Sometimes life seems challenging, stressful, and frustrating but what I do is do today's stuff today. This means I tackle today's challenges today, tomorrow's tomorrow, etc. This is not a concept I created by any means, it is simple and I do it out of necessity. Basically, I would go insane trying to tackle more than today's problems on today's date.

With that concept in mind, I can have a 'core' schedule that must also be flexible, but something to gauge my kids' school progress, keep up with the daily chores, working and other various activities/tasks.

My days are spent meeting the needs of my husband, my kids, and my employer. I thought it would be interesting to plot a day's schedule for me.

6:30 a.m. alarm sounds, but most days I am up sometimes as early as 5:00 a.m.
6:30 - 7:15 a.m. I spend this time making my husband's breakfast and, maybe a small load of dishes (handwashed) and start a load of laundry
7:15 - 8:00 a.m. I spend this time preparing my workstation work and greeting my three youngest kids for the morning, helping them with their cereal and assigning some small morning chores

On days when I work for my employer, I usually start at 8 a.m., but it can vary. For example, this week it was 8:30 one day, 8:45 the next and 8 a.m. the next. So I have to be flexible or I'll break! ;)

I have set my availability with my employer to be 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. EST, so as you can see by my example above, I can work a variety of hours in a week and still stay within that availability. Often times I am asked to pick up additional short shifts to work in the evening, but I try to keep those to a minimum.

During work I take small breaks to check the kids' progress on their school, make sure the tv is off, etc., but they are so accustomed to my work and schedule that kid noise is not a problem for my home office and I can usually have my home office door open.

When I am done working I pick up where I left off with the household chores, to include preparing supper, laundry, vacuuming, mopping floors, etc. There is always dishes to wash, but after the kids are done with their school I usually assign small chores to each of them to complete before their daddy arrives home from work. This helps me, keeps them occupied and things usually run pretty smoothly. Music lessons, doctor appointments and variations in my work schedule can affect our organized chaos, but for the most part, it works.

While I don't normally have a formal weekly menu plan printed out, I do have a mental listing of what I would like to have made for the evening meals and any baking that I would like to do. This is about to change. I'm developing my own menu planner based on the meals my family likes and the budget I've alloted to make this all happen. I don't want to get too anal about this menu planning thing, but I do want an organized menu for better shopping lists, a better snapshot of what I've made recently so I don't overdo any recipes and wear out their welcome. I will keep you posted with my progress on this, but for right now it is in the extremely early stages of creation! I have some inspiration from some others I've seen over the internet, but some are too generic and you might as well do a mental listing, or others are too cumbersome and I know I wouldn't adhere to the planning with all the extra work. I mean, afterall, this is supposed to make things easier for me, not create additional work! Right?

Since my oldest child left home a couple of months ago to live on her own, my job as a wife, mother, employee, etc., has been stressed. I assigned some tasks to her that she normally just did without being reminded, but anything outside of those initial duties was like pulling teeth from a bull! One of the biggest things I noticed is the fact I had a built-in babysitter, now I don't. I don't have many options in lieu of her sitting for them either. We are still working through this.

I guess I stopped charting my day by the hour like I said I was going to above didn't I? Oh well, you get the idea.

In a nutshell, I'm creating a permanent chore list for each child still living under my roof, a menu planner to help assist me with keeping the pantry and fridge stocked to make the meals my family likes best, and keep me organized in the kitchen. As I get these things accomplished I will be sharing them with you all in the form of downloadable files. Stay tuned!