When we were in Colorado last month, we realized that whilst visiting faraway family was lovely, we hadn’t actually been on a vacation since our honeymoon in January 2019.
So, feeling refreshed and energized from our time outside of Boulder, we planned an exciting trip to somewhere we’d never been.
Unfortunately when we got home, reality hit us like a ton of bricks and we realized there was no way we could possibly travel with the house a mess, half-finished projects that had been waiting for months, home upgrades to plan for the summer and we hadn’t even started our taxes yet.
We decided to cancel our trip but Eric would still take that week off, we would hire a nanny and get stuff done. And get stuff done we have, friends–while our nanny unfortunately couldn’t make it today due to a last-minute emergency, we have been working our bottoms off yesterday and today on so many projects.
Just between yesterday and today, we’ve accomplished:
- Finishing up decluttering and taking a trunkload of miscellaneous donations to Goodwill
- Selling two bags of books at Half Price (we made $25!)
- Dropping off an old USPS crate at the post office
- Returning library books and printing some forms at the library, as our printer is broken
- Repacking several jumbled boxes of toys into three large boxes and finding a spot for them that isn’t in the middle of our bedroom!
- Several loads of laundry and sheets, washed, dried and folded
- Baking a healthier chocolate cake (as we needed a baked good for some work we’re doing with little A in his OT/feeding therapy–and well, little A loves SIL recipes!)
- Writing and submitting a short piece for a magazine
- Lots of vacuuming so we can Swiff our floors tomorrow
- Deep cleaning our bedroom (minus my closet which has a bunch of stuff in it for redoing our bathroom this summer)
- Grabbing a coffee, just us!
It’s amazing how much you can accomplish when you’re focused (i.e. attention not divided between tasks and children) and motivated to get your house in order.
Some people might ask why we haven’t hired help. Honestly, I was opposed to hiring a nanny for so long because I’m a SAHM–why shouldn’t I be able to do it all?
We also had a bad experience when we hired a cleaning service a few months ago. It wasn’t a thorough job at all and I felt like we’d just wasted a bunch of money.
To be quite honest, we don’t have much help/support here. So while I’d love to drop E and A with family for a day and just deep clean the whole house–that’s not really an option.
Extended family in the area wouldn’t do that for us (not pointing fingers, it’s just how it is). And my parents both work more than full-time: my dad is in consulting and my mom is the vice president of a small company, so they’re not in the lots-of-free-time grandparent stage of life yet. They do what they can.
I think a good example of just how little help we have from anyone is that before we spent some time minus kids with a friend in Colorado, we hadn’t been out alone–except for one hour at the grocery store over Thanksgiving–since July 2021.
I think we’ve only been out by ourselves four times without kids since little E was born. Five, if you count that one-hour grocery store trip.
We decided to stop pretending that that help from family or friends (because most of our friends are faraway, or very busy with work, AND none of them have kids yet) was going to materialize. There’s no shame in spending a bit of extra money to help yourself get out of the endless hole of housework.
Anyways, I wanted to remind you that if you don’t have the kind of support in your life that you want, that’s okay. Don’t let it get you down. Hire the help you need to keep things running smoothly and don’t feel guilty for a second!
xx Claire