BrittanyMakes

I felt like mixing up today’s Friday post from my usual 5 things. I’ve been receiving common questions lately surrounding my schedule, like ‘how do you do it all?’, which I never really considered would be interesting to outsiders. I try to go through every day balancing the things I want and love to do (being a mom, social media, blog/shop, & design!) with the things I have to do (my day job, chores, exercise, etc). I juggle a bunch of things that I suppose not everyone juggles, and unintentionally has become something mysterious about me. That being said, I want to share with you 5 things I specifically do which helps me to juggle all the things:

1) I stopped cooking. This is perhaps the most life changing thing I’ve done, and I actually feel great about it – here me out! Cooking dinner every night was always a chore for me, it led to stress over meal planning and frustration over dirty dishes that I could never keep up with.  Now we cover Monday & Tuesday’s dinners with Methodology (not sponsored!), make a crock pot meal on Wednesday (enough to eat left-overs on Thursday), which leaves Friday open to grab something light with the fam – which 9 times out of 10 is Chipotle.  Eliminating weekday cooking has made me a much happier person, not to mention I get to spend more time with my kids before they go to bed.

2) I hired a seamstress. Another life changing move I’ve made! Hiring help to keep up with the growing demand for pillows from my Shop is one of the best things I’ve done. I know how to sew, and until March have been sewing all the pillows we’ve sold myself, but I could barely keep up and the time I was spending sewing pillows I can now spend on other things, like taking on client projects and growing the design side of the biz.

3) I utilize every ‘free’ minute of the day. I’m not joking, every free minute in my day is being used for something. I now commute to/from work by train at least 2 hours a day, which is when I spend time on social media or doing research for client projects, basically anything I can do on my phone I do while I’m commuting to/from work. during my lunch hour I’m either reading blogs, taking client calls, or do more internet research/social media interaction while I stand in line at my favorite salad spot.

4) My husband and I tag-team. I know this isn’t a novel concept, but working together to schedule out our responsibilities has really helped us juggle all the things we juggle. Apart from everything else, I still need to work on this post-baby bod, and exercise is so challenging to fit into my schedule. My husband picks up the kids from daycare 2 days a week so I can leave work a little early (like 5pm) to go for a 30 minute run. He gets to exercise the other 3 days a week, and on weekends we try to go for a long walk together.

5) I don’t sleep. I mean I get sleep, but I don’t sleep as much as I want to or should. I already don’t sleep because I have a 5 month old who still insists on being fed at 1am and 5am, but I’ve pushed my bedtime back to about 11pm, which allows me to do work after the kids go to bed while simultaneously watching whatever show my husband and I are into. Lately it’s Billions, and I’m counting down the days to House of Cards!

So there you go. I never actually feel like I ‘do it all’, I mean, I barely blog post twice a week, I can barely keep up with house cleaning, and I barely wash my hair once a week, but making changes to the inefficiencies in my schedule has opened up more time to get to do more of what I love to do.  So tell me, what are some changes you’ve made personally to your schedule that has helped you?