work hours, since running a farm IS work?

[GLC1968]

GLC, you are the exception. If I had to do all that you have taken on, I'd need every day to be 48 hours long.

Any chance one of you can cut down on the work hours, since running a farm IS work?

I wish. We are working very hard to eliminate all debt, but our mortgage is the scary one. Until we've got that under control, I don't see how either of us could cut back. It's unfortunate that farming doesn't pay anywhere near what engineering pays. It's also unfortunate that we moved while the market was still strong in this area and had to pay as much for our home/land as we did.

Eh...we'll figure it out! I just hope it's before we are both too old to enjoy life!