Tuesday, April 17

Homemaking with a New Baby...

Kat recently left a comment asking what my homemaking routines were like after having our first born. Unfortunately, I really don't have a simple answer for that question because of life changing events that happened around the time of our daughter's birth: my husband's ordination to the priesthood and a move to a new state. Instead of a straight forward answer, here is the (whole) story:

Homemaking and a full time job rarely mix well. My homemaking life while teaching was no exception. Despite my best laid plans, I was never able to complete homemaking tasks during the week and thus was frantic to clean the house and do laundry on Saturdays. Not fun!

Though I had planned to have three weeks to a month of being at home (setting up the nursery, cooking and freezing multitudes of meals, packing a suitcase for the hospital, etc.) before our daughter arrived on the scene, that didn't happen! Instead, my poor husband had to run his business and try to set up a nursery corner in our bedroom while trying to deal with a wife crying her eyes out because she couldn't "nest" properly!

As I previously posted, I spend the first forty days of our daughter's life resting and caring for Baby Bear. The most I did (home-keeping wise) was to sort through gifts, organize baby clothing and miscellaneous items, and write thank you notes to generous family and friends. I also tried to plan for my husband's ordination, our baby's baptism, and a move to a new state. Most of this planning was taking care of invitations, rsvps, and task delegation.

Once our forty days were completed and the ordination and baptism were safely behind us, packing and moving commenced. As a result of this, I pretty much did no deep cleaning and very little involved cooking.

In order to keep things as organized as possible, I devised a Daily Routine that I blogged about a few months ago. I found this to be so helpful that I still use this routine now (though I tweak it a bit every so often). Basically, my homemaking philosophy is to spend as much quality time as possible with the baby while maintaining a clean and tidy home that celebrates the five senses (touch, taste, scent, sound, and sight). In addition, since we are a priest family, there are always things that come up during the week (church, social engagements, etc.) that "disrupt" our schedule. I try to keep things as flexible as possible so that life doesn't fall apart if we have to do something unexpected.

I know that there are many mothers who have much better homemaking schedules than I did/do. If you have one to share, please leave a comment! It is wonderful to be able to read about other ways to do things... I often find great ideas to implement in my own life in this way!

3 comments:

Emma said...

So many good advise,I love to read about other ladies routines !one thing i have found very helpful is to take one of those" little "things
(those i always forget,that really only take two minutes but make a huge difference -espesially when not done)
and do one a regular day.Take care of plants and flowers,clean my purse,writing thank you notes and cards,bying presents,pick up things from the car...Today i did my handbag and wrote four thank you notes in 20 minutes,and it feels so good!

MamaBirdEmma said...

Thanks, Emilie! It is funny how the most simple tasks are the ones that we dread the most!

Anonymous said...

I'm not very organized and the only thing that has worked for me is www.flylady.net

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