Lately as I do the dishes I've been pondering how much time I spend in the kitchen each day. Some days it really feels like an eternity. Wake up, get M some milk, go jogging, feed everyone breakfast, clean up breakfast, make lunch, eat lunch, clean up lunch, sweep the kitchen, mop the kitchen, load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher, disinfect the counter tops, make dinner, eat dinner, clean up dinner, think about cleaning out the refrigerator, holy cow the microwave could use a good scrubbing, and have you looked in the oven lately? Does it ever end? Nope. As soon as is sparkly it's inevitably time to eat again. I get why people in America eat out so much. I think the reason we're supposed to cook on the Sabbath with "singleness of heart" isn't about the cooking, but the amount of cleaning up after. I've been thinking about this a lot. Which snowballed into thinking about what I really do all day anyway. I like to think I budget my time fairly well, but how do I know if the things I do all day are undone by the end of the day?
I've decided that budgeting time must be like budgeting money. Right? Both are finite(ish) resources that are necessary but we never seem to have enough of. And what's the first step to budgeting? Finding out where you spend your money. So I'm doing an experiment. For one week I'm going to track on paper what I do with all of my time during the day. I started this morning. It's been awesome. When I started tracking my money at first I realized I wasn't as great with money as I thought I was. When I started tracking my time this morning I realized that I do a lot more in the day than I give myself credit for. By 10am I had showered, made the husband lunch, eaten breakfast, fed 2 babies breakfast, cleaned the kitchen (not to total cleanliness), started sorting through two bags of amazing hand me downs, played with babies, read books with babies, unpacked from a trip, put the laundry away, picked up the living room, patched a pair of pants, changed three diapers, and put two babies down for naps. That's a lot. And it also turns out that my perception of how long things take me is also totally skewed.
I'll give you an update at the end of the week. My tendency to organize and analyze is kicking in and I'm planning on sorting my time into categories and percentages. I can't wait.
Wonder where you're spending your time? Experiment with me!
3 comments:
I'm on board. Sounds like an excellent idea.
Good for you! It'll be fun to see how your experiment works out.
Contrary to you, I think I would be surprised of how NOT productive I am....I'll just stick to reading how successful other people are! Keep up the good work!
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