One Month In
The plan was to write a post about my 2019 progress on all of my goals thus far on February 1. Since we are now seven days into February, that is probably indicative of how this year is going.
For this year, I had five main areas of focus which included using a new cleaning system (Clean Mama), getting up every morning for The Miracle Morning, going through the Declutter 365 system for decluttering my whole house a little each day, starting my 3rd round for 80 Day Obsession for my workout program, and managing everything plus my goals with the 12 Week Year plan. Here’s the current situation:
1. Clean Mama
Using this system has not gone well at all. January was not the best time to start this cleaning plan. My kids were both in many activities, so there were weeks in January where Wednesday was the only free weeknight. Since the suggested Clean Mama system has me cleaning bathrooms on Monday and floor washing on Thursday, two days where I have absolutely no time, I was just not able to keep up with this system. As usual, I was playing catch up on the weekends, which is fine, it’s just discouraging when I keep getting notices and reminders of what the system suggests I should be doing on the weekdays.
A typical weeknight in January looked like the following: Pick the kids up from after-school care at 5:00, rush home to get them a snack, take son to basketball (or daughter to gymnastics), get home, get a real dinner in, take showers, do reading, clean up kitchen, unpack school bags, try to do some laundry, get some work in, and crash into bed. Not much time to spend on cleaning three bathrooms.
Sadly, I have decided the Clean Mama system just is not for busy, working moms. I see so many posts on moms accomplishing these tasks, but they don’t work outside the home. Our schedule is freeing up a little in February, so I may give this another try, but for now, I’m on the lookout for a different schedule for keeping my house clean without feeling behind or discouraged all the time.
2. The Miracle Morning
This week I hit my 300th weekday morning of doing The Miracle Morning. Very exciting! I have used Mel Robbins’ suggestion of putting my phone and Kindle outside my room at and in the living room at night while sleeping. I let my Fitbit vibrating alarm wake me up, and I have a phone alarm set 10 minutes later. This forces me to jump out of bed and turn off the phone alarm in the living room before it wakes everyone else up. Perfect! Then I just head into the bathroom and start my morning routine. This has kept me from snoozing and from scrolling Instagram before getting out of bed. So much more time for reading!
3. Declutter 365
I have automated adding these tasks into my To Do app, so I can see all of the tasks I still have not done. It’s overwhelming. Luckily, since we just moved into our new house in May, we don’t have as much clutter as we might in a few years. I’m not so worried about being behind in this challenge, I just need some time to catch up. Totally doable.
4. 80 Day Obsession
This one is easy. I love to workout, and it’s part of my morning routine, so I am 36 days into it and feeling great. Short update on this one because it’s the easiest part of my resolutions!
5. 12 Week Year
Going terribly. This is the system I use to track my goals and what I want to accomplish. I am still tracking every week, but I’ve started this bad habit of just copying over the tracking page from the previous week and not adding any additional or new goals to my week. I never found the time at the beginning of the year to really plan what I wanted to tackle during this first 12 weeks of the year, so I’m very behind. Hoping with the cold weather coming this weekend, I will have some time to really focus as we will be home bound.
There you have it. As you can see, I barely have time to clean my bathrooms, so trying to get a blog post in has been a challenge. I hope to check in again this weekend and have better news.
Does anyone have any tips on how this working mama can find more time? Does Amazon Prime carry it?
So great! And i can totally relate!
I'm doing a shorter workout than 80 Day cause I need the time.
How old are your kiddos?
I try to have kids unpack folder and lunchbox in the kitchen. But who am i kidding, im lucky if they hang their coat.
What workout are you doing? I definitely need to find more time! I love 80DO but I'm in Phase 3 and hour workouts are soooo long.
My kiddos are 5 and 7. How old are yours? I'm slowly trying to get them to get into habits, but it's hard for me to stick to habits, so I'm not a great example for them! HAHA. They've started throwing their boots/coats/backpacks in the same pile in our mudroom, does that count??