Indigo jones

I promised to provide an update to my post on organization (Organized Living 1/29/10) and how I am faring with my attempt to re-organize my life.
I have been working like crazy (yeah!) and I have been absolutely exhausted. The month long “Fashion Weeks”: New York, London. Milan and Paris were filled with long hours and Friday night marathons that often lasted until 11:00 pm. and totally wrecked havoc in our lives.

I followed my own advice, and managed to keep it together somehow.

I am now (grudgingly) up at 6:00 am trudging through the dark morning gloom to get to the gym before 6:30 am. I return home to shower and get ready for work, eat breakfast and get a child to school. This week, due to a special Spring break program, I have been fixing 2 different breakfasts and packing 2 different lunches in the morning as well. This helps me eat healthfully, inexpensively, and on some semblance of a schedule. The rest is necessary maintenance.

Dinners are not always cooked at 7 pm, especially when I am still at work at that hour. Thankfully, I had the unexpected luxury of a few gentlemen who came by and cooked dinner for us during the last month. (Someone’s in the Kitchen with Jonesie). It was an unanticipated pleasure to say the least, and something that is not likely to become commonplace.

I try to get the cleaning done over the weekend. Remember the section about prioritization and “have to do’, want to do” and other?
I have to clean the kitchen and bathrooms. I have to vacuum and mop the floors and the main floor needs to be tidy. I confess: my closets are a disaster and the upstairs master bedroom is not always the way I would like it to be. While I am not thrilled about it, I am not beating myself up over an extra pile of magazines or some laundry folded and not yet put away.

My daughter always comes first. Last month I paper mache-ed, attended school functions during the worst of the deadlines and always took her to school and put her to bed. In between, others, mostly her father, had to pick up some slack, but they all survived. Paris fashion shows proved to be slightly less of a priority than Prairie Day for some of us, and I did my best to juggle both, albeit at the expense of clean laundry. (Let it be said that we were always clean, but not always chic that week!!)

Much of my to-do list of “want to do’s” gave way to “other” but I know some day I will get those things back.

Sometimes, Saturday afternoon chores get waylaid by a nap. By the time I had edited and documented my way through Milan, those naps became critical and allowed me to recover just enough to get through the rest of the “must do” list.

The most important lesson I learned through this is that we can’t do it all alone. We are not superhuman, although somewhere along the line we were taught that we needed to be.

I have learned to live a less than perfect life  (whatever that fairy tale was) and now live a very realistic one. In the on-going pursuit of a balanced life, the scale often tips to one side or the other. Accepting that and prioritizing what is important to YOU is the best route to an organized life.

Gotta go…I’m organizing that messy closet this morning!!

photo: Glasshouse Images