My Life's Non-Negotiables I Learned This Week

Being a Type A person, it pains me to not be fully prepared. Not have it all laid out and planned out. Not be super human. But the thing is, we aren’t super human and more often than not, the role of being a single mom battles with, and often defeats, the type A Mom.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know when their first day of school was, unlike my first day- finding out I had the date wrong. I knew their date and started planning early. I bought supplies in advance and had been buying and storing snacks for weeks. I had even turned our dining room into a study café.

But even with all of that preparation, I was still finding myself making it to the next day only to realize I was not prepared. And then it dawns on me this morning, well to be honest I’ve known this for a while, but for some reason it hit me like a ton of bricks this morning. If I don’t carve out time to prep for the next week, that week will explode regardless of my efforts.

So for context, last weekend was the last weekend before their school started. For me, I already had that weekend planned out. My dad was coming up to be my House Handy Man on Saturday and I had a few things on my checklist to do. Pretty straight forward weekend right?

Enter the kids with their own list of things to do before school starts:

• The twins had 4 stores they wanted to go “back” to for exchanges and more clothes. My oldest had already taken them for me during the week (not in my plan)

• My daughters hair needed to be done (this was in my plan though)

• My son wanted his hair braided and then he needed to swing by the barber for a line-up (not in my plan)

• Another school supply trip, thanks open house (in the plan)

It was like the perfect storm. The things I planned to do either got pushed back or took longer than plan. Either way, the point is, I went the entire weekend and absolutely did not prep for the next week and boy did I feel it.

Or maybe I failed them.

When done properly, these systems actually work for me. Now I am learning the hard way, that if I am not disciplined and consistent, the snowball effect of that lack will overwhelm me every time. I seriously have to accept that prepping for the next week is a non-negitionable. Just like I protect going to bed by a certain time because I realize how valuable sleep is, I learned this week, so is prep time on the weekend.

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For example, 2 Saturdays ago I got up in the morning and used that quiet time to prep for next week. Usually I do this on a Sunday but I really don’t like having a lot to do on a Sunday. I honestly want that day to be a day of rest. So this particular Saturday I said, let me prep. I have all the things I need and its quite here.

So I grabbed all my deli containers (I keep these in stock for meal prep) and made:

• 7 containers of my yogurt mix (Greek yogurt, fresh blueberries, pumpkin seeds and grounded flax seeds)

• 7 containers of tuna salad

• 7 containers of watermelon

Each morning, while I was completing my morning breakfast routine, I would grab a container of each and pack my lunch box. Now, yes, I ate the same thing for work everyday, but I also did not spend any money that week on lunch. So I count that as a win!

Even though this prep was just for my lunch, it made my life that week so simple and in this next season I know I will need more simple life systems to survive.

Last weekend, the only thing that I completed from my systems list was the Sunday Family meeting. Thus, the rough week I had.

There was so much that was jammed into last weekend that I chose to push my prep time out. What I am also realizing is that I don’t want to tell my kids no. They don’t ask for much and they were so excited about back to school, so I really wanted to grant them all the wish wants they were throwing at me. But after this week, I have to find a way to balance that better. I have to tell myself no, stop filling up the weekend and eating up the time I need for prep. From now on, it has to happen.

Dinner was very much touch and go this week, some days I brought food home and other days they were too tired to eat dinner. Definitely not a proud moment here. The funny part in all of this is that I have the meals planned out already. But after missing that step over the weekend, I really could not catch up.