Pardon Me While I Get My Head Together

A wonderful thing has happened recently. The kids are sleeping - and well! They all take a decent afternoon nap and go to bed at a reasonable hour - in their own beds! Crazy, huh? Well, this has opened up a fair chunk of what might be called "free time" for yours truly. And it has shown me how utterly incapable I am of putting myself to bed before midnight. Or staying on top of projects. Or not generally freaking out and not knowing what to do with myself when I don't have babies crawling all over me. Eep. So, in an effort to get all that under control and maybe even put this writing thing to good use, I'm coming up with a plan. Now, some of this magical free time will have to be sacrificed in the name of housekeeping and generally not letting things go to crap. But, for the rest of it, I think if I know ahead of time what I'm doing, then maybe I can just settle down and do it. And get to bed before midnight. So, pardon me while I spend some time getting my head together and enjoy watching me go slightly more nuts.

So, first things first - just how much time are we talking about? Well, in the afternoon, the kids nap for about two hours all together. A half hour of this usually gets eaten up in putting them down in the first place and sticking around to make sure everyone gets to sleep. So, an hour and a half. Let's shave off another half hour for stupid housecleaning. I could do more, but I really don't want to. The house isn't bad and I also get a fair bit of stuff done in the afternoon when everyone's up and playing. That leaves an hour in the afternoon for my crafty pursuits. I can use the sewing machine and the cricut in the afternoons - the house is naturally loud enough in the afternoons that these wouldn't disturb the kids upstairs. Bedtime is a bit different. I can reasonably get everyone down by ten, if not nine thirty. So, an hour - sometimes more. Friday nights I don't have to turn in early, so maybe even two hours there. But, I have to keep things quiet.

Now, for the division of projects. Probably the easiest thing to do is divide along type. Hrm - there's the knitting/crochet yarny goodness, I have some embroidery going right now, there's sewing to do, and of course paper craftiness. Paper craftiness and sewing are best done in the afternoon, and the quiet things (yarniness and embroidery) are best done at night. Now, Fridays I may delve into some paper craftiness just because I can. But that's neither here nor there.

Now, as for projects. This is where I tend to lose my mind a bit - what to work on in these bits of happy time. This goes for the housecleaning, too. If I don't already know what I'm doing, I tend to get a little crazy and try to do it all or I freak out and end up doing nothing. Yaay, schedule time. Let me work out a plan here, then I'll let you in on what I'm working on this week.

*Mondays:
Nap Project: Paper Craftiness
Nap Chores: Basement & Living Room (Toy Control)
Night Project: Yarny Goodness

*Tuesdays:
Nap Project: Sewing Machine Fun
Nap Chores: Kitchen Madness
Night Project: Embroidery

*Wednesdays:
Nap Project: Paaapperrrr (Cricut Day)
Nap Chores: Trash Day (pickup is Thursday AM)
Night Project: More Yarn (yay!)

*Thursdays:
Nap Project: Knit in the Afternoon! (I need something nice to make up for having to do laundry)
Nap Chores: Laundry (yuk!)
Night Project: Back to Embroidery

*Fridays:
Nap Project: More Sewing
Nap Chores: Basement & Living Room (again!), make the grocery list
Night Project: Leave this open for now - This can be my whatever's the most pressing issue/whatever I feel like working on most

Well, time to get to work, so I'll get back to this later and we'll talk about what I'm working on this week.