I have been so impressed with Alison. She is an accommodating hostess-amazingly so not having any prep time or time to mentally prepare (we surprised her with our visit). She is an organized, successful, confident working mother and wife. Naturally I find myself comparing my life with hers. Surprisingly, I have not felt bad that I don't measure up in areas but rather I want to glean from her working systems and take that knowledge home with me.
Something I've come to remember most recently is if you don't plan- you plan to fail. Just knowing what your duties are doesn't in itself propel you to get it done. Having a strategy is vital.
There are a couple people in my circle who have the gift to fix most any situation. I'm not a complete failure at it but the part I'm not in tune with sometimes is identifying the problem and at other times being aware that there is a way to stop the insanity. I think those two go hand in hand. If you can't see or are too busy to seek the solution you may not want to admit there is a problem in the first place.
I'm referring to the day to day-the division of chores, the chaos of the weekday morning, the sibling rivalaries, the lack of one on one time. There are answers to these very real, stressful, upsetting problems that plague family life. There are better ways to do things.
We need to stop complaining and figure out how to change what isn't working to what does. The first step is to stop and sit down to figure it out. What if you had a running list of your household issues, then you could turn them into daily exercises. "Dick and Jane can't seem to agree on who should be responsible for doing the bills. What could they do?", "Bobby and Jimmy share a room but keep each other awake at night. The boys are hard to wake up in the morning. What can Mom and Dad do to fix this problem?", "The kids point out things that need to be cleaned but Mom can't do it all. Who should be the one to rid the silverware caddy of crumbs?".
Sometimes all that needs to be done is to label some bins to make things easier to find, sometimes a parent teacher conf needs to be scheduled, sometimes there is no easy fix and the issue will need to be revisited many times as you try different recipes.
We can't expect things to change without taking action. Complaining is not proactive and you can not depend on others to remedy your problems. Help has to be solicited in a direct manner. "I need help making sure the mail is picked up daily-Dylan that will be your job after school." Done.
Take control, come up with a plan, carry it out. Thanks Al for having a working, running household. It's good to see one in action.
Tybee Island. Put our feet in the Atlantic.
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