Time Management

I've decided that there is no bigger obstacle, and at the same time, impetus, to effective time management than a baby. I often thought I was busy before, but now it seems like there is always something that needs doing, and not enough time to do it in. My evenings, which used to consist of coming home from work, relaxing, making and having a leisurely dinner with my husband, and chilling out watching TV, now are packed with feeding, bathing, bedtime, and then way more washing of various and sundry items than I ever could have predicted was necessary. Now that Little Man actually does go down to sleep on his own, we have approximately from 8pm to 10:30 (when he wakes up for a feeding, and we go to bed) to do whatever needs doing, but anything we do must be done relatively quietly, and since the kitchen is right next to the bedroom in our apartment, not much can be done in there (where usually the most work needs to be done). Vacuuming has to be done when he is out of the house (he can't stand the noise of it), and any organization of our bedroom, where he also sleeps, is unheard of.

Then there are things like shopping for groceries or cleaning the bathroom that seem to always get rushed or overlooked, and we end up just ordering out for pizza since there's nothing in the house (not good for my attempted weight loss), and a somewhat scummy bathroom (which I'm trying desperately to be better about since Little Man likes to lick the sides of the tub when he takes his bath...)

Suddenly I am feeling a desperate desire for a strict schedule and constant diligence. And I finally understand the seemingly constant frustration of my mother when we were growing up. I come from a family of 7 children, each one messier than the last. I didn't start actually liking things clean and organized until after college, and really not until after I met my now husband. I was always a little OCD about randomly organizing things (I remember one day as a kid when I was supposed to be cleaning the bathroom and I instead spent all morning reorganizing the drawer where we kept things like bandaids and spare toothbrushes -- my mother, while exasperated with me, couldn't really be too angry since I had, in essence, been "cleaning"...) but actually being diligent about cleaning was another matter.

But where do you begin? When is the best time to do all the things you want to do? For now I'm just trying to figure out how to keep the laundry from (literally) piling up everywhere, or how to make sure we have vegetables to eat at every meal, but what about all those other things I want to do? I am not too far behind in making Little Man's 1st year scrapbook, but I haven't even opened the sewing machine my husband got me last Christmas... and then there is work... okay, yes, maybe I try to do a few too many things at once...

I have one friend of a 3 year old who tells me that we are even ahead of the game from where she was with her child at the same time when it comes to adapting from the fairly carefree life of a childless couple to the relative insanity of being first-time-parents. I'm sure I'll figure it out in time -- of course by then we'll probably be having another child, and then there's a whole new set of worries...