My 2012 Schedule

Here it is. The magical schedule. The schedule that will GIVE me time.

Here's how I came up with it: I sat down and made a list of all of the things that I want to have done regularly - mainly house cleaning stuff. Then I separated it out into the different days of the week. I purposely made it so most everything gets done Monday-Friday, so we could have Saturdays to do whatever we want and Sundays to be what Sundays should be. Every week my house will be clean. At any given moment my house will be clean enough that I would feel no embarrassment to invite somebody in. I'll get caught up on my scrapbook. Scriptures will get read everyday. Projects will be done, etc. And I'll still have time to live life and have fun. It's going to be great.

Everyday I do at least one load of laundry (clothes, towels, sheets, blankets, shower curtains, ... just wash SOMETHING everyday). Cook Mon/Wed/Fri and have left overs on the nights in between. Family Home Evening is on Monday, but if for some reason Monday doesn't work out it can be switched to another day - the important thing is just that it happens at some point during each week. The rest of the table in the picture is pretty self explanatory. David is in charge of cleaning the the tub/showers. I hate cleaning tub/showers. I feel like I'm beaten and bruised by the time I'm done and David is a lot faster at it than me, anyway. He's fine with it ... in fact he practically begged me to let him do the toilets, too - NO JOKE!! Here's how that conversation went:

David: "You don't have me down for toilets?"
Me: "No."
David: "Put me down for toilets. I'll do them."
Me: "It's fine, I can do them."
David: "No, seriously - give them to me. I promised you before we got married that you wouldn't have to clean toilets because you hate them and you think they're gross.
Me: "I don't remember that conversation."
David: "Well it happened and I'm going to keep my promise. I'm doing toilets."
Me: "Ummm ... ok. Sounds good to me!"

DEAD SERIOUS. This was our conversation.
Close your mouths and stop drooling ladies ... he's a married man. ;)

David wears the pants in our family. I don't dare argue with him. If he puts his foot down and says he's in charge of cleaning toilets, then by golly he's in charge of cleaning toilets! That's just how we roll around here. haha ;)

Now, this schedule isn't written out in a "do such and such at 11:07am, and such and such at 11:36am ..." kind of way because I think it's important that a schedule be FLEXIBLE whenever possible. I think if you have a schedule with little or no flexibility, you're either setting yourself up for eventual failure, or your setting yourself up for a lot of missed opportunities. Missed opportunities to serve, have fun with your family/kids, strengthen friendships, make new friendships, ... missed opportunities to live life, pretty much.

It's all about managing time and having a proper balance between work and play. If I'm always compromising my schedule to go and play, then ya that's not going to work, obviously. I just need to use good judgement. What I DON'T want to have happen with this schedule is to turn down opportunities to go out and do things because I have to clean my house. That would be dumb. That wouldn't accomplish what I ultimately want, at all. Yes, sometimes there are things you need to get done and you can't go out because it NEEDS to get done. That happens. Good judgement and time management ... that's all.

Last week with this schedule it took a while to get things done because everything desperately needed to be done and had been put off way too long. But now that I'm in maintenance phase, it's going a lot quicker. Like today, I finished all of my cleaning stuff and it went pretty quick, so I took the extra time to wipe out the inside of the fridge. I have a list at the bottom of the table that says "Other". In that list are things that don't need to really be done all of the time, but on days when there is a little extra time if one of those things needs to be done, then I'll do it.

Now, does making this schedule and starting a new year suddenly make me Miss Merry Sunshine, bursting with energy at every moment of every day with an insane, insatiable desire to sniff cleaner and scrub toilet rings? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! Some days I feel more energetic than others. Last week I felt like I was DRAGGING myself to do a lot of the things that were on my list. I expected it to be that way, honestly. BUT I DID IT ANYWAY. And the feeling of accomplishment I had at the end of the week was worth EVERY MINUTE OF IT. Honestly, the hardest part was just getting myself to START. Once I started it wasn't too bad.

I plan to print off my list of "to do's", as soon as we get a new black ink cartridge for our printer. I plan to put it in a sheet protector and hang it somewhere. That way I can mark things off with a dry erase marker as they get done during the week. Then if I end up shuffling things around a little bit, then I'll remember on a different day during that week, that, "oh, we still need to do family home evening" or whatever that didn't get done on the day it was originally scheduled for - for whatever reason.

My goal is to get my "to do's" and getting myself and the kids ready for the day out of the way ASAP. Get started early and get it all done, so I can enjoy the rest of the day to do whatever. I'm sure it won't happen that way everyday, because of different things that might be going on, on different days and such (hopefully fun things). But, as a general guideline - that's what I would like to have happen.

I hope this was helpful for some of you! After my post, "Live Like You Mean It - 2012", I received a couple of private messages and also a phone call. They were all from people who had read that post and could relate. This post is for you guys! ... and any of you silent readers out there whom this might be helpful to. ;)

Remember - progress, not perfection.

P.S. If your life doesn't happen to allow for a schedule that cleans your whole house in one week (or if you think I'm just plain crazy for doing it that way) ... maybe think about splitting it up into 2 weeks. Just a thought. :)