Writing

We are currently pretty broke.  And since I am used to working and bringing in a decent income, I was quick to step to the plate.  After a lot of deliberation and  no call backs from submitted resumes, I increased the amount of energy I put in to my online endeavors.  Some of them are working fairly good.  The most successful one has actually been writing.  Pretty surprising from the looks of my blog, right? 

Even though it is the most successful endeavor, that doesn't mean that I'm doing great at it.  It does, however, remind me that not only do I like writing, but I'm good at it.  So why not try and get better at it?  Being a writer could really work for me.  

Sadly, it seems that the easiest ways to make money writing are blogging and reviews.  I'm no good at those.  I can work on being a better blogger, but for some odd reason, I'm horrible at reviews.  I have plenty of strong opinions but I simply suck at putting them together on any particular subject.

Well, let's give it a go, shall we?

Doing what I can

As I have probably mentioned before, it's not always easy for me to be a stay-at-home-mom.  There have been a lot of adjustments (on top of being a new mom) and being super broke does not help lessen my desire to return to work.  Thank God for miscellaneous money-making opportunities!  So just in case I haven't talked about this before, I only have two issues with being a stay-at-home-mom.  First, I suck at it.  I'm getting better, but truly, I'm a terrible home-maker.  The second reason is that I feel like I should be working.  We could use the extra income and I've worked since before I was 16.  Ok, and I was good at what I did.  Really good.  And the money wasn't too shabby in my line of work.

After being a home-maker for almost 2 years now, I am glad to say that I'm getting better.  Having a small child that depends on a constant schedule helps a lot.  It forces me to be more organized with my time and plan my days better as well.  Since she's now getting into everything and putting all kinds of things in her mouth, our house has to stay cleaner and more organized so that helps me stay on top of household duties as well.  I'm using flylady.net for some of my house cleaning advice but that site just seems to cluttered for me to get the hang of.  The rest of my house cleaning and home managing skills came from my favorite magazine, Real Simple, and other little tidbits that I have found have helped me.

Ever since leaving my job in 2009, I have wanted to figure out how to run my home efficiently like I would an office or any work project.  After all, that I could no problem.  I was used to finding solutions for problems and setting up new systems in a business environment, why couldn't I figure out how to do it in my home?  Enter my saving grace: a simple project management template.  I took my to-do list and broke it down into a timeline, a step by step action list for each area, as well as milestones along the way to meet before I could go to the next step or area.  Actually, there was a lot more breaking down of what I expect from myself as a home-maker and stay-at-home-mom, but the point is it worked.

Each day, I get closer and closer to being a successful home-maker.  I'm sure that title means a million different things depending on who you ask, but I have a pretty specific definition in my mind.  As for my progress today...  I have a safe home for my child, with plenty of open space for her to play in, I'm being the best mom I can be, my home is cleaner, more organized, and me and hubby are actively working at making our lives more organized as well.  It took a long time coming, but I'm getting there.

Life Organization Help Needed!!!!

Hi ya'll!  I haven't been on for a while but I need advice!  I've been a stay at home/wife since the first trimester of my pregnancy and now my daughter is 11 months old.  I positively LOVE spending all day every day with my daughter... maybe a lil too much...  I am getting nothing done!!!!  It's especially frustrating because I'm great at managing an office and admin stuff in a work environment, no problem!  Manage a team, a project, a budget, etc... No problem!  Managing a house and a family life.... oh dear!

My husband and I have talked A LOT about this issue of mine.  I keep busy with my at home work of misc online jobs and Avon ok, but not as well as I'd like to.  Then there's the household...  We know that one of my issues is just being used to working and working a lot outside of the house so I'm trying to get used to not doing that and not providing even half of the household income, so that makes me a little stir crazy.  I'm incredibly thankful to get to spend this time with our baby and want to be better at being a house-wife and mom so I'm trying my hardest to make it work instead of just throwing in the towel and signing up with a temp agency or even applying at a grocery store or something.  Help?  

Where can I find more resources on how to be more organized with time, priorities and other household stuff?  Money and baby I've got down.  Now I just have to figure out EVERYTHING else!  lol, I know a lot of us stay at home moms have impossibly high expectations of ourselves and our homes but I'd be happy with just being good enough to... hmm i guess i don't have an end goal... good enough to be happy with my work at the end of the day?  I think I can keep my housework, laundry and meals taken care of each day as soon as I get an actual plan together and a good base worth of work done.  We just moved into a new townhouse and are taking forever to unpack since we have too much crap and i'm being super picky about what is actually allowed to stay and get put away.  I'm currently working on accepting that we have too much crap and letting my husband just put the boxes in storage until we have time to both go through them.  

Goodness gracious this is long!!!! Help???  What is your advice for having a productive, organized day and life?  Are any of you also used to managing a work life and now good at managing a home life so you can maybe translate it for me....  I know this sounds insane, but I wish....  ;)  I'm looking through other posts right now for more ideas.  OH and hubby can't really help because he works 19 days in a row then gets two off and most of those days are 10 hour days.  He'd like to help but he's so dead tired he often makes more of a mess than accomplishing much.  lol sorry so long... I bet that if I spent these last 3 or 4 minutes scrubbing a toilet or organizing another box I could at least have something to show for my time.  lol omg I'm a mess.  

Thanks for reading!!!!  have a great day and God bless!
-Jennifer

A new post while baby is sleeping!

I found that I highly dislike typing on my phone and I've always known that I hate typing on Kris' netbook, so now that I have my own lap top set up... :)  Hi!

Haylie.  Baby is napping.  She should actually be waking up any time now.  She has been sleeping amazing, by the way!  Thank you for asking.  She now sleeps through the night, has been for a few months now and even puts herself to sleep without a problem.  90% of the time anyway.  And there she is!  Life is awesome.  Hard, of course, but awesome.  We've got each other (me, Kris, Haylie and Bozzy) and a ton of love and support from our family, close friends, and of course, God.  It's all kinds of great.  I'll try and write more later but no promises.