What to do with the time?

Here's that time in the afternoon when Ben is down for a nap and Rachel is watching TV, when I debate what I should do with the time. Should I put receipts into the Money program? Play some Scramble? Read Facebook status updates? Clean up the kitchen? Clean the bathroom? Put away laundry? Put away the groceries and household supplies I bought this morning?

It always seems like there are so many things to do and so little time to do them. Every day is a juggling act, trying to fit in the necessary things, like keeping the house fairly clean, with the important things, like spending quality time with my children and not only keeping them occupied so I can do things, as well as the essential things, like working on hobbies or spending time online so that I have a little fun me-time here and there in my day. Plus there's spending quality time with James in the evenings and on weekends (something that's too lacking on certain days) and keeping up with my Bible Study, which is a Beth Moore one. If you'd ever done a Beth Moore Bible Study, you know that it involves a fair amount of homework in 5 lessons per week, in addition to the video session you watch when you get together with the other people doing the Study. Annoyingly, I had 2 lessons remaining yesterday evening and my Bible Study meets on Tuesday mornings. So I did one after the kids went to bed and the other right before I went to bed, staying up a little late to do so.

Only after I woke up this morning and had gotten ready did I remember that we didn't have Bible Study this week because our school district had yesterday and today off. I doubt I would have gotten any more sleep because Rachel came into my room shortly before my alarm went off, anyway, and by getting up and getting ready I was able to run some errands instead of just puttering around and wasting the morning. But it would have been nice to have gone to bed a little earlier last night since I didn't have to rush to get them done by this morning. Oh, well. Guess I'll be extra prepared for next week.

But I digress...it actually seemed easier to get things done when James and I both worked and Rachel was in daycare. We had someone who came and cleaned every other week, which helped greatly with keeping things clean and organized, and we had a pretty specific routine we'd follow in the evenings: pick up Rachel, head home for dinner, spend a little time playing with her, get her ready for bed (usually including a bath or shower), then do some cleaning before watching a little TV and heading off to bed. Of course, I usually ended up getting far less sleep than I needed, even after she was sleeping through the night. And our Saturdays were frequently taken up by errands that we didn't have time to do during the week. And I hated having Rachel in daycare for nearly 55 hours a week.

So it wasn't all good, that's for sure. And I think that if I just start figuring out ways to manage my time better (less Facebook? the horror!), things will run more smoothly than they did then. It's easy to remember the past with rose-colored glasses, and I suspect that there were more frustrations and feelings of "we never have time for anything!" than I remember. While there were things I appreciated about our lives then, I much prefer the way they are now.