Time Management and the Crochet Obsessive

My ideal would be a parallel universe – one world in which I can crochet all hours of the day, and another running simultaneously where I meet all my other-world commitments, and of course enjoy all the precious, lovely non-crochet elements of my life! Such a universe, alas, does not exist and therefore, I find I must prioritise (sucks!).

But. How much dust is too much? I know I will never regret not having dusted more when I die haha but at the same time, one cannot run a family in chaos (well I can’t anyway). My girls are almost five and almost seven and I am a full time stay at home mum who is suddenly feeling the currents of change and finding just a little more time on her hands. My youngest will be starting school in January and I am now well out of the survival mode of the early years (which included severe depression and anxiety) and moving into a new phase.

This is very exciting but also rather daunting! My youngest is currently only at preschool three days a week during school hours so I have her with me lots still, plus of course there are a lot of hours before 9 and after 3.30! However, suddenly both girls seem to be growing less needful of me with every passing week. The demands on my time are no longer so great and there are finally more hours in my day in which I have CHOICES!? This is most novel! I am no longer fire-fighting, as we used to say in my previous life as a corporate finance analyst – rushing to put out one fire after another and barely pausing for breath. It’s fabulous! But I do find myself…drifting a little. I think, yay! I can crochet now, nobody is here wanting stuff! So I do (sometimes rather a lot), and then I do a little bit of cleaning or ironing and then I get distracted, have a quick look at gorgeous lovely crochet things on Instagram and oops it’s 3pm where did that go and OMG what have I achieved?!

Believe me I am NOT complaining – I know how blessed I am. The things is, after almost seven years of being “on” pretty much 24/7 as a full time stay at home mum of very young children with no family support network and a husband who is AWESOME but who also works long hours, I am just not used to this level of freedom. I’ve reached a point where I need to start thinking about how to structure my days, and what I want them to look like. I’ve been crocheting a LOT , particularly since I started this blog a few months ago, and it has been awesome but that parallel universe I yearn for does not exist and the time has come to plan and prioritise. I don’t want to feel guilty when I crochet. I don’t think I need to work harder – I do work very hard for my family – but I need, as they say, to work SMARTER, so that I have done all the things I need to do before I sit down with my hooks and yarn, guilt free and hooker-happy! Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that better time management will ultimately result in more hooking time for this crochet obsessive. YES!!!

So.

• A little less blogging , and more defined times for doing so and for addressing correspondence related to Hooks and Hills (I’ve taken the email apps off my phone so I don’t get distracted by the ‘ping’ any more – such a time monster!).
• Flexible but clear forward schedule in terms of crochet skills I want to learn – I am an ambitious and adventurous crocheter! – book reviews I want to write and patterns of my own that I want to work on.
• Fixed hours on preschool days for family / family business interests paperwork.
• Fixed hours on preschool days for home duties, and clear schedule of tasks (thank you Motivated Moms app!)
• Fixed hours for exercise – vital and sliding a little recently  (run/walking and yoga now replace antidepressents for me).

How do you make sure you get your crochet fix? If you’re a stay at home mum, what are your best tips for managing your time? And how did you go when your youngest started school? For so long I felt like the day would never come and now it seems to be racing at me full speed and it’s a bit…confronting! 🙂