I just figured out why so many moms are so sad, worn down, tired, feeling behind, discouraged, feeling inadequate, etc. I know this won't be a shock to many of you, especially those of you who are moms, but the general mom-jobs (cleaning, cooking, etc) are truly never complete. You never get the satisfaction of knowing you did a great job.
I spent all night long on Thursday doing laundry. There was not a dirty article of clothing anywhere in my entire house. This is rare for me because I usually do one or two batches a night and am just in a constant cycle. Not this time. I was bound and determined that everything in my home would be clean. I did 8 batches of laundry, including sheets, towels, cleaning rags, along with the regulars. Not only did I wash them all, I also had them all put away. Then my husband came home. He got ready for bed, and took off the clothes he was wearing to trade for pajamas. I'm not kidding when I tell you he wore, in 1 day an ENTIRE full batch of darks! I was already a batch behind and I had only been done for 5 minutes! That's not even counting the clothes I was wearing, or the pajamas we were now both wearing! What am I supposed to do with that?
No matter how many batches of laundry I do, we'll both be wearing something and I won't be finished. No matter how many meals I cook - my husband will have gotten hungry in the time it took me to clean up what he just ate, and I'll be behind again. The dishes will always be dirty, the bed will always become un-made within 24 hours, I will never ever ever be caught up at any wife/mom jobs! That is a depressing thought.
The worst part is that I have it easy! There are a lot of moms with much more mundane tasks than mine. Most moms do more of these things than I do, and I'm already whining and complaining about it. That's a bad sign.
I like going to work, I like finishing a project and taking it off my to do list. I hate looking at the same tasks over and over again knowing that it should have been done a year ago, but I love the feeling of finishing a year long task! I love being able to finally say "it's done!". I think though, that I'm going to have to go get over that, because at home my jobs never change. I create the same to-do list every single week, and it's boring. "grocery shopping, laundry, exercise, cook, dishes, clean bathrooms, vacuum, pay bills, put that recipe in my recipe book" that's a boring list. It's time consuming, it fills my evenings alone, and before I have the time to check off one thing, it's added back on. I think I need to stop listing things to do because it's discouraging and disheartening and that doesn't make me feel happy so I'm officially done with to-do lists that never change.
From now on, I'm going to make cool to-do lists. In fact, I don't even care if I do anything on those lists, I'm going to make the lists and take stuff off even if it's not done. "Sky-diving, tubing, snowshoeing, shopping (not for groceries, for anything I want), go to France, eat out, read a good book" this is my official to do list for the day.
I like that kid of to do list!
ReplyDeleteReally, the mundane over and over becomes a little more satisfying (some days) when you see your kids growing and getting bigger. After a while you see how the mundane grows into much more. For example feeding your kids can sure be tedious, but then in a few months and a few years you see how your mundane effort has helped your kids grow into healthy children. At least, it's the goal to see it that way.
But laundry....I will never be done and I will never stop being frustrated by that. Oh well. After doing it and not getting all done week after week and year after year, I guess you just accept it, or something like that.