If any of my readers are my former co-workers, they know about a little thing called my "Things To Do" sheet that I had on my desk at all times. I never worked in my Outlook calendar or task list in Office, but I used this ridiculous sheet of paper with boxes I could check. If anyone wanted to peeve me off or throw off my whole day, they just needed to take this list away. In fact, every year at April Fools, some joker loved to hide it. My former boss asked that I have a task list to work from and kicked me out of his office once he found out it was on paper. Antiquated? Yes. But it worked for me.
I would print 5 off every Friday afternoon, staple it neatly in the left hand corner at a certain angle and enter the meetings for next week onto the respective sheets. As the week progressed, I would update it nightly to document what would be done the next day. If I went home and something was undone, I freaked out and the whole day was crud. Anal retentive? Maybe. I lived by it and died by it.
Today is my first official day of being a stay-at-home mom (hereforth SHM) and the lack of this list is my biggest obstacle. I've been incredibly productive today in the form of writing an article, sweeping cobwebs out of corners (literally) doing a load of laundry, cleaning up the cat puke on the floor, sterilizing bottles, doing tummy time with my daughter, reading a story about belly buttons and how everyone has them, etc. (Although I'm pretty sure the story is wrong and giraffes and snakes don't have belly buttons. My 2- month-old daughter and I had a long talk about how you can't believe everything you read. But I digress.) However, I'm going nuts with the fact that I have a mental list of stuff to do that is half-arse written on a wipe board and can't really wrap my head around doing any of it.
Why?
I have always operated with the assumption that I am going back to work. For example, I need to clean my baseboards. In the past, I'd write that down to do on a random Tuesday night. However, now it's just some task that I need to get done in the next 4 years before my kid goes to preschool. I have no deadline. I have all the time in the world. Well, maybe not all the time in the world, but I have an open expanse of time that is not packaged into any neat minute, hour, or even day. I can now clean out the garage over the course of a month other than knowing that I need to do it in one day because I have to work the rest of the week and there will be more things to do next weekend. Knowing that I have more expanse of time to complete tasks may sound like heaven to some, but to this Type A with OCD, it seems like a vast wasteland that I'll need Moses to lead me through especially when I don't know what a reasonable achievement goal for the day actually is. Will I have time to put my maternity clothes into storage or will my daughter have other ideas?
In short, I'm beginning to realize that nothing goes as planned when you stay at home. I've always thought that SHMs and housewives had parceled and structured lives with Days of Our Lives everyday at 2:00 and lunch at 11:30 or noon. In actuality, I think the working world is way more structured and predictable.
So I'll put my list of things to do on the nursery door and try to work my way through them as best I can and be kind to myself when they don't get done. Who cares right? I have years to clean the bathroom.
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