What Does That mean???

It occurred to me yesterday that I started this blog and I have been running with it without actually explaining what the title is all about!  Leave it to me to hit the ground running without paying attention to the starting line! 

This title, consolidating chaos, has been with me for years because it has become my way of life.  It was the way I was able to cope (mostly calmly) with four children ages four and under.  It was the way I managed to live in seven different places with my husband, across the United States within eight years (that sounds exhausting to say out loud and yes, that was through children and pregnancies, not before it).  It is how I manage finances, volunteer work, the house and every other facet of my life.  I consolidate the chaos of that one topic, or area, so that I may better concentrate on other boxes of chaos that need opened at the moment. 

I get overwhelmed when I feel like everything is hitting me at once and so this is my survival mode I suppose.  Handle one thing, one crisis, one child at a time.  I have a time for everything and a place for everything.  This is not to say I walk around with spectacles bridged across my lower nose tapping intendedly at a schedule clutched in my hands, but I do keep a general schedule to my day and deviate rarely.  There is always a nap/quiet time in the afternoon except on a very rare occasion now that the girls are getting a bit bigger.  The girls get up at 8am and bed is at 8pm, with the exception of the our school aged daughter who gets up earlier.  There are three meals a day and a snack after naptime with two half hour shows a day (one in the morning and one after nap while they have their snack).  A schedule limits, and consolidates, the chaos from so many different angles.  The kids understand the schedule and it is second nature to them.  They know exactly what happens everyday and what to expect.  There is no uneasiness of the unknown and no bartering for anything different.  A schedule equals peace in many ways.

Like our schedule, other things are planned out as well.  I have the grocery list pre-printed with check boxes so I just have to walk over whenever we run out of something and mark it.  I know before I go to the store to take a second glance to check inventories.  I pre-plan my month of meals out so I know I have all the ingredients for each night.  Sure we deviate from it often with switching days or skipping them when we go out, but it was always a huge stress to figure out dinner everyday and now I just do it once a month.  The chaos of cleaning a house of six people is consolidated into sections and managed easily (See my cleaning series “My Secret Recipe to a Clean House” from September).  I keep a planner, of course, to keep up with the doings of this crazy crew.  We are far from a stagnant group and so we need a central calendar to refer to (ie. my planner) for all of the multiple school functions, doctor appointments, vacations, visitors and social events.

I also keep folders for many things to cut paper clutter down.  I have a file cabinet with the usual suspects in it like tax folders, medical insurance, financial things and house things.  I have folders for the other things as well though.  There is one for each school my kids attend, each group I belong to, each hobby I have etc.  In this way I can literally close the cover on one subject and open the cover to another. 

My house is a great example of how I use consolidating chaos.  The girls, guaranteed, have the play room crazy by 9am and that is fine.  They are supposed to do that. But, come nap time the chaos has to be consolidated to the play room.  There is a threshold of carpet/hard wood there and the toys need to be on the inside of the playroom. The rest of the house is in order and I can sit, have my lunch and relax and let the chaos be in there.  I consolidate it to the other room and it is crazy with a capital C in there, but it is all in THERE, not where I am.  When it is time to clean up the playroom, as we do every night together, we just have to work in that one room and not all over the house. 

Of course there is the literal folders/boxes of chaos and there is the figurative.  That talk you are going to have with your child or husband can’t effectively happen when the dinner is being made and backpacks are being emptied in all of the evening’s pandemonium.  Wait, find a time and then you can focus on the subject at hand.  The homework, the work outs, the errands and everything can have its own time.  Sometimes those times overlap and that is where the wondrous thing called multitasking comes in, but even that can be calm.  You just need to learn how to work through everything.    

There are so many different areas of our lives and I know mine has more than I can think of at any given moment.  But, we don’t have to deal with them all at the same time.  Life happens, things shift, the unexpected becomes normal, but organizing your chaos into manageable portions makes life that much easier.  Do what you can to make the work of life less cumbersome so that you can concentrate on the fun in it.