Motivation

I love to be a stay at home mom/housewife. I wouldn't have it any other way, although on a bad day with the kids I do tease Tim that I am going back to work and he can stay home again! :) But sometimes the repetitive nature of my "job" gets me down. You know. . . wash dishes only to return a hour later to another counter of dishes. Mop the floor and voila soon there are small muddy footprints across it. Laundry is a never ending pile. Sometimes it is hard to get motivated to do the things I need to.

I do ok at the basics (laundry, dishes, toys picked up) usually. There is a lot of cleaning that should get done more regularly in my house. There are also a lot of organizing type projects that need done. (or redone) I told my mom the other day that I could tell how wiped out I was by the pregnancy when we moved. I am normally pretty organized but most of our cabinets and closets just got shoved with stuff when we moved in.

Well now V is almost 3 months old, the weather is nice and I find these some of these issues are starting to bother me. Yet still I am not getting them done. It would be easy to say that I don't have the time, and that is true to a point. But I am a firm believer that we all find the time and money for the things that are really important to us. So I how do I motivate myself.

Well one way is I have resorted to is a reward system. Yes just like a kid! :) "Now Steph, if you want to blog, check email, read blogs or your book you need to do this and that first!" And for those of you wondering, yes I started laundry, got N breakfast and cleaned up our dishes before sitting done to type this blog.

But my very best motivator is to invite company over. Suddenly there are bathrooms being cleaned and clutter being decluttered and long forgotten projects being finished. I don't feel like I have to clean to impress them. And most people have seen my house at its worse at some point anyhow. I think the motivation comes from having a deadline to reach. Company is coming on Friday so I have to get this clean and that done by then. When there is no deadline it is too easy to just think, "oh I will get to that later." I still don't ever get everything I would like done before company comes, but I do make a significant dent in it.

But of course housework never ends so by the time we have company again we are back to the same mess. I think I just need to plan to have company at least every other week in order to keep myself motivated!

Well if you read my AAAH post this is the blog I was referring to. It has been found. It wasn't where I usually find my drafts but I did find it so . . .here it is. Ok Steph if you need to go fold that basket of laundry if you want anymore computer time!