This evening I took all 4 kids to a school disco by myself. The disco was at 4:30pm (great time for a party!) and we were home by 5:45. Andy had his work Christmas party, so he wasn't home when I got back, and I managed to do a 4 kids dinner and bedtime by myself. Kids ate yogurt and shreddies for dinner (the disco had pizza and hot dogs)... and everyone was asleep by 7:45.
Andy does 4 kids dinner and bedtime twice a month when I'm in the office, but I can't remember the last time I tried. It went fine! Tiring, but fine.
After they went to bed I wasn't sure what to do with my sudden free time. I thought that I could go to bed early and get up early and workout... or I could do housework...
I could order myself a pizza and watch the Barbie Movie (it was a goal of mine to watch it this year). This sounded great, except that ordering a pizza for myself seemed kind of weird. We don't ever order takeout, and I know the one thing I can't do when at home with 4 asleep kids is leave the house, but it just seemed like not the best use of £20 right now.
I decided to putter around the house and tidy it up. I've been very intentionally trying not to spend all my free time cleaning and tidying lately. I've stopped hoovering multiple times a week. Friday twin nap time is Rachel time, I've been doing Peloton or other Rachel-adjacent things. But this evening I started listening to some recent Organize 365 podcasts and enjoyed properly cleaning and tidying the downstairs.
It took about 1.5 hours but it looks so much better, I've hoovered everything, taken toys upstairs, taken down the fall decorations. I do feel nice when spaces are clean, and even though it's still somewhat cluttered (the rising tide of "stuff" that happens with a reachy & grabby 2 year old is legit!) at least things feel a bit more orderly.
I've also been intentionally not defaulting to putting away laundry all the time, which means that our bedroom has a giant clean laundry basket which gets fuller and fuller until Andy and I find a time to put it away together. I used to operate a very "just in time" clothing system, where the kids had enough clothes to last exactly the time between washes. I've slowly accumulated more clothes so that technically we could go 3-4 days between washes if we needed to. While putting away 3 loads of laundry recently Andy said "I think the issue is the kids have too many clothes". I told Andy that was the point of the new laundry system - it was no longer dependant on me.
I am not sure how this weekend will go. Ezra has tennis lessons on Saturday morning and we need to go refill our spices at the zero waste shop in the village. Sometimes my life is just too middle class. There is a local Santa tour around our village on Sunday which we will try and see. We are hoping to get to the charity shop to buy some christmas decorations. I am making Turkey chili tomorrow with some freezer turkey from thanksgiving. And otherwise, it's just a december weekend!
I'm feeling less Grinchy than I was last week now that our house is tidy. Which maybe means I should tidy more? But then I feel grumpy about my time spent tidying. There is no win.
Maybe next year we can find a cleaner again (I will someday blog about my multiple failed attempts at hiring a cleaner recently)
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