Working Mom Resolutions 2013
Welp it’s 2013…woooooo. This year I turn 30 and hopefully get more sleep. I set the bar low. It helps the general cheeriness around here. But being serious for a bit, I do have some “resolutions”. Being a new working mom of 2 is a whole new ball game. I have had 3 months in the groove figure stuff out (and then blow it all to hell over break…good luck, daycare). I can see where the weak points are and where I need to give myself a break.
My friend Laura does a yearly theme. I have never really thought about that kind of thing but I think I need that overarching guidance this year. I think my theme is
The Year of Balance
I know, it seems pretty generic. We all strive for balance but I really want to weigh my feelings more before doing things.
Stop the guilt.
Enjoy my family and friends.
Make the most of my time.
For Liberating Working Moms, Tracy asked us to jot down a few resolutions. I personally made it a goal to word vomit the first 5 things I could think of at the moment what would help me. The commonality? Balance.
So here we go
- Make more large dinner options on Sundays. – Seems specific but in the last month, we got better at thinking ahead. I am not gonna start “meal planning” because that isn’t our style but the idea to make 2 BIG things on Sunday and use a lot of leftovers has been working. A pork loin on the grill and a casserole in the oven. A meatloaf and taco meat. Utilize those sunday afternoon nap times we still have (for now) then our manic evenings in the week are less…well..manic.
- Highly consider a cleaning service. – I am still on the fence. It’s hard to give up control but I am tired of the guilt of not cleaning. Yes, if I spend every night doing a chore and every weekend get my ducks in a row, we can accomplish it…but do I want to use every minute doing that? In those manic evenings, it would be nice to not stress over the dog hair everywhere and the bathroom yuck. Also a toddler boy in the bathroom alone? I NEED REINFORCEMENTS! So I am highly considering the slight cost for my lack of guilt.
- Figure out more 30 minute workouts to do at lunch – I still want to nurse Oliver at lunch. While it seems like a chunk of my day, the pumping and stress of that are more. He won’t be this little for long and I want to cherish it. I have a great opportunity to be able to do this and I want to run with it. So my goal is to use the extra minutes I have to do small workouts. I also may take one day a week for just me at lunch and leave him a bottle. This could be to work out or a lunch with friends.
- Start running again – Maybe if I can get the dinners taken care of in bulk and some help cleaning, I can get a small run in on the weekends. Step one? Getting the jogging stroller fixed!
- Clean out my closet and get some new versatile pieces – I have a lot of clothes I have just hung on to for way too long. I just took some boots from 10 years ago to Goodwill this weekend. I am not looking for a whole new setup with a nursing mom bod (I seem to hang on to some chub until I am done). I am just looking for some variety.
Balance. I want to have more of that. Everything else is gravy.
What are you looking to change this year?
I think these are great and I totally understand the need for balance. As for the cleaning service, I say go for it! We couldn’t afford our entire house to get the full treatment so we pay to have our living room/dining room, kitchen, two bathrooms and our son’s room cleaned. Guest bedrooms didn’t seem necessary and our bedroom we can take care of ourselves. In between the cleaners coming I still vacum every week (our dog sheds like its her job) but that’s it. I get to spend my precious weekends with my family and not doing chores. Of course during maternity leave that expense will not contintue and we will have to re-evaluate once we have two in daycare full-time. But while it lasted, I LOVED it and it made for one happy mama for sure!
Good luck with finding your balance. I think you set yourself up for success with the 5 things you’d like to implement. As always, you are giving me hope for when my second arrives and how to handle it all. I admire all you do! (I don’t mean that in a creepy way, I mean it in a “we have similar situations” way.) Happy New Year!
Aw thanks. I am trying to think realistically. Of course there are some I would love to put down but i can’t really say they would get priority when push comes to shove.
And you are going to do great. You really get into a swing again fairly quickly. 🙂
On the cleaning thing…. try it out and don’t think of it as a forever thing. We never intended to get a house cleaner. Someone got it for us as a baby gift and we used it when I went back to work after maternity leave. After having it for 3 months, we decided it was a priority for us to make it happen, even when money was SUPER tight when the boys were babies.
It’s not for the cleaning. It’s for our marriage, truly. We don’t spend time making lists and bickering over who is going to clean something on what night. It’s one piece of stress and time crunch that is gone from our lives. We still have all the maintenance tasks – dishes, laundry – but the big things are done.
We use this place bc they use eco-products and do a deep clean system on rotation. We don’t have them clean the third floor. They’ve been great with our requests to not be the first clean or last clean of the day since we have young kids. And if we’re on vacation, we just call them to move the cleaning. We’ve had the same two people cleaning our house for 2+ years and they are great!
http://www.thecleaningauthority.com/CleaningSystem.aspx
(we also used them the previous 4 years in our old house, but it was different cleaning ladies since it was a different zip code)
Get the cleaning service! We had someone for awhile doing the public areas – kitchen, living room, and bathroom – and it was great. We came home to a clean house on Fridays. We haven’t been able to find a replacement and with our tight budget with two in daycare, it’s been placed on the back burner. It will be a priority once we move though! Good luck finding balance for 2013.
Thanks for the recommendation 🙂
I definitely recommend the house cleaner. We tried it last year and loved it, and I think we’re going to figure out how to do it more often once we ease in to 2013. As for the large meals, yes, yes, yes! We are huge proponents of a multi-day meal: chicken pie, ziti, beef stew, jambalaya, etc. It is so nice knowing that dinner is taken care of for a few nights. Good luck finding balance in 2013!
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