You have to sing the title in the manner of body rockers ‘every day I’m shuffling’. Following on from yesterdays post listing the reasons why I’ve been blog absent I’m going to share one of the solutions I’m using to try and get a bit of a break.
I have this quote up above my desk ‘work smarter, not harder’. I love it. For me working smarter means shutting down Facebook, focusing on one task at a time, crossing 3 items on my to-do list per day, and creating one piece of content every day (for 4 sites – hell no could I create blog fodder on a daily basis, im just not that interesting!). Working smarter means trading off with Mr Clev for 1 hour on my own in the office while he is on daughter duty – in exchange I take the girls out later on in the day so he can crack out some stuff.
The summer holidays are looming, and we are going to have to manage work and 5 children on a daily basis. Forewarned is forearmed is my motto and I’m hoping to carve out some time over the next few weeks to plan some activities and create some activity packs. I’ve been reflecting on parenting recently and its occurred to me that really I’ve somewhat made a rod for my own back. I am a wigwam making, cupcake decorating, hide-and-seek playing, argument solving, dance party d-jaying, trampoline bouncing kind of mum. Which is just what I want to be. BUT when you do that 80% of the time your kids just expect it all the time. They get bored easily and when boredom strikes they fall back on TV, Xbox and iPads, when I need to work and they need to entertain themselves peace only lasts about 10 minutes. I’ve been parenting harder, not smarter.
In an attempt to parent smarter, and to bridge a gap between being super activity organise parent and work at home mum supremo I’m using this –
Enter…THE BORED BOARD.
Everything on the board is easily accessible, even the blankets for den building now have an easy to reach home. Nothing here requires set up by me, or even too much direct supervision. We are testing it out at the moment with the odd day after school when I cant be on hand for entertainment and my plan is to change the activities on there over the summer holidays to keep the kids on their toes!
Mummy 1 – Xbox 0
Its superb as your other posts : D, thankyou for putting up. “To be at peace with ourselves we need to know ourselves.” by Caitlin Matthews.
This actually answered my downside, thanks!