Simplicity

I just saw the movie, "I Don't See How She Does It."  A young wife and mother with two small children and a high powered job in finance is trying to fit everything in and mostly in trouble either with her kids, her husband or her boss.  I was there at one time except that workloads were much lighter and night and weekend work was not expected - but I had five kids and three of them were disabled.  Later I had one of those 90 hour a week jobs plus a sick husband.  After the movie ended, I remember thinking how programmed I was to believe that certain things absolutely HAD to be done.  I didn't get all of them done, but I suffered daily from guilt.

Since I saw myself as a talented researcher and problem solver, I read a lot of books on time management, etc.  I soon figured out that just managing my time better wasn't going to cut it.  If I was to have a life that had any peace, I was either going to have to get someone else to do some of the stuff on my to-do-list, eliminate some of it, or streamline (simplify).  Since there was nobody standing in the wings waiting to come on stage to do some of my chores, I was left with elimination and simplification.

I did eliminate some of the stuff - like washing clothes every day and dusting (I just quit dusting).  Things got fairly messy around the house, but it wasn't life or death.  Much later in my life, I learned that doing 15 minutes of household chores a day would keep me pretty much caught up.  Then I learned about simplification - a miraculous gift.  One of my favorite books on the subject is - Simplify Your Life by Elaine St. James.  Some of the ideas I got from the book and implemented totally changed my life.  I learned how to cook good food quickly and simply.  Complicated recipes went out the window and were replaced by dishes that could be cooked in one pot, made in big batches and frozen for later.  I developed quick and easy ways to load the dishwasher so that it took almost no time.  I ran errands only once a week and ran them in sequence according to locations.  I learned to say "no" to some of the things I was invited or requested to do.  I carved out time on my calendar to do nothing or whatever I wanted to do at least once a week for several hours.  I treated that time as just as sacred as time I had promised to someone else.

Now that I don't have a bunch of commitments I still continue to try to find ways of even further simplifying what I do every day.  Peace is a priority!