Whether you work outside the home, run a farm, homeschool a dozen kids or just have a busy life, I’m sure you stress on how you’ll fit in time to get chores done before things get out of hand. Am I right? Well, I am just like that too, minus the homeschool a dozen kids part, we just have 2 hahaha. I am often asked, “how do you do it all?” Truth is, I don’t, but I am constantly working! Time management and the skill of multitasking is key! By nature, I am a scatter brain! I get easily distracted. I could be cleaning the bathroom and take the dirty hand towels to the laundry room only to end up switching over the laundry, then folding what I just took out of the dryer and putting it away before I go back to cleaning the bathroom. That’s what I mean by distracted. However, the folding and putting away may happen many hours later but you get the idea. There are days where I simply wake up out of energy but I push myself to always….everyday…..keep up with things like laundry and dishes. Of course with just those 2 chores, there’s still animal care and meal prep and some days, that’s all I manage to do. I’m going to walk you through a day last week that I packed in a huge load of work! This is typical for me.
Here goes it…..
7:00am Wake up, let dogs out, make coffee, brush my teeth at which point my 7 year old usually rolls out of bed.
7:30-8am Head out to take care of chickens, turkeys and rabbits then start a load of laundry.
8:30-9am Breakfast for my daughter and I. My husband is a night owl and my son is a tween who needs more sleep now. More often than not, breakfast and lunch are a fend for yourself meal since we do tend to run on different schedules. Dinner time is a family meal always!
9:30am Clean the kitchen usually from the night before or just empty the dishwasher and wipe down the counters.
10am I usually jump in the shower by now. Followed by one later at night if farm life gets too dirty. I am the type of person who needs a shower to get motivated.
10:30am time for dog duty again, this time it’s feeding. Stay tuned for another post on that which is time consuming since our dogs are fed more than just plain old dog food.
11:00am the kids get given their chores for the day and school work usually begins if it’s a book work day. Our homeschool consists of both an unschooling method and a sit down book work more of a structured type of method, just depends on the day, because farm life is busy ya’ll!
Ok, so that’s a pretty typical day thus far, but on this particular day, I had already managed to get our 600 sq. ft. garden tilled in between all that other stuff! Time management was my friend on this day. I may have only had 10 or 15 minutes at a time to till but let’s face it, tilling can go quickly. Especially since I had already done the clean out and put in compost back in the fall!
Noon-5pm Lunch followed by more work. On this particular day, I weeded our onion and garlic garden, dusted the living room and ceiling fans and cleared off the kitchen table which is always the spot we all plop down our arm load of stuff when we walk in the door, it’s a daily battle to keep it cleared off which we fail at…..miserably, just keeping it real (wink)!
5:30pm time to start supper
6:30pm eat supper and clean up
7:00pm feed dogs. this feeding is more basic than the morning feeding, so it takes a lot less time.
7:30-8:15pm time to feed, water and lock up the chickens, turkeys and rabbits for the night.
After I come in from nighttime farm chores, I’m dead tired, but I got out of running kids to their event tonight. Boy Scouts for our 12 year old was tonight’s event and since my husband is an Eagle Scout himself, he’s usually the one who takes our son to this anyway.
So, that’s a day in the life of this lady. Days like today, I amaze myself at my capabilities in getting so much done in 1 day, but that’s how I do it, time management and multitasking! You didn’t know I had a clone with 18 arms did you bwahahaha.