I don’t have time.

I so often hear myself saying “I don’t have time for this (or that)”  or I will say to the children “We don’t have time.”

Hate is a particularly strong word, that I don’t encourage my children to use, but I have found myself growing to hate that phrase.  It sucks the life out of me. 

Just what am I doing that is so important that I don’t have time to do the things I want to do? What is keeping me so busy that I don’t have time to enjoy spending time doing “nothing” with my children?

Some of the life (time) suckers for me include computer time.  I enjoy spending time on the computer looking blogs, or reading a couple of forums or  some emails.  But…. sometimes I find that I use the computer as a distraction to keep me from doing something that needs to be done.  Then all of a sudden it is time to leave the house and I start shouting “I don’t have time.”

But I can’t blame it all on the computer.  I think a good chunk of my “don’t have time” issues are a lack of good routines or habits.   Everybody has a routine.  It is part of human nature to have a routine; yes even those “free spirits” who don’t schedule anything have routines.  Those routines become habit.  Some of my routines are good and some are not so good.

I find that I routinely procrastinate and put off doing until later, much later, what I should do right now.  Then all of a sudden I have far more work to do and it is ten times harder than it ever needed to be and I don’t have time.   Not only do I now not have time to get the job done, but I don’t have time to read a book to Supergirl.  I don’t have time to listen to Turtlegirl tell me about a story she is writing nor time to enjoy hearing BooBear play the piano.  I don’t have time to hear about Tailorbear tell me about her latest game and how silly and fun it was.

I find it heartbreaking to tell my children “I don’t have time to help you sew that rag doll.”  “I don’t have time to play a board game with you”.  “I’ve got to do the laundry or the dishes or the lesson planning or write the review or one of tens of other things that in and of themselves are NOT bad but because of my (poor) choices I now do not have time.

I don’t seem to have time to read the books I want to read, to visit the places I want to see or to just be with my girls.  So I have to ask myself why?  And if those things are important to me why am I not doing something towards  changing?

For whatever reason (and I’m not exactly sure) the house had become a total wreck.   Some basic cleaning got done so that we could live but the clutter got out of control and a circular pattern evolved.   The more out of control the house got; the more overwhelmed I got.  The more overwhelmed I got;the more I distracted myself.  The more I distracted myself; the more the house would get out of control and the cycle would start again.

Thanks to a well timed Church rummage sale, an impending visit and the help of my family, we’ve broken the cycle of the house.   Today, we begin rebuilding those habits and routines that will allow us to have MORE time.  More time to enjoy doing the things we WANT to do.

If I say “I don’t have time" again, I want it to be that I have done such a great job of time managing and prioritizing that I can’t do x because I’ve already made plans to do A, B and C and the house is already clean!