Five on Friday--May 15

Hi friends! We made it through another week! Whether you survived another week of homeschooling kids, trying to work while juggling kids, keeping toddlers alive, or survived another week of nothing but zoom calls, cheers to you, you made it! I’m sitting here surrounded by coloring books, printed out math worksheets, water bottles and granola bar wrappers, anxious to clean up and enter into another weekend, but also grateful for this school work we’ve had to do this week to keep us occupied—because without it I would have SO many hours to try & fill! This week’s 5 on Friday includes some thoughts on not being okay, both a weekly and a daily rhythm of home life that’s making a huge difference for us right now, one of my very favorite things about spring, and a Netflix binge that’s fantastic. So here we go—this week’s 5 on Friday!

ONE

It’s okay to not be okay right now. There you go, your mantra for the day if you need one! It is okay if you are exhausted, emotional, or all over the place in terms of your mental health. This is a literal global pandemic, the likes of which none of us alive today have ever lived through before. We weren’t trained on how to handle this well. There’s no book you can buy all about 10 Steps to Thriving in a Pandemic. We prepare for major events in our lives like childbirth or marriage or big entrance exams by researching, reading, and learning. None of us were prepared for where we find ourselves today. I think acknowledging that is a really important place to start when it comes to our mental health. We feel like we should be “doing better” but how could we possibly do that when nothing in our prior lifestyles prepared us to all of a sudden be sequestered in our houses, cut off from activities, places and people we love, fearful of grocery stores, educating our children, working from home and watching a death toll rise at an alarming rate? So it’s okay to not be okay. I am literally texting that message to a friend right now. It’s okay to say this is scary, this is hard, this is exhausting, this is overwhelming. I was powering through each day, accomplishing tasks right and left thinking I was “fine” until night came and I didn’t sleep for about a week. I finally had to say “umm maybe I am more afraid than I realized. Maybe all of this is too much.” Which led to some shifts in terms of our routine here. I stopped trying to accomplish 20 things a day. There are zero closets or drawers that have been organized or purged here. There are zero extra credit or “for extra enrichment…” projects or activities that we’re doing. I love our teachers. But I am not doing all the extra things, just the assignments that are teaching them something and that will be graded. I’ve been making sure we all get outside everyday—sometimes that’s for exercise, and sometimes I turn the sprinkler on for them and I sit on the patio with a yummy drink, but we are all outside. I’m blocking off time each day for the things that make me feel refreshed (more on that in another section) and I’m trying to limit the number of decisions I have to make in a day to eliminate decision fatigue. Everyone has different things that will refresh them and help their mental health, and we are all dealing with vastly different circumstances, I fully acknowledge I’m not also trying to work full time from home. But no matter what our circumstances are, I think now more than ever it’s time to lean into those things. Do we need to schedule an appointment with a therapist? Take a nap? Block out 10 minutes for prayer? Turn off the news for a week? Eliminate the noise of social media for a bit? Exercise each day? We’re all different, so each of us has different things that will help us, but especially in this season of life it is good to name what those are and advocate for time/space to be able to do at least a little bit of something that will help with how we’re faring emotionally and mentally.

TWO

One of the things that is so key for my mental health is to have a set of weekly/daily routines in place to sort of anchor our time and help me stay on top of basic household jobs so our space that we are spending ALL our time in doesn’t get out of control with mess and clutter (I literally cannot function in chaos around me, I get angry, grumpy and nasty until it’s cleaned up. When I see clean spaces in front of me I physically feel myself relax. I know, I’m super strange. But I’ve at least finally realized this about myself and have put small benchmarks in place to keep myself from loosing it since none of the other people in this house even see the mess or care that it’s there). Since being home starting in mid-March, Friday has become our house cleaning day. Our schoolwork is usually a little lighter and I have figured out how much I enjoy going into a Friday evening/Saturday with a perfectly picked up space, it relaxes me in a very real way. We finish school work and then in the afternoon we clean the whole house. Literally everything that’s out on a floor, table, countertop, bedside table or wherever gets put back where it belongs. We turn music on and the boys are each assigned areas to focus on. They know I’m coming through with the vacuum and anything mom has to pick up I get to keep for a week. We change sheets (well the kids sheets are not being changed every week, lets be honest…), wipe down bathrooms, vacuum the whole house, dust tables that are super dusty and put all toys/games/puzzles away. They earn their movie time when it’s done, and the best part is—when they sit down for a late afternoon movie on Friday and I pour a glass of wine, I know I really am done for the weekend—school is done, the house is clean, and I actually get to relax. I found this routine works so much better than trying to clean different things each day, we just get it all done at once and then I don’t worry about cleaning anything throughout the week other than an evening pick up of toys/school stuff each day. And because it’s been built into our week for the past 8 weeks now the boys know what to expect and they have done a great job jumping in to help.

Likewise, I found that in this season when we’re home all day every day it actually became easier to do one big laundry day instead of trying to keep up with it each day (because I’d start it in the morning but forget about it and it would never get folded and put away when I was doing a load a day). Fridays I clean, Mondays we do ALL the laundry in the house. It’s a lot of loads throughout the day but we are home, I set timers to remember to switch loads and I save all the folding for Monday evening when my husband comes home. He plays with the kids and I lock myself in the bedroom with a favorite show (which feels like such a treat, I literally never turn on the TV for my own shows during the daylight hours!) and just fold it all in one 30-45 minute chunk of time. Everyone helps put their clothes away and then it’s done and I don’t think about laundry for another 6 days. I think during this season where my brain feels overloaded with so many things, to have built in times to tackle certain chores has been a huge game changer. Are there any routines or benchmarks you’ve implemented since quarantine started that has helped you make it through a week without loosing your mind? I’d love to hear!

THREE

Daily treats. We all need something to look forward to don’t we?! There’s a very real part of us that still respond as first graders—”If I do this I get a gold star! Or extra recess! Or an M&M!” Everyone needs something to look forward to in days that bleed endlessly into one another and feel like a never ending cycle of sameness. This has taken awhile for us to figure out—what rhythm to our day feels the best for all of us? When are we most productive? When each day does it seem like we’re all in need of a break? But after many weeks we’ve finally settled into a pretty good daily rhythm with things we all look forward to built in. One of those is our daily 1 hour of quiet time—this might be my very favorite time of the day :) The kids have to read for 30 minutes silently and then they can share 30 minutes of either a game on the ipad or my laptop (they are super into PBS kids Wild Kratts games right now) and I spend that hour with a book and iced coffee. It’s such a needed break mid-day for me, to know that I’ll have an hour without having to answer questions or referee anything and I’ve been flying through a few books with just this one hour of designated time to sit. If you are a mom with tiny ones who don’t nap anymore an hour of quiet time may seem like a pipe dream to you—honestly this is the first summer this has been something that is truly working only because they can both read on their own. We were never good at enforcing “quiet time” when they had to do quiet independent playtime in their rooms. That usually worked for about 10 minutes a day, leaving me more frustrated than anything. So maybe this can be when you turn on a show or hand over a screen of some kind. There is no shame in that if it leads to a parent being more refreshed and able to reengage for the afternoon in a good way. Likewise I’ve been trying to turn dinner prepping time into a bit of a treat for me as well. We’re all sick of cooking, but it still needs to be done. So every afternoon about 4:30 I let the kids watch a movie while I pop in my headphones, turn on a podcast and pour a glass of wine or sparkling cocktail. It signals to my brain that even though this is a chore that needs to be done it’s still alone time in the kitchen that I’ve come to really look forward to. I don’t know if there’s a particular chore or pain point in your days that could possibly be adjusted or made more fun somehow, but maybe think about it in terms of a little reward—if I need to be the one to make dinner, how can I make that enjoyable? If I get through a morning of schooling the kids, how can I give myself a mental break before entering back into the activity of the afternoon? Maybe it’s getting out and going for a walk alone in the evenings while your partner gets kids ready for bed or cleans up the kitchen. Whatever it is, it’s okay to reward yourself—the season we’re in is so difficult and most of us have taken on so many extra things that it is absolutely okay to carve out small treats for yourself throughout the day.

FOUR

Okay cue the Christmas music and imagine someone breaking out into “It’s the most wonderful time…of the year!” No it’s not Christmas, but this week is kind of like my own personal Christmas! Every May, my very favorite book blogger/podcaster/whisperer, Anne Bogel (of Modern Mrs. Darcy—her blog and the host of the What Should I Read Next podcast) puts out her annual summer reading guide and it is a MAJOR event in my springtime. Like on my calendar, with time blocked out that day to savor it. Yes, I’m nuts. But there’s literally nothing else on my calendar right now so I have to celebrate what I can. But really, I adore the release day of her reading guide. Anne is given hundreds of advance copies of novels being published in the spring and summer of this year and she reads them all. She narrows them down to her very favorite 30 books and puts together an e-magazine that she sends to people for free. She has fantastic taste, she never steers me wrong. She’ll explain why she loved each book to help readers find books that are right for them. You can get this year’s guide for yourself here, and see if there are any titles that catch your eye!

FIVE

Has anyone else been watching the new Netflix series Never Have I Ever? It’s Mindy Kaling’s new project and it is absolutely fantastic—sweet, funny, full of adorable and also cringe-worthy moments, it’s the story of Devi, an Indian American girl living in the San Fernando Valley with her mom. Her dad died last year. Devi is a sophomore in high school and is determined this is the year she gets a boyfriend and ups her social status. It is a delight and with 25 minute episodes it is the perfect binge watch. I finished last night and am so sad it’s over! I even mentioned it to a friend today who hadn’t heard of it and she texted me an hour later saying she had already watched the first episode and was hooked! Anyone else watched it yet??

That’s all for this week, friends, but I will see you back here next week with 5 more thoughts for ya!