60mins is all I get…

We’ve been back from Japan for a fortnight already – how the heck did that happen?! I’m still working through trying to produce the rest of the videos, but now that I’m back in the land of reality it’s much harder to find time to spend on them.

It’s kinda crazy right? Just how much goes on in my life…and how I’ve forever got 15 things that require my attention.

Let’s take a typical work day for example.

If I wake up at 4.30:

  • I’ve got anywhere from 30 seconds to 60mins before my son wakes up (if he sleeps in past 5.30 then something is seriously wrong)
  • I’ve got 75mins before my husband goes to work
  • There’s 2.5hrs between waking up and before I have to leave the house (drop my son at daycare and head into the office). That time is completely filled with feeding my son, myself, dressing the both of us and cleaning up the house so it’s in a presentable state. If my husband’s lucky I might find time to reply to one of his text messages.
  • At the office I get about an hour for a lunch break, during which time I’ll try to go for a walk, or something to at least move around (today I swam laps for the first time in about 2 years). I’m trying to get back into the routine of exercising in the morning before my husband goes to work.
  • Once the workday is over and I get home, it’s usually about 6.30pm
  • I’ve got anywhere from 30 seconds to 60mins before my son goes to bed (I just realised it’s a bit of de ja vu from the morning). My husband picks him up from daycare during the week, so by the time I get home he’s already been at home for about 2+ hours.
  • I’ve got 2 hours until I try to get to bed myself (I’ve been aiming to be in bed by 8.30 so that I can get in some quality sleep).
  • In that 2 hours I need to cook my dinner, and find some time to unwind. Let’s say it takes me about an hour to make my dinner, eat and clean up, so that leaves me with 60mins of “do whatever” time.
  • In that 60mins I can either spend time with my husband, write a blog post, do some exercise, video editing, read a book, play a game on my ipad, mindlessly surf the internet, study, or watch a movie. I’ve also got a ton of projects waiting on me – sewing my first ever piece of clothing (it’s been waiting on me for over a year) and a ton of maintenance/improvement work on my blog.
  • Also requiring attention is to either clean the house, fold clothes, clean up the toys scattered around the house.

I’m slowly starting to get back into a routine of doing little bits of cleaning the house each day so it’s never a ton of stuff waiting for me. Room-by-room, a different room a week, a couple of items ticked off each day. The idea is so that I don’t have to spend a lot of time on the weekend doing a mountain of housework, and the house is always in a clean, maintained state.

I guess this whole post was just so that I could process that this is my new normal. I’m still accepting that I’m never going to be able to do things quickly.

And by the way, I just used up the majority of my 60mins writing this post and watching “Love Actually”. Because….Christmas movie, right?

Oh, right. It’s 8.25pm. Time for bed.

How do you all do it? How much time do you get to yourself, and what do you spend it doing?

Let me know your thoughts!