Make Over Your Mornings {Half-Time Report}

Sorry, I am posting this late - we lost power yesterday! Thankfully everything is all right. Our neighbor's tree fell across the street. It was not pretty, let me tell you. BUT had it fallen the other way, their house would be destroyed. As is, it didn't hit any cars or people when it fell ... just blocked the road and took out the power. All in all not so bad! 

I made it! I'm halfway through the Make Over Your Mornings ecourse from Crystal Paine (aka Money Saving Mom). Below are my thoughts immediately after completing the course material for the day. Course material ... that makes it sound really intensive. It isn't! There's a short (3-5 minute) video to watch and then a literal couple pages to read, and one or two tasks. Crystal designed the course so that each day's work could be completed in 15 minutes or less! When you're a mom of little ones like me, that is so helpful.

Note: You get an idea of what Crystal talks about each based off my reflections. What I say is by no means all that she communicates. Her job is to instruct, mine to reflect!

Day 1 - Task: choose a time every day that you're going to do this course.

This was easy, even though I didn't get to do Day 1 until right before bed, I have to pump first thing in the morning. That became my time for this ecourse.

Day 2: Establish a before bed routine, identifying stresser areas.

Before kids, years before marriage, I had a before-bed routine. When I was in college I had to leave the house no later than 6:30 to commute to school (seriously, leaving 5 minutes late meant I got stuck behind EVERY school bus on the way and would be seriously late. Leaving 5 minutes early meant I arrived a half hour early. Leaving on time or early was crucial). Let me tell you, when you have to wake up early the LAST thing you want to do is figure out what you're going to wear. So I established a routine where I prepped my breakfast for the car and laid out my clothes. This meant I could get up 10 minutes before I had to leave, and leave on time. Before my before bed routine was instituted, I'd wake up at 5:30 or 6 and *still* struggle to leave the house on time.

So I totally get why Crystal emphasizes the importance of this. When my life shifted to marriage and honeymoon baby this key part of my evenings disappeared. I guess because I had so much new I was adjusting to. If you asked me yesterday if we had a before-bed routine, I would've said yes. I mean, I pick up the playroom, we put the kiddos down, I pump, and usually husband works on cleaning the dishes.

But the kitchen doesn't usually get fully cleaned. There's usually something we don't get to, or we forget to wipe the counters. Or we left some pantry staple sitting on the counter. And we have a fairly small kitchen with a poor layout so ANYTHING out of place, or out at all, means its overcrowded.

And the whole "cleaning the playroom" thing is more of a if-I-get-to-it. Everything has a place, so it honestly doesn't take that long - 5-10 minutes when EVERYTHING is strewn out, but sometimes I just don't feel like picking it up (our oldest is just getting to the age where her helping clean up is a possibility). Then, in the mornings, I feel bad putting the children in the there to play...even though they messed it up! I don't want to encourage messiness. I want to instill the tidiness in them, and putting them in a disaster zone isn't the best way to accomplish that purpose.

We're in the middle of renovating right now, so our table is in the middle of our living room at present. Having a joint living/dining room is stressful in and of itself. But since it's not in sight when we're cleaning the kitchen, we usually forget to clean the table off and dishes or napkins just tend to pile up. This definitely needs to become a part of our routine. Starting the day walking in for breakfast and seeing a pile of stuff is not calming.

I'm going to be honest - my husband got sick the night of Day 2. This is a great way to ensure that whatever new routine you're doing together ISN'T going to happen! This has been followed by a half week of me feeling pretty awful (pregnancy related), but it's Sunday (so I should be on Day 6) and I'm on Day 3. Woohoo. BUT I'm going to see if it's at all feasible to play "catch up."

Day 3: Identify your big rocks (non negotiables).

This day is hard for me. What are my  big rocks, my non-negotiables that I should do first thing when I wake up to make sure they don't get lost during the day? As I said in Day 2, I used to get up early and exercise - I knew if I didn't then, it wouldn't happen. But my children are my alarm clock now. I'm not sleeping well at night, and the baby needs my attention first thing in the morning followed by my toddler. I want to exercise, but there's not much I can do while pregnant anyway. And, since I have to pump because of complications breastfeeding this time around, that takes up an hour of my time where I literally have to sit down and feel like I'm doing nothing. I try and eat breakfast during this time, write a little for the blog, work on earning swagbucks (since I'm immobile anyway).

On Mondays (laundry day) I know if I don't get that started right after I feed the baby, I'll probably continue to forget the rest of the day. But I don't have something like this for other days. This is an instance where I'm considering 2 things: 1. Talking with my husband - what does HE prioritize? What is something that would make him feel more relaxed when he arrives home if it was done? 2. Thinking about tweaking our daily schedule so I can make better use of my mornings.

Day 4: What's something you get pleasure out of?

This was an easy one. I love reading and I love scrapbooking/crafting. Because of the aforestated necessary pumping, during these times is usually when I'll read some. I read to my children all day long, but while board books are great for them, they aren't my cup of tea ;-) Crafting is harder. Right now my thing is trying to make scrapbooks for my children's first year (the one for my daughter would be finished, but I'm trying to get pictures from other people for several months of her life ... because my phone fritzed and I lost everything from that time! Back up your phones and computers often, people! This is heartbreaking) But this is a LOT harder to do with a toddler who wants in and is just going to mess things up. Usually, I make sporadic progress on this during a nap time here or after the kids are in bed there...but I usually feel guilty if the house isn't caught up first and I'm working on this. And since we're renovating parts of our house right now, nothing is ever entirely done.

Day 5: Goal setting.

This is really hard for me. My priorities are making sure my children are healthy, safe, and clean. I WANT to be a better housekeeper, but I'm just so tired! (Yes, I know Crystal talks about making sleep a priority, and I try - trust me, I'm actually one of those unfortunates who needs 8-9 hours of good sleep every night to fire on all cylinders, though I've managed to learn to function on much less. Pregnancy and young children aren't always kind to this, however.) Days I feel like I really got a lot accomplished with house stuff are usually the same days I feel bad because I didn't spend a lot of time playing with or reading to my children. I want to keep the house in order AND spend time with them! I'm sure this will be easier the older they get (my oldest is all of 2)

Day 6: Make it realistic.

Good, actionable tips to making goals manageable.

Day 7: Find an accountability partner.

This will be a harder one for me for a few reasons. 1) I've never had success with accountability partners before. Always a lot of oh sure I'll help! or I'd love for you to keep me accountable. But then they never follow through ... or get defensive when I follow through. This is obviously NOT the desired situation, but past experience makes me wary, even if my experience was in middle/high school! 2) My husband is an awesome accountability partner...for some things. Like this ecourse - he has been great, he'll text things like "have you been able to watch your video yet today?"  But what about the areas he and I both struggle in? Obviously, that's harder because its easy to both fall off the bandwagon at the same time and not even notice it, or to "take a break" and never start again.

MOMENT OF TRUTH

I have watched the videos and read the material for this ecourse every day (or caught up when I missed) BUT if something isn't listed out here, it hasn't been done. For example - those goals I'm supposed to actually write down and then make manageable? Hasn't happened. The reason is, this is something that really my husband and I need to be in on together. Some of it is "merely" applicable to me. Some of it needs his support if not his active participation. Some of it is that if I'm going to be trying to make our household run smoother and be better, I want to do things that make him more relaxed and blessed...that means we need to actually sit down and spend some time discussing things. I'm planning on us talking about that some Thursday night. Yes, its late in the game, but better late than never!

Another confession? We have absolutely not accomplished the before bed routine. Husband was sick, I've been dealing with pregnancy sickness, and the baby is teething. Bad timing? Yep. But there will always be something going on. I've been trying not to get discouraged that things "haven't been going my way" but I have the tools, and even if I'm not making the big strides, at least I'm thinking about things. I'm aware of what we're doing. I'm aware of what's not working and what we are going to do to fix it. Sometimes you have to take those baby steps. Inching forward is better than standing still.

Make Over Your Mornings has had a lot of good material. The issue so far has been what's going on in our family, not the course. As my experience so far has shown - there's never an *ideal* time to start making changes. It's certainly easier to stay stuck in your rut than to climb out - but if you don't make the effort, you won't improve and you'll continue to feel behind and frustrated.

I'm looking forward to finishing this course over the next week and being able to actually start implementing what I've been learning.

What about you?

Right now (through Jan 9) you can grab this course for only $9! What are you waiting for?

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