OYOL Week 4

I have so many things that I want to write about, but I'm really having trouble getting motivated to do it. So for now, I'll stick with this :). I might get to more later...but no promises!

Anyway, Week 4 on One Year to a more Organized Life was creating a pie chart (or in my case a list) of your roles and how much time you spend in them. Once you've decided the most important down to the least, and how much time you want to spend doing them, you are to take it and use that to sort through the list from last week.

I'm not good with pie charts, I get too hung up on getting each to be a perfect representative slice, so instead I made a simple chart/list. I put each category of my life across the top and then while thinking through my average day, I put down the general time I spend doing it. We're pretty scheduled around here, so everyday that we are at home looks pretty much the same, making this fairly easy for me. Then I totaled up each column for easy comparison.

Here are the totals:

Spiritual- 0:30

Personal- 1:00

Housecleaning/Homemaking (includes preparing/cleaning meals)- 4:45

Kids- 4:25 (time solely focused on them, though I'm not sure even then it's the best quality of time as it includes diapering, getting dressed, basic hygiene, etc.)

Husband- 0:30 (again, focused solely on him and this might be lower depending on the day...I know, I know, we're working on it)

Exercise- 0:30...ish...maybe...

Time-Stealers- 4:20 to 5:20 (if Kent's not home that night and I don't exercise)

So sad to look at, but very informative. Especially the time stealers. My excuse has been that I do a lot of my TV/computer time while the kids are sleeping (my children go to bed early), but that still doesn't mean that I shouldn't make more of that time. One of the things this doesn't show is our weekend schedule of visiting extended family and going to church, but it's a pretty decent representative of our week. I definitely will be working on redeeming my time more in an attempt cut back on that wasted time.

One other surprising thing was when I split the homemaking category out a bit to see how it was divided. I discovered that I spend roughly four hours per day just making food and cleaning up from meals. No wonder I feel like it's a never ending job! That's a full quarter of my day! I also only spend about 45 minutes doing actual housecleaning as of right now (out side of cleaning the kitchen after meals). Of course, I'm working to change that, but I wanted to take an honest look at my habitual day. No wonder I feel like I can't keep up!

I'm not going to try to put percentages on each area, because, quite honestly, I'm not sure how. I am, however, going to be cutting down on the time stealers and also making sure that I keep my priorities in the proper order. That means, if there's a question of what to do the top priority always happens first. Oh and if you were wondering, here's how I ranked them:

1. God/Spiritual

2. Kent

3. Kids

4. Housecleaning/Homemaking

5. Personal (except showering, which ranks higher, lol)

6. Extended Family (not on list because isn't a daily thing)

7. Exercise

8. Hobbies (again, not daily)

Anyway, definitely want to do some tweaking. I've mentioned some of the changes, but one I failed to mention is increasing my time spent in spiritual pursuits. That one is a big one as well. I try to mix it in with the others (unfortunately, this kind of format doesn't show where things overlap very well) but it's a category that deserves more individual time as well.

Sooooo, to wrap this enormous post up, I hope this is helpful to you, it certainly was to me!