A Little Overwhelmed

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the sheer quantity of things that we are “supposed to do.” Of course, living and teaching our families about the gospel is the most important thing, and should come first. Aside from attending church each Sunday and other church meetings and responsibilities, we need to do things like personal scripture study, family scripture study, personal and family prayers, and other gospel activities in our everyday life. I am not questioning the importance of these things.

And then everyone knows that you should spend time doing things to let your family know you love and appreciate them. We have always set aside Monday evening as family night at our house, and recently we started setting aside one night each week for one of us to have an individual night out with one of our children. We should also be having regular date nights as a couple. And taking time to really listen to the children and have good conversations is really important too.

And then there are all the less-fun, but necessary everyday things that cannot be left for later – preparing and feeding the kids three meals a day, changing diapers and dealing with potty training, and getting the children to take naps and go to bed at night.

And we need to educate our children too. We need to read them good books, eventually teach them to write and read, and do fun art projects so that they will have a chance to be creative. And, our children will eventually need to go to school, too. School, and all the activities that go with it, take up a big chunk of time.

And we need to teach our children now so that they can become good adults someday – they need a good example in these things, so not only do we need to spend time teaching them and letting them help with things like cleaning up around the house, having good manners, physical fitness, being organized, healthy eating habits, being polite to others, money management and having good personal hygiene, but we need to do all of these things too so that our children will have positive examples to learn from. (Oh yeah, I guess bathing the kids and having them brush their teeth aught to be on the above list of “less-fun, but necessary everyday things.”) And we need to do things to keep our own minds sharp, like continually learning about new subjects and reading novels.

Plus we should have a nice place to live. I don’t mean an expensive, spotless, fancy place to live, but a good, clean home where the children can feel safe. It takes a lot of time just picking up after four kids, let alone doing any ‘deep cleaning.’ But I have tried just putting off all of the housework – leaving it for later so I can get other things done, and this just makes me feel like everything around me is dirty and disorderly. So lately I have been really good about getting everything cleaned and picked up soon after a mess is made so there won’t be a big job to do later. This makes it feel better at home, but takes up time here and there all day long. Plus we should take the time to have good music, good books, family photos, and pictures of the temple and other beautiful things displayed in our home.

And then there are things that have to be taken care of – paying rent and utilities, replacing little household things that get broken, getting clothes for the kids that are the right size and are warm/cool enough for the current season (and, if you are on a low income, it is also necessary to take the time to find the best deals possible for purchases that need to be made), checking the mail and responding to important messages, dealing with insurance, car maintenance, and other little things.

And family history. I was a genealogy major in college and love researching about my ancestors. But even though we have been blessed to live in an age when many records are made available to us at home through the internet, this research takes time. And once you get through the internet records and get to a point when you need to do some deeper research, this takes even more time (and sometimes money). And even if you are not working on researching your ancestors and extended family, you should at the very least be documenting your own life and the lives of your immediate family members. Keeping a regular journal (how I justify spending time writing our blog posts), saving and organizing family photographs, keeping a family scrapbook, and eventually finding time for bigger things like writing my life history, interviewing older family members, or collecting family stories.

And we should save some money for an emergency fund (not even taking into account the investing and retirement savings that we should be doing once we have a regular income). Our church recommends building a supply of food storage and emergency supplies, just in case we hit hard times at some point down the road (and every time I watch the news and see people somewhere in the world who have been hit by fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc., I know what good advice this is and I think of how I need to add to our little store of food until we have enough to provide for our family in case of an emergency or even just hard times with something like a lost job in the family).

And we are viewed as stupid if we don’t regularly make back-ups of computer files – how would it be to loose all of those precious family photos, videos, journal entries, etc.? So, we need to take the time to back everything up (I went to make backups on CDs of just the most important files on our computer the other day – photos, video, family history documents, etc., not even things that could be replaced, such as music files, and I had just over 60 CDs-worth of files to backup, I still need to finish that job).

And we have fun spending time with friends (especially while we live far from family now, and our friends are our family). We should try to fellowship new people who move in and meet our neighbors. And we should keep in touch with family and old friends.

And if we would like out children to have opportunities to develop their talents, we need to start early. It seems that children who learn to play a musical instrument in their early years are more likely to continue and to play well when they are older. And art, sports, writing, crafts, outdoors activities, etc. – all of these are good things to spend time doing with your family.

And people, especially children, need frequent visits to the doctor (even when they are healthy). Plus, you should make ourselves aware of the warning signs and symptoms of health problems. And, if a child does become sick and contagious, life gets put on hold and you have even less time to get everything done.

And, of course, someone needs to provide for the family, and a good, stable job takes education, which takes time and money, and then after the education it will take time to pay off the debt from school, and then the good, stable job will continue to take time for a long, long time.

I’m sure there are a million other things that could be added to this list that I’m not thinking of right now. And I have really tried to include here just things that we should be doing, not making a list of all the extra things that people could possibly add to their daily schedule. I have to admit that I have been feeling a little overwhelmed lately at the sheer quantity of things that we “should” be doing, and the fact that there is no way to fit everything into the hours of each day that we need to if we want to accomplish just these things, excluding any other fun activities, hobbies, or time to just relax. I mentioned this topic to Michael and his answer was “prioritize,” which I understand and agree with. But if we prioritize and accomplish the necessities of life (food, changing diapers, sleep), and then prioritize and accomplish the most important things (the gospel, teaching our children, and making sure they know that you love them and you love your spouse), then you are still left with a lot of things undone that are expected of you – I don’t really feel like I can just prioritize and exclude things like reading to my kids, taking family photos, doing family history, paying bills, or taking the kids to school when they are old enough.

Often in the morning I will make a list of things to do that day. Today this was my list:
To Do Today:
• Type and print food storage list [I got some new things for our food storage last night and wanted to add them to the inventory list so we can keep track of all the expiration dates and not waste food]
• Put new food storage items away
• Breakfast, feed Isaac [yes, I do need to put these things on the list so that I have something to cross off after spending my morning doing these things]
• Clean boys’ room
• Let the boys watch ‘Super Y’ [they get to watch their favorite PBS show as their reward for helping pick up the house and clean their room]
• Clean bathroom
• Print hand-outs for enrichment activity [I was asked to host an activity for the women’s group at our church, and that will be at our house tonight]
• Empty the trash cans and diaper pail
• Get myself dressed, do my hair, and put on make-up
So, I’ve crossed everything off this list so far except taking out the trash. How many really important things were included on that list?

So, I guess I will continue to prioritize the most important things (and the necessary things), and just do a little bit of each of the other things that we “should” be doing, but never feel like I am completely accomplishing any of those other tasks. I guess. All we can do is what we can do.