CHALLENGE.....Prioritize

Do I fix the kids breakfast or have cereal bars while watching Curious George? Clean the house or read some books? Yard work or dishes? Groceries or gas? Work or stay home? Vitamins or force-fed broccoli?
In the past few weeks, I have read many blogs about the struggle a lot of women have in the great debate of where our time is best spent.
For the most part, my current state in life is extremely flexible. My children are young enough to not be involved in a lot of activities. They are completely satisfied with a Ramen Noodle dinner or a banquet. Their boredom can be solved with the push of a button. Literally. I can hand them a banana and some crackers, turn on the flat-screened babysitter and blog/surf/veg all day long. And sometimes I do. Not always, but probably more often than needed.
I decided a few days ago to not post a challenge this week on the afore-designated Tuesday. Why not? Five years from now, will it really make any difference whatsoever that I blogged every Tuesday morning? I highly doubt it. 5 days from now it won't make much of a difference. The baby and I snuggled half the morning. The kids and I all settled in the cold morning air under an ocean of blankets for the latest in the adventures of a large purple dinosaur. Oh! How I swore I would never let my children watch Barney!
We talked together, danced together and cleaned together. And we had fun! Sure, I do some of these things everyday, but today, there were no pressing concerns on my mind. We were just simply being a family, nothing more and most importantly, nothing less.

CHALLENGE.......Prioritize


Pick something in your life that is "fluff." Let it slide to the back burner for a while. Let yourself de-emphasize the unnecessary and re-emphasize the simple, the what really counts.....the what will I really be glad that I did when I look back in 5 years. Will I be glad that I did the dishes or snuggled with my kids on the couch? Maybe you are always on the phone. It doesn't matter if you have kids or not. Before kids, I spent way too many extra minutes at work straightening the pencils in their drawer. Maybe a certain book series with a movie coming out in a few weeks has captured your being.

I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in the past few years with my husband's grandmother. She passed away a few months ago after living for nearly a century. She was an immaculate housekeeper, good cook and quick to share her thoughts. Grandma remembered more things from her youth in her nineties than I remember of mine- and I am still in my twenties! My small children and I took over her home at least weekly for the past few years. Sometimes we were there several afternoons each week. In her life, she was meticulous in how she kept her home. She cleaned things that I didn't know needed cleaning. The filters in her furnace were actually changed before the recommended time. The rugs were beat and the light fixtures polished. I always felt inadequate in my homemaking skills until about a year ago when she told me something that I will never forget.
As my kids ran around the many breakable things in her home, she told me that she wondered if maybe all that housework really wasn't as important as she thought it was when she was raising her children. I don't remember her exact wording, but the point was that the most text-book perfect homemaker that I had ever met was saying that all those things (dusting, dishes, laundry, etc.) really didn't matter. I felt validated. I felt so happy walking in to my cluttered home that day.
It is nice to get the work done. It is nice to spend time on my own little projects.
It is even nicer to put that all aside for a while to just be.....................and maybe dance to "Pump Up the Jam" with the happiest 5-year-old in Idaho.

Please don't think twice when you see that frazzled mom head-banging with a baby on her hip. She is just getting her priorities straight.

Anyone in?