2 Much 2 Do 2 Be Perfect!

Lately I’ve been feeling overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed to the point of being anxious.  Just feeling like there is so.  much.  to.  do.  Feeling like it will take forever to do it all and I’ll never be able to get on top of it all and manage all these balls I’m juggling. (Farming, cooking vegan, gluten-free foods from scratch, cleaning, being a wife, being a mom, homeschooling, studying…)

I’m sure you never feel that way, right?  **wink, wink**

Part of it is that it really does take me longer than the average person to clean.  That’s because I have a 2 year old who hangs on to my leg as I work.  I was watching someone else clean one day.  It’s amazing how fast a person can move when they don’t have 30 pounds attached to one ankle.

So I decided to get on top of everything, once and for all.  Do a complete de-clutter and reorganization of the whole house.  Make this house PERFECT. 

Have you ever done that?  Have you ever said, “Today, we are going to clean this house and this time it’s going to stay that way!!!”  ? 

Why do we say that?  We all know how that works out!  Nevertheless, I said it and I took steps to implement it:

Step #1 was to take the never-ending to-do list in my head and write it all down.  Here it is.  Notice this list does not include all the obvious things I need to do like “feed/dress/bathe children” “homeschool children” “laundry” etc.  This is just the cleaning and decluttering list.

I worked all day on Monday and got item #1 crossed off the list.  Then I worked all day today and got six more items crossed off.  So, after two very full days of work, I have 7 items crossed off the list.  That’s less than 10% of what I originally thought I could do in a single day.

Do you ever do that?  Do you ever set expectations that are just way too unreasonably high and then feel deflated when you don’t meet them?

As I clean, I keep finding more things that I want to attend to later and the list keeps growing.  So I decided to draw a line underneath item #75.  When I get to item #75 I will consider myself finished.

Still a to-do list with this many still-need-to-be-dones is a bit daunting!  And wouldn’t you know it, just when I was feeling so overwhelmed by how much work I still have to do, I came across this post by Michelle Connolly at GetOrganizedWizard.com.  Apparently I am not the only person who strives for perfection and can’t reach it!  What a timely reminder that I will never have everything crossed off my “to-do” list!

If you struggle with too-high expectations for yourself and wanting everything to be perfect, click on over and read her article.  One of the things she suggests is to pick only 3 of the most important “to-dos” of the day and doing those things first.  So let’s divide my 75-item to-do list by 3.  That gives me 25 days to get through my list!  Wow!  I’m feeling better already!  And you know what?  I think I should schedule a few days off in there to give myself a break!  Instead of this being a list of things I need to do today… this has now become the list of things I need to do before…. Thanksgiving.

I encourage you to give yourself a break, too!