The Trick to Getting Things Done after Having Babies

I never wanted to be the person who says the things that annoyed me before I was a parent.  "Just wait til..."  or "You think this is hard, wait til..." or "Oh, you think you're busy?"  (Honestly, when childfree friends post on Facebook about their busy day it reminds me of the great divide between us... a day packed with errands and calls and meetings, whatever... it's just a very different kind of busy, I'll leave it at that.)

Anyway-- I am determined to accomplish things-- and I am a bit obsessive compulsive about it... when I get an idea, I feel that if I don't spring to action within 24 hours, I'll never do it.

ALSO--- we are a family of 5 on a  teacher's salary, so we are not people who can hire someone to do anything-- we try to figure almost everything out ourselves if we can.  While that is time-consuming and sometimes frustrating, it reinforces that there is very little people cannot do themselves.

Put these things together and mix in three kids 6 & under and you are faced with a certain amount of obstacles to accomplishing things.

So... want to accomplish things with these obstacles?

My tips:

1.  Do everything late at night.  What you lose in sleep you gain in time spent on a project.  We painted our girls' room in 2 hours flat from 10pm-midnight-- gave them a  movie night so they were out of the room.  I don't even know how we could have done that with them awake.  Don't do it every night obviously, but we think it's worth the missed sleep to get a project done quickly and efficiently.  It's also kind of cool because the kids wake up and it seems magical.  Side note:  Our neighbor came out twice thinking we were getting robbed at 2am-- nope, just doing projects.  :)

2.  Lower your standards.  If I perfected every thing-- painting, organizing, making an annual family album, sewing curtains, creating budgets, mapping vacations, couponing, planning birthday celebrations, even folding laundry... I'd accomplish maybe 1/4 of what I do.  Not even perfection--- I just go with 'pretty good'.  Dragging out a project starts to make me feel shackled and sad.  I want to be able to do a decent job and then go have fun.  It also keeps me motivated to start a new one... there no feeling of dread about projects because I know I can work quickly and not be bogged down by perfect standards.

That's really it---- those two things and you can conquer projects galore with kids. :)