When I was a young professional, after I finished school and before I became a mom, I had huge amounts of free time. Long evenings and entire weekends at my complete disposal.

I have no idea what I did with all this free time.

I had some personal projects to realize, but not legions of them. I would put off many of them until later. I was doing so-so at house keeping; my house was clean enough for company, but just barely so. Frank and I avoided the kitchen often enough by eating out, or getting take out we would eat in front of the t.v. in the basement. Long story short, we were sort of lazy.

Now that Xavier, then Orléane, are born, my available time is greatly reduced. Strangely, though, I have become more efficient in cleaning and cooking. I use my free time to work on small projects. I avoid putting things off. I still watch a little t.v. during fall-winter, but not that many movies. We eat at the dinner table, and the kitchen is the brains of our home.

I recently developed some tricks to keep the house in order. (It helps that I’m on maternity leave and Xavier is spending a couple days a week at daycare, but oh well… cleanliness is even more necessary these days, with a baby crawling on the floor and two kids in diapers.) It’s nothing amazing, but it helps me a lot for keeping on top of things. I even end up doing more than I used too!

What’s crucial is finding a method that works for you, but I’ll share my little tips in tomorrow’s article, in case they might be right for you, too.

To be continued…

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 14:26 and is filed under Kids & family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.