Becoming Domestic

My kids started preschool today which means that I now get a guaranteed two and a half childfree hours each day to crack on with some of the chores & projects I have put off or felt unable to do whilst looking after 3 year old twins.

Suddenly I feel overwhelmed by the number of things I want to achieve and how small an amount of time I have each day to achieve my goals (exercise, write more of my book, sell the enormous pile of things we have accumulated on eBay, plant up and maintain the garden, help Darren with his new enterprise, work on the piece of software Darren and I have identified as being needed by lots of people, shop for food without kids etc etc etc).

I guess I need a system of prioritising each of these areas so that each gets some of my time and energy but some get more than others. I should also write a list of every single tasks make up the end goals and see which of the tasks can be done with the children around (eg. hoovering, food shopping, cooking), which I could do with low energy reserves after putting the children to bed (eg. researching and writing, household finances admin) and which definitely need the child-free hours (eg. phoning D’s clients to chase invoices).

I recently read on Steve Pavlina’s wonderful site that one should dedicate a ratio of 50% of available time to long term projects, 20% to medium-term goals and only 10% to things that bring very short term benefits.

I’m not sure that I agree with this as being a fulltime mother most of my days are taken up with laundry (washing, drying, folding, ironing, putting away), cleaning (sweeping, vacuuming, wiping, washing up). Perhaps I need to allocate a definite chunk of time each day to ‘project work’ and the rest to ‘urgent housework’.

The basic principle of little and often is what I will do for now. A 15 minute cleaning session followed by 15 minutes of household finances followed by 30 minutes of gardening etc.

The trick which works best for me is setting the kitchen timer for 15 minutes and getting stuck in to a task. Usually I surprise myself at how much I have accomplished within the 15 minutes. The rule I then apply is to move on regardless of how much more of the chore there is left and reset the timer for another 15 minutes for the next job. After a few of these sessions I make sure I have a timed 15 minutes where I have a big drink and a sit down or a walk around the garden.

If 30 minutes are spent on a task or a project for just one short month then a whopping great 15 hours of dedicated energy and thought will have been spent on it by the end of that month.

September 5th, 2006 | Category: Home Management, Time Management | Leave a comment

There are hours of fun for all the family when you put together a small collection of old buttons (obtained from charity shops, relatives, spares supplied with clothes, the sewing box).

They can be sorted by size, shape or colour (’These ones are all my favourite colour pink’), put into a long line, counted poured back into the jar, threaded onto stiff thread (we’re using an old reel of christmas elastic) to make bracelets/necklaces, stuck onto card and even bashed with a spoon to see how far they bounce around the room, made into families (’This one is the daddy, this is mummy, this is sister and that is the baby’), used as money in shopping games…

According to a pre-school expert I once had the pleasure of spending an evening with, the key is to constantly describe to the children what they are doing and afirm what they have done interspersed with some praise about how nicely they are playing (Eg. “You counted one, two, three, four, five. Well done, there are five buttons in that line, you counted them all!”)

30 minutes of nice, quiet, absorbed children for Mummy and so much fun for the little ones all for the princely sum of £0!

I can’t recommend having a button collection enough for 36+ month children but keep the jar out of sight and out of mind to just bring out under supervision every so often to ensure they don’t get bored with it and surprise them every so often by finding a new stash of different buttons from a new source.

September 4th, 2006 | Category: Things to do with young kids | Leave a comment

My poor mother is completely perplexed by our move away from high earnings, regular social occasions, City based careers and all the fancy things we wanted to buy.

Each time I speak to her on the phone I am invariably enthusing to her about some small achievement in my quest to downshift massively and to Become Domestic (eg. found a new recipe for chutney or plans to have a a major jam making session with the plentiful supply of free local blackberries, or discovering that the secret to a clean house is frequent & regular but not fanatical cleaning/tidying).

Each time my mum then states in a ock horrified voice ‘Good God you really are turning into one of the Stepford Wives!’. Which I took as a compliment about how well I was doing in my new but challenging role of fulltime housewife and mother.

Have just looked up Stepford Wives and am less sure that it was an encouraging comment after all…

From

September 4th, 2006 | Category: Home Management | Comments Off

Our little daughter is sneaking into our beds most nights and having to be carried/guided back to her own (much chillier) bed when I realise Bealers and I have no room due to large 31/2 year old and her beloved Bunny taking up the majority of room. Despite numerous escortings back to her bed I usually wake in the morning with her next to me fast asleep.

When quizzed as to why she is doing this by a mother who feels more sleep deprived than she did when doing twin baby night feeds her answer is ‘Because your bed is snuggly and mine isn’t’.
Q: How do I make a child’s bed more snuggly without spending any money?
A: Go up into loft and retrieve the single duvet in storage, use as an extra layer between cheap Ikea matress and sheet.

It seems to have worked a little but not cured the sleep problem. I think part of the problem is that I’ve always had little Edie pulled into my bed for an easy life & have known since she was really tiny that the warmth of my body sends her to sleep instantly which means a good nights sleep for us both. Until her legs became long and gangly I really liked cuddling up to her too.

Yesterday I found a really lovely vintage feather quilt with silky pink cover. I’ve yet to pick it up from the charity shop tomorrow but am hoping this extra layer of heaviness and warmth over her bed will stop her from waking and wandering across the corridor to us.

September 4th, 2006 | Category: Sleep Problems | Leave a comment

I’ve managed to make our new home (we are renting a large Victorian country house) more cosy and beautifully furnished by visiting the local charity shops once a week (there are three in the local town) and trawling the weekly car boot sale every time it is on.

Some people have an aversion to all things second hand but luckily I have the opposite view - I feel ever so slightly revulsed by new things now, especially those made of plastic and for me buying beautifully made things for under £3 (usually for under 50p) is a great way of saving the planet from being submerged in landfill refuse and gives me an eclectic collection of things for my home within my extremely tight budget.

We keep a list of ‘Things we want’ posted on the fridge and instead of shopping for new items we look out for 2nd hand ones. Current list had ‘buttons, extra knife block, bay tree cutting, lampshades, pretty curtains, houseplant pot, old fashioned feather quilt’ which amazingly have all been aqcuired this week for total spend of £20
I was most excited this week to find two beautiful wicker shopping baskets at the local car boot sale for £2 each. It was an extra big bargain for me as only the day before while driving through nearby Cheltenham we’d stopped the car to look at an identical wicker basket sitting outside a secondhand store - the price tag stated it was £22. I climbed back in the car without it thinking of days gone by when I would have bought it without a thought.

The following day at the car boot sale I was grinning from ear to ear when I found my latest two wicker purchases…

[See also - The Basket Case System]

September 3rd, 2006 | Category: Frugal living, Vintage Country Shabby Chic | Leave a comment

I had employed a cleaner for the last decade to come to my house twice a week for a total of 5 hours a week in order to vacuum, iron, scrub toilets, wash baths, floors, windows. I had never lifted a finger in my own home and had no idea how to.

After we moved away from London to downshift I read as many books as the local library stocked on home management and soon found out that little and often is the best approach with a general focus on one room or area per week (this works especially well if you can divide your house into approximately four zones so you are then back to the first zone each month).

Setting the timer for 15 minutes and doing some rather than nothing works really well for me as I could easily spend 15 minutes sitting on the sofa thinking ‘Grrrr I’ve got so much vacuuming to do it’s going to take me ages especially as I have to get the vacuum out, plug it in, blah blah blah’. The minute my brain thinks about vacuuming I now set the timer for 15 mins and get going. More often than not I have done LOADS by the time the beeper goes, feel great about my achievement and am back sitting with the kids before they have even noticed I’ve moved.

August 31st, 2006 | Category: Cleaning, Frugal living | Leave a comment

Since we downshifted to rural Worcestershire and I left work to be a fulltime mum I have started to manage the family’s weekly and monthly budget (before this move I just spent). If I saw something I liked I generally bought it. No wonder I ended up with a house full of stuff and no idea what things cost, how much essentials should cost or how much we could live on.

Until we moved at the beginning of July 2006 to live in the country and spendmuch more time with our kids I did not know the value of food, clothes, household goods, gifts etc.

The first step I took towards understanding where our money went was to carry a small chasbook with me and I now jot down every penny that is spent, what it is spent on and where. This then gives me valuable data as to what is essential spending and what could have been saved. It helped me to set weekly budgets for food, petrol, pharmacy items, kids clothing etc.

The cashbook is used at the end of the week and the data is collated into our familys financial spreadsheet as actual spendings against the predicted.

August 31st, 2006 | Category: Budgeting and Finances, Frugal living | Comments (1)