What can I be doing and is there anything I should be doing are questions I ask myself a lot when I’m at home. Trying to find a good balance between working outside the home and still keeping up on housework plus spending time with family can be tricky.
Something I try to do is set realistic goals and giving myself grace. There are going to be days where I have more energy and time and there are also days, we’re I’m just exhausted and what nothing more than to just lay down and take a nap.
On the days I’m tired, I just try to do one or two things that are easy and I can do quickly. Unloading and loading the dishwasher is something I can do quickly and see instant results because my sink full of dishes is in the dishwasher and my sink is clean again.
Now on the days I have the energy to tackle big projects I usually get in a rhythm and can get a lot accomplished. This past week I came home slightly early from work and had some garden veggies that needed to be processed so that’s what I did. My husband had already peeled and diced the potatoes by the time I got home. So, when I got there, they were on the final soak and I started chopping peppers for my jelly. (You can get the recipe on my recipe page.) Once I got my peppers cooking, I started cooking my potatoes and got those in jars and in the pressure canner. After that the jelly was ready to be jarred and into the water bath canner they went. While I was waiting for my timers, my boys and I took the bad peppers and the scraps out to the chickens. Once everything came out of the canners Curt had some cayenne pepper dehydrating and they were done so he made cayenne pepper and I started on our sour dough Pancakes. I made a triple batch and was able to get 46. You can find that recipe on my recipe page. While they cooled on the counter we got the dishes in the dishwasher. By the time that was done the pancakes were cooled and I could pack them and put them in the freezer.
Now I wish all my nights could be as productive as that one was but at the end of the day sometimes, I just don’t want to do all of that work.
