Why am I always so busy now? Is it motherhood? Is it being in your 30s? Or is this just what adult life becomes?
I genuinely found myself Googling some version of this recently because I cannot work out where all my time went.
Before kids, I worked full-time and some days felt painfully slow.
I remember getting annoyed when Wade wasn’t home by 7pm because I was waiting for him so we could watch Home and Away.
Twenty minutes could feel like FOREVER.
Now?
I wake up and somehow feel rushed before I’ve even done anything.
I’m raising two little kids, running a small business from home and currently caring for my frail, unwell Dad who has moved in with us.
There are appointments to book, kids to feed, orders to make, messages to answer, birthdays to remember and approximately 700 tiny things floating around my head at any given moment.
And every day I think:
How does everyone else get everything done?
I thought the problem was housework
For years I’ve blamed the washing.
If I could just stay on top of the washing and dishes, then I’d have time.
Except recently, I’ve had significantly less of those jobs to do.
And guess what?
I’m still busy.
All. The. Time.
Apparently the washing machine was not the villain of this story after all.
I think I’m finally realising that the exhausting part of motherhood isn’t always one enormous job.
It’s a thousand tiny ones.
It’s remembering what everyone needs.
Starting something and being interrupted.
Trying to work while also being Mum.
Booking appointments.
Thinking about dinner while making lunch.
Remembering something you forgot yesterday while trying to finish something that needs doing tomorrow.
And every time something disappears from my plate, I seem to immediately fill the space with something else.
I don’t actually want a perfect house
What I really want is the feeling I imagine comes with it.
I want to wake up one morning and think:
“What should we do today?”
I want to ask my kids that question without mentally calculating everything I should be doing instead.
Maybe that’s what I’ve been getting wrong.
Maybe I’m waiting for a magical stage of motherhood where everything is finished and I’m finally “caught up.”
But perhaps caught up doesn’t exist when you’re raising little humans.
There will always be another job.
Another meal.
Another appointment.
Another email.
Another load of washing.
And one day, there will probably be far fewer of those things demanding my attention.
But there also won’t be two little kids standing in front of me when I ask:
“What should we do today?”
So I’m trying to stop waiting for everything to be finished before I let myself enjoy the day.
Because maybe I don’t actually need to find more hours.
Maybe I need to stop giving every hour a job.
And if you found this because you were also Googling “why am I always so busy as a mum?”…
At least now there’s two of us
stacey x