The Big Projects

I try to keep a rhythm, but I am falling behind.

Photo by Thomas Q on Unsplash

The other morning, I was picking up the living room, which is where the 19-month-old spends a majority of her time playing, therefore is always in disarray with toys scattered everywhere. Too young to effectively clean up after herself, it is a daily decision of either putting her things into baskets, or accepting a messy living room. My 9-year-old saw me on my hands and knees and came over to help. He said, consolingly, “I know. It’s hard being a parent.” Yes, yes it is.

By itself, this was an amusing comment, but a few days later when we were making dinner, sorting the mail, unloading the dishwasher, and I was simultaneously trying to get myself ready for an evening event, the same observant 9-year-old said “It seems like parents have a lot of jobs to do.”

His second comment seemed to stem from how I have felt lately. We are coming up on a year since we started talking to an architect about putting an addition on our house. Now in the final stretch of the last few weeks, it feels like it will never be done. And yet, so close. The house feels like chaos in its “in between” state.

It has culminated over the past few weeks. Perhaps stemming from a rotten end to winter we had, with someone in this house constantly feeling sick. Perhaps it is looking ahead to spring, and knowing that we always have a lot of yard work that needs to be done, but knowing we cannot do parts of it effectively while still under construction. I pulled out my totes of “warm weather” attire from storage under my bed and now there are piles of laundry as I do the giant twice-annual seasonal switch.

I feel like I need about 24 hours of uninterrupted time to get caught up on everything. And can never find the time.

I take care of everything related to our household finances. Years ago, I abandoned Quicken’s budget tool because it didn’t have a mobile companion and switched to an app called Goodbudget. It meant duplicating a small amount of effort between Quicken for tracking overall finances and Goodbudget for its purpose, but worth it for what I could access on my phone. Now Quicken has rolled out a new version of the app, and with it, a budget component. To effectively use it, I need to make a huge change how I track…