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15th January 2016
03:35pm GMT
2. Avoiding toxic relationships
This is most likely a product of growing up that everyone eventually gets to but we are still learning to distance ourselves from relationships that are more negative than positive. When you have kids, you really want to invest all your energy into them as much as possible so you do really feel that other people's negativity are not important enough to waste precious time on. We have been able to focus so much more on family time and positively managing our business by making quick decisions about situations or people that we are not comfortable dealing with.
3. Stop bitching
If I'm tired or under the weather, my default mode can go directly to 'give out yards about absolutely everything' (and everyone). Making a conscious effort to switch our reactions from moany to happy has actually worked wonders for us in the past few months. Our new mantra is 'We can only control our behaviour and no one else's'. It doesn't mean that other people's behaviour can't be annoying at times, but knowing that it's really none of our business what they choose to do stops you from staying up at night trying to figure it out.
4. Insert down time [here]
For the first four years that we worked for ourselves, we didn't take a holiday. I don't really think that we couldn't take a holiday, we sort of succumbed to the pressure of owning our own company and chose not to take a holiday. Big mistake. We took the kids to Portugal last year for a week and wanted to stay for another by the end of it. You could work all day, every day, all year long and for what? From here on out, holidays are a must, as are days out every weekend, and facilitating each other doing something nice for ourselves. That can be anything - a bath, a lie-in, a swim, a night out with friends - and can mean so much to both of your overall wellbeing.
5. Mission de-clutter
Our hand has sort of been forced on this one since we have moved out to have a house extension built and so naturally threw out a lot of stuff along the way (like, why did I have fourteen pairs of Penny's fluffy socks?). We seem to have become major hoarders over the years and I can tell you now that our office, shed and Alan's drawer of forty t-shirts are on my hit list for 2016. And we MAY have a plastic bag addiction issue having found at least eighty bags under the stairs last week. Wtf?
6. Reclaim our morning time
Exhaustion, laziness, blind optimism - whatever you want to call it - has caused us to crawl up the stairs to bed muttering 'I'll do it in the morning' in the past. We were generally referring to making the lunches or ironing clothes for the next day, cleaning the kitchen, walking the dog around the block. This will come as no surprise to anyone that we NEVER got to it in the morning because there was never enough time, and so instead of just getting dressed and having brekkie together before leaving for school and work, we instead used to spend the time stressing out trying to get everything done. Bad idea. It takes half the time to get through your list the night before, than it takes to do it all with grumpy heads in the morning. Fact.
7. There's an App for that
I have totally accepted that I am not an island. I'm not even the jetty where the boats land at an island. I am a busy mother of two who likes to spend time writing, running a business and being a fab parent. I started doing two things that have saved me loads of time last year: I send out a couple of bags of ironing every two weeks and I do my grocery shopping online. Am I happier for it? By jobe I am.
8. Spend less time arguing
Alan and I used to argue a lot and it wasted so much of our time. We would spend days not speaking to each other and therefore not running any other part of our lives well because we were so busy sulking. The business would suffer, the fun times at home would suffer and especially, we individually suffered because neither of us feel right when we're having a fight. I can pinpoint the end of our major bickering to the day that our daughter, Eva, was born. My dad calls her 'The Magic' and I think he's right. We were so happy and fell so much more in love with each other that I think her very her presence grounded us in some way. That's not to say that we don't fight these days, but we are far better at getting over it quickly, which is a must.
9. You've got mail.. so deal with it
As of today, I have moved almost 3,000 photos and videos off my laptop and phone onto an external hard drive and it's only the start. What parent doesn't have a gazillion cute pics of their kids on their phones? But I have been so utterly lazy about my digital organisation that every time I open my email account I feel like hiding under the desk so the 'Inbox 342' doesn't see me. Alan is the same. We are clearing everything out for a start-over and are going to dedicate a few minutes every day to answering or deleting emails and organising photos and videos so that we don't have to panic over the dreaded 'Your startup disk is almost full'. Shudder.
10. Dress that bed
I once saw an amazing interview with Christina Applegate where she talked about her breast cancer. She spoke about a new rule that she and her partner had decided on to start every new day the right way and it was so simple: they simply dressed their bed each morning. How lovely is that? You close the door on the previous twenty-four hours with one simple gesture and say 'We are ready for you' to the next. Given that we as parents often end up in different rooms of the house during the night dealing with the kids, our new rule is: 'Whoever is last in the bed has to dress it'. And that totally works for us.
What are you doing to simplify your life a little bit? Join the conversation on Twitter @HerFamilyDotie
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