I wonder if you have experienced the same as me, that you think that once this thing is done, then I will have time to do this and that? I admit that I fall into this pit all too often. There are so many things I should be doing in a day and when the day is gone, so few things have been accomplished. It can’t be possible that I have fewer hours than anybody else, so it must be caused by something else.

One person once told me that my problem is that I don’t have realistic ideas about how much this one thing on my to-do-list would take. But I think that’s not the issue in here. Let’s take an example: I have planned to cook a meal, clean the kitchen, and eat the meal with my family. I know that it takes half an hour to boil potatoes and in the meanwhile I’m grilling the meat and chopping salad. As dessert would be ice cream with a ready-made caramel sauce, which doesn’t take much time to put it together.

So, I have considered that the cooking time would be about 45 mins in total and the cleaning the kitchen after cooking would take about 15 mins. Normally having that type of meal takes 30-45 mins to eat when not in hurry, so all of this should take less than two hours. But why does it take 3 hours of my life?

The reason I found is that I’m not able to concentrate into this project fully and I’m doing many other things at the same time. A friend calls me when I’m chopping the veggies, and I need to put the knife down. When I’ve finished the call, husband comes in from the groceries, and I need to place those foods correctly. When I’m about to start grilling, the dog indicates that there’s an instant need, and I take her out. When the meal is finally ready, after an hour and 10 mins, I start to clean the kitchen. But i accidentally drop the bag of macaroni on the floor and cleaning that mess takes extra 5 minutes. While doing it I notice the trash bag is full and I need to take it out and the dog wants to get out with me. Again, few minutes extra. While having the meal my family gets into a very interesting conversation, and we end up planning the next year’s summer trip. The meal takes about an hour. In total little over 3 hours spent.

Now, do you think that my plan was unrealistic or is it just that there are too many random things going on?

This is something I’ve been thinking of after catching myself being a big jealous to my single friend, who seems to have so much time for her hobbies. She plays an instrument, she goes to movies, her house is always clean. On the other hand she doesn’t have children, she doesn’t have any pets and she often buys her meals ready. After that epiphany I admitted that my family and cooking for them are my hobbies. I have chosen to have pets and children, I have chosen to live in country and I have chosen to stay connected with my friends. These choices cause a lot of random incidents to happen in my life, and I need to react to those.

Now, when my children are not small, I’ve noticed that I have more time to my own interests. There are days when I can walk into the kitchen and get the food that is already cooked. I can let my kids take care of animals if I’m travelling. I don’t need to start cleaning the whole house right after getting home from work as the dogs have their own room to stay when I’m out. All these changes affect how much of my daily time I spend on maintaining at home. Thanks to this excess time, I’ve been able to study and create online products. I’m publishing my materials under the name of SkillfulYou. My latest work was creating that travelling blog in Finnish, and I was surprised how many hours it took to put it all together. Now when the structure seems to work, I can continue with creating content into it. My plan is to get those writings translated into English so that I can publish them on this website.

Based on my experience I’d say that never judge other people’s life as you are not living that life. Even if things seem to be easy on the surface, there can be things that are out of your knowledge. That’s the beauty of the life, you have your own unique experience! Let’s celebrate this unique experience by being grateful for things we have!

With love

Joana

PS. My next major task is to start writing posts about this house and it’s renovations.