How I do it all...

On a recent Ask Me Anything post someone asked: How do you do it all?

Want the simple answer? I don't. Ha!

Honestly, my people pleasing side wants to do it all and say yes to all the things. Really.

How do I do what I do?

I think this is a question I can attempt to answer.

Making Snow Candy

Determine your priorities

Sit down and actually determine what matters to you and your family.

We had to determine our priorities. For us that looks like this: The most important things for us is our personal relationship with Jesus and knowing God more each day. Our marriage. Yep, our marriage is priority over our kids. Our children. Our family and church family. Serving in our local body and ministry. Work.

What stresses you out?

Sit down pin point activities, areas of your home, or times of day that stress you out. Come up with some possible solutions for solving those issues.

Plan ahead and ask for help are usually the 2 things I find most helpful.

Once I determine what stresses me out I try to put a system or a routine in place to make that thing or time less stressful.

For instance dinner time. This used to be a crazy time for me. When I first came to stay at home I was at a loss. It would be 6:30 or 7 PM before we would be eating dinner because I hadn't planned ahead or I just didn't think about it. I started to look into meal planning. I have changed up how I meal plan over the years. You can go here to read about how I make meal planning easy and flexible. I usually start dinner around 4:30 everyday, if I dont have something in the slow cooker that'll be ready when we are. This allows time for interruptions. (It comes with having lots of littles.)

What are you saying yes to?

Are you saying yes to things that don't fit into what matters to your family? I know I was.

I was watching a video by Lydia Senn on simplifying. In this video she said something that I have had to work on a lot. In fact, I'm still working on it. If you have to uproot or rearrange your life to yea to that thing someone is asking you to do. You do have the option to say no. No is a complete sentence. It is perfectly acceptable for you to say I'm sorry no, I can't. You're not obligated come up with an excuse or reason to make the other person feel better.

Say YES to what actually matters!

Say yes to what matters. What does this look like for me? I have a routine I follow everyday it's super simple.

A simplified look at our day Wake up Spend time in The Word + Pray (drink coffee) Breakfast

Start a load of laundry Start our homeschool day (or the occasional outing/field trip) Lunch Wrap up our homeschool day Cleaning for that day

Work on various business tasks Start dinner Evenings are usually reserved for relationships family, friends, miscellaneous activities, including church activities. Kids bedtime routine

Pat and I spend time together

I may do some other various business tasks or read after everyone is in bed.

OK, that is the over simplified version of our day in and day out. We have different activities we do have on different days. Some days this gets totally tossed to the side in the name of life happens. We can't plan for everything. We can choose how we respond to it. I am far from perfect at responding well to having my plan disrupted. I am working on choosing gratitude every time my plans are changed by what God sees as most important.

New mercies every morning

No one is expecting you to do it all. If you need to make any change, I say start small. Set actionable achievable steps. It has taken me quite sometime to get a handle on my desire to please everyone and end up pleasing no one and being miserable. You are not alone. My desire is to encourage you and to learn from you.

What is one thing you know is stressing you out that you need help switching up? Or, what is something that has really helped you in this area?