The Life and Times of this Housewife
I’ve been keeping track of my time a bit this last week or so, trying to estimate what percentages of my time is devoted to what.
Here’s what I have found, currently:
- sleep an average of 6 hours a night and nurse about 2-3 times during those 6 hours.
- (spend an average of) 4 hours a day on meal prep, eating and meal cleanup.
- 4 hours a day on house chores and yard work (and still my laundry is piled up!)
- 3 hours a day on direct involvement with the kids (reading, crafts, outings, bathtime, bedtime, etc)
- 3 hours a day on my work-at-home business (no wonder I have so little time for this!)
- 1 hour a day with Chris
- 1 hour a day on email/blog/facebook to catch up with friends and family
- 30 minutes a day on personal needs (shower, brush teeth, get dressed.)
- leaving me with 1.5 hours a day for something to surprise me 
For me, this list is somewhat revealing. I have found that I spend a lot of my day on a lifestyle of “simplicity” that is really quite a bit of hard work but very good for me too. I eat well and I move a lot, (which saves me the time and money going to a gym – or having any healthcare needs!), and my kids are happy and healthy, which contributes to my quality of life a lot. And I suppose the house/yard is somewhat maintained, lol. I would like more sleep, me time, and husband time, but I suspect so does every mom! Perhaps when I “retire” (I’ve told you I plan to retire by 35, right? It’s my ten year plan. Yeah. I have lots of those.)
I also get time to watch a movie or knit here and there (though usually only when multi-tasking or coinciding with husband-time). I don’t have much time to call people back or reply to emails, and I get chided for that from friends and family members at least once a day
As I bend down, 30 pound baby on my back as usual, to sweep the mornings crumbs and sticky oatmeal from under the table, summer ants scattering away, I admit to having mixed feelings about how much of my day is spent just keeping us from being under a foot of garbage. Within 20 minutes the sink will be full again with kefir smoothie (our morning snack) remains. The table and floor I just cleaned will have sticky spills of smoothie everywhere and the kids’ hands and faces will need to be cleaned again. And when I finish all that, I’ll have about 20 minutes until I need to start thinking about lunch. Nobody said this job was easy!
I’m blessed to have a husband who comes in from a 10 hour work day and goes directly to the sink to do dishes, then outside to care for the chickens, then inside to eat dinner and do the dishes AGAIN, then help put the 5 year old to bed, then fold clothes while watching a show. Literally, he does this Every.Single.Day. His help is probably why I even get those precious 6 hours of sleep!
Life on the homestead, I suppose?
More posts coming your way this week – much going on up in this noggin’ of mine…
Until next time.
5 comments
Turns out the “simple life” isn’t necessarily a low-stress life, huh? Ah, trade-offs…
Hi Dan!!!
Well, I don’t know — I would say that, in general, it is low-stress (in comparison to getting to work on time, meeting arbitrary deadlines, rushing around scrambling for a quick meal when you’re starving and forgot to eat, and figuring out how to afford things like big cell bills and lots of cable channels and dining out — so on). But it does require a lot of time and elbow grease sometimes!
In fact, it is the elbow grease that probably works out some stress (movements like a work out of mowing the lawn with a manual mower and weeding rather than spraying, or chopping your firewood, or building projects). But often times people falsely believe that simple living will mean ample time soaking up rays in a hammock, (and maybe without kids, it would!), but that is just not the case.
Modern conveniences (like an extra car, or a drier, or some one to clean your house for you!) save time so you can go to a job all day to afford them. But then you have the high stress, lack of health, and lack of time for relationships – which to me is not nearly worth it. And I suspect you would pretty much agree, lol.
Having more time for relationships certainly would be a win, but I honestly think an urban lifestyle provides more leisure time. On the other hand, at least you can leave most of those daily stresses behind every night when you go to sleep, and that’s no small thing. I get the impression that it’s been quite a positive trade for you, and I’m very happy for you! Given the right conditions, I may well make a similar change someday.
What a great husband! My husband is having a hard time with helping out on a daily basis like that. He helps when I ask, but he also gets upset that he doesn’t have as much “me time” as he used to (and he has a million more me time than I do…since I am the one feeding the baby and nursing the baby to sleep,etc).
Was it hard for your husband at first, but now 5 years into being a father he is in a routine?
Oh yes, while he has always been hands on as a dad, the parental responsibility on me used to be much more skewed. I did make it clear from the get go, though, that he will have to trade the bedtime routine with me every other night. And that if I can stand up for an hour cooking dinner, he can stand up for 10 minutes doing the dishes after dinner! Some things, like him doing the clothes folding and dishes in the evening, has been a part of our marriage for the whole (almost 8 years) marriage.
I’m sure you will get there too! Just communicate LOTS!
I think it also “helped” in some ways that he was unemployed for the last year and I worked from home the whole time, so he learned just how hard it is to keep up the house and kids all day long. He was right there with me doing chores and so on, and saw how rarely you get time to just sit down and relax! So even though he works now, he maintains a lot of empathy for me and encouragement – which I think became more ingrained in him during that year together.
Becoming egalitarian in our sharing of roles and responsibilities is something we are striving for – with some hits and some misses
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