This Day In Gutsy History

As part of a workshop I am taking, I accepted the challenge to start a Perpetual Family Memory File. You know those blank, perpetual birthday/anniversary calendars some people use to track important dates? This is kinda like that, except it's for tracking (and celebrating!) the things that make up your every day life.


Since it is just a file box with 3x5 cards in it, the whole thing was assembled for under $3.50, using ink, stamp sets, a ribbon, a tiny bit of cardstock, and adhesive I already had in my stash. There is a card, date stamped, for every day in the year, plus month dividers and a pink "you are here" marker card.


It's meant to have just one line about your ordinary life that day. Examples of recent entries are: "Jillson's first ballet class," or "Maddie bit Mommy's knee and was told no!" or "Dinner with friends at Dave & Buster's." I love what another participant wrote about this project: it's like an old-school, paper-and-pen, permanent "status updates" file--something that'll stick around longer than, say, tweats and such.



I thought this Emerson quote was perfect. I found it while I was looking for something else he wrote and thought "oh, I know just what to do with THAT quote."

If we can hold on to this file for years and years, as I hope to, we can look back and see what we did on the same day in years before. We're keeping the box in the kitchen, and almost every day, usually during dinner, we talk as a family about what one liner to put on the card.

Thanks to Stacy Julian, Kolette Hall, and BPS for this great idea.

Happy V-Day!

Exercise. Sort. Create. Read.

Welcome to Project ESCR, my latest plan to achieve the unachievable, i.e. a balanced and happy life as a stay-at-home-mom. Go ahead and roll your eyes now, but please don't roll them in the comments section, because I am so stoked right now, and I don't need your rain on my parade. Project ESCR is sooooo working for me.

Most of you know that I never thought I would be a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) for very long, and, though my feelings on the subject have changed rather regularly over the last three years, I am pleased to report that for quite some time now (about 10 months, hmmm) I've been seriously content with my SAHM status. I woke up one morning a few weeks ago and re-realized two things for sure: (1) I will not be a SAHM forever and (2) I had better make the most of it while I still am one.

So, then, how to make the most of it? How indeed, when so much time gets sucked away doing the chores and errands and driving here and there? (This situation bewilders me a bit. When I worked full time, I still had to do all those things, and I found the time to do them outside of work, so, in theory, as a SAHM, shouldn't I have 8+ hours in the day to do things other than chores and errands? You would think so, but any other SAHM would tell you that it never really works out that way. The constant reminder of the things we feel we should do is there, in our faces, all day long. So we somehow do them all day long. Or, embarrassingly, we waste a precious hour watching Days of Our Lives [because we can] with alarming regularity. Also no bueno.)

Anyhoo. All fired up to "make the most of it," I sat down and made a list of all the things I "had" to do or "should" do versus all the things I "wanted" to do (there was a little bit of overlap) as a SAHM. The most exciting revelation came when I was looking at my "things I want to do" list and easily identified four things, which, when I do them, make me feel seriously great afterwards.

And thus was born Project Exercise Sort Create Read, or Project ESCR (pronounced "Esker"). Here's how it works. Every day, in addition to doing my chores and errands, I am committing to spending time on each of the ESCR categories. In theory (and believe me, I did the Mom math*) I should easily have 4 hours for Project ESCR every day, which conveniently would allow me one hour per activity per day.

I presented this idea to my husband over dinner one evening, because I knew I would need his support and buy-in in terms of overall family time management. He was totally on board with ESCR, knowing that a happy Gutsy Mom means a happy Gutsy Family. (Also he's pretty much a shoe-in to support anything that has an acronym, so I knew he'd like Project ESCR from the get-go.)

For two weeks now, Monday through Friday, I have kept a little checklist on the bookmark in my day planner that simply says "exercise, sort, create, read." In the interest of full disclosure, I have only actually done all four in one day once (but DANG it felt good). But I must say that any day where I've done at least two of the four activities, I have felt great about the way life is balanced, and this in turn makes me more giving of my time to my kids and husband and dogs. Funny how that works.

In the weeks to come, I'm going to share some musings on each of my 4 ESCR categories, but in the meantime, I am simply committing to doing AT LEAST two of them every day.

By the way, if anyone out there (hello? hello?) has ideas about life balancing to share, please chime in.

Love,
The Gutsy Mom


*Mom math is the practice of looking at your daily calendar and figuring out where your pockets of available time will be, assuming (1) the children eat and nap when they are supposed to, (2) you are relatively caught up on dishes, vacuuming, and laundry, and (3) you do not have any papers to edit for your husband.