Enjoli Woman...

Do you remember the 1980s "Enjoli Woman"?  She could "bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you're a man..."  That woman has had a nervous breakdown!  In fact, that's the exact line I used in my resignation letter in 1995.  I was battling being a career woman, wife and mother and I was losing!  It occurred to me then that while it's great that we think we can do it all, we really cannot.  Something or SOMEONE loses.  In my case, it's me.  And if you think about it, it's probably you.  We women tend to take care of others before we take care of ourselves.  When was the last time you exercised?  Me, two weeks ago.  When was the last time you sat down to finish reading your book?  Me?  I've been reading Water for Elephants for MONTHS now...  Like 9 or 10 months!  There is always something more to do other than what I want to do....  

Case in point...  I cannot keep my house clean, go to school, exercise and do my crafts all in a day.  Something goes by the way side...  Take a look at these pictures.  Yesterday, my hubby and I worked on our new bedroom in the basement that we are finishing for our college daughter.  (I'll have more pics of this in a later blog!)  We literally worked on it ALL DAY.  We were sore and tired when we finished.  So we ate dinner and relaxed by watching TV and  in my case, schoolwork on the laptop.

So, my kitchen turned into this:

 At least here you can see that I had washed SOME dishes...

 My kitchen is too small for this!!!

I KNOW!  This is embarrassing!  But my kitchen got like this after one day and with my focus on something else...  I looked at my kitchen after our coffee fiasco this morning (totally different story that I refuse to digress to!) and after breakfast and thought, "I do not have time for this this morning.  I need to do some schoolwork and then I need to finish my swaps for my Prairie Fairy event.  I only have two weeks left and I'm no where near finished!"  But I cannot stand it.  I just cannot.  So, I applied the FlyLady principle and set my clock for 15 minutes.  I subscribed to her ideals many years ago, but do not follow them as ridged-ly as I should (as evidenced by my kitchen!).   Within 15 minutes, my kitchen looked like this...

 You can still see the soap on my counter!

Still not perfect, but better.  I took pics just to show you how much you can get done in 15 minutes.  

Another 7 minutes, and it looked like this:

So my point is this:  We cannot do everything.  We just cannot be the "Enjoli Woman".  I don't believe it's possible.  But we can take 22 minutes to make ourselves happy.  For me, a clean kitchen is a happy Tracy.  Now, I can focus on my schoolwork and on my swaps and maybe get a walk in with my sweetie.  Of course, the rest of the house is a mess, but one step at a time.  

Let's quit judging each other... and most of all, let's quit judging ourselves!  Have a great day!