Photo courtesy of Wildrose Primitives Etsy Shop |
I am a list person, always have been and probably always will be. My lists keep me sane. When the mind is cruising along at 110 mph when I am trying to fall asleep, I take out a notepad and pen and dump everything onto the piece of paper which often results in a vague self-assurance that these things will get done eventually and I can finally drift off to dreams.
On Saturday morning while Little man eats and I drink my coffee, THE LIST is created, it contains, but is not limited to - every housecleaning item that didn't get done during the week, any financial/book keeping tasks required to keep the lights on and repo man at bay, any orders or replenishment of farmer's market inventory, any animal related jobs which weren't done during the week, at least one or two irregular house cleaning tasks, meal prep for the following week, laundry, dishes and garbage, one or two organizational projects, at least one home maintenance task, and one or seven farm projects.
By the time breakfast is done, the first load of laundry is ready to be switched, the dishwasher is finishing its rinse cycle and the garbage has been tied and is ready to go out when we feed the animals. Little man is collected, washed up, changed and out we go to care for all the critters in our charge, water bottles and containers filled, all feeders topped off and the chickens let loose from the night time safety of their coop. Back inside to wash out buckets for the restaurant who generously donates their food scraps to our pig and then it is off to run any remaining errands. Grocery shopping is often completed on Friday evenings when I can run quickly through the store collecting the week's supplies. Errands are complete by 11:30 a.m. or 12:00 p.m. and then it is back to the house or off to Nana's depending on the day. Lunch, then Little man goes down for his nap and the true work on the THE LIST begins. Some day I will be able to complete everything on THE LIST by the end of the weekend. In the meantime, I just keep working on one or two things each night in hopes that there aren't too many carry overs from week to week.
Maintaining a weekly list and having a weekly meal plan are two goals that I made for myself starting in September. Both were established in an effort to ensure I had more time to spend with Little man after work and to curtail the amount of waste we were creating. Last night I was finally able to clean up the rotted OSB from the backyard. This represented good money wasted because I hadn't made the time to finish the rabbit shed after I had already purchased materials to do so. While picking up rotted wood I found some good tools which had been forgotten at the end of one project or another, collected them and returned them to the garage. There is much to be done, but each day at least one thing gets crossed off the THE LIST.
Clean, repair, oil/grease hand tools - added
Such is nature of the THE LIST.