I wonder if any of you experience the same problem as me?
My life consists of me constantly struggling to keep the balance in my life. If I am keeping up with my art, then my house is a mess or I'm not exercising. If my house is spotless then my artwork hasn't been touched. However, I have FINALLY figured out a way to keep myself on top of everything. It mainly came down to my housework. If my house is a mess, it affects everything else for me. Even if my artwork is going well, I will be depressed and feel out of control with my house being in chaos. So I recently broke up all of my housework into specific chores and assigned them to specific days. I had tried to do this before, but I would spend too much time doing each task and end up getting overwhelmed again.
Before it would have been Monday- wash laundry. Now it's Monday-wash whites. You'll notice that I have specifically broken it down to JUST the whites. This is because 'wash laundry' would often involve me washing and folding 3 loads of laundry! By the time I finished doing all of that I wouldn't have done any artwork again. Now I only give myself tasks that will take no more than 1 hour. Once I have completed this chore I am free to work on art, exercise, or whatever. While there are definitely days when I want to be lazy, I find it easier to force myself to do the tasks at hand because I know that they will only take 1 hour at the very most. It's not such a daunting task anymore. If I know that Fridays are my day to watch the Frasier marathon on We TV, then I schedule tasks that allow me to be in the living room. (ex. iron clothes)
So far it has worked out really well. It's amazing how free I feel just by having less clutter and chaos!
What tricks do you have to help keep the balance in your life?
I have this problem all the time. Balancing the should dos with the want to do and the need to dos. I try to follow lessons from FlyLady.net. That helps me a little.
ReplyDeleteOh, it feels so great when you've worked something out that really works for you and makes your life easier. I can totally relate. I don't feel guilty about housework here, but the desire to keep up on the net and do networking, then traveling and enjoying nature AND getting somewhere with my art is an everlassting struggle!
ReplyDeleteit;s always reassuring to read about other people feeling the same. I really struggle and never seem to get enough done of anything (hmm apart from maybe reading blogs.... but that's what I do for pleasure)
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of breaking down housework into smaller chunks and set a day to do it. I think some routine would really help I just need to make myself stick to it.
Problem I find with art is I have to be in the right frame of mind and that seems to always come at just the wrong time.