My 10 Rules

Do Mom's have rules? Unstructured people like me (unlike people like Clark Kent) sometimes try to make rules for themselves, in some kind of desperate attempt to obtain more order in their lives. (Thinking, if it's a RULE then maybe I will actually DO it?)

I was just trying to clean off my desk & wading through my mounds of paperwork. (And if you know me, you already know how much I HATE PAPERWORK and therefore you can see how I would jump at the chance to blog my way out of this job.) (By the way we DO have a rule in our house that we never say we HATE anything, but I DO HATE paperwork, so there goes that rule-- out the window.)

Anyway, as I was throwing away papers, I found a list of Rules (that I made for myself) that I had scribled on the back cardboard part of my trusty yellow legal pad which contains all my to-do lists--(thank you Ward). I know I was thinking that the cardboard part was a "safe" place to put these rules. :)

RULES

1) Exercise 3x's a week (I am doing ok on this right now, but I must have made this a rule because of my tendency at times to take a short break from exercise-- like 6 months off)

2) Do jobs on the right day before 3pm
This means that Monday is laundry, Tues is house cleaning, Wed. is shopping & Thursday is paperwork & Friday is catch up. Now I confess, I'm not sure if those are the right days, because

a. I can't find the notebook that tells me what day is what and

b. I change them everyweek anyway, and

c. no matter what I never, ever seem to fit in the day for paperwork. I have actually managed to skip it for like a month now. (The before 3pm is because after my kids get home from school nothing gets done, since I am just in "putting out fires" & "driving my taxi" mode.)

3) Prepare dinner (or as much as I can) in the morning. I like this rule & try to keep to it if possible. But a new rule, or maybe a byline of this is "Just eat leftovers as often as we can" which also makes me eat less because I don't really care about leftovers.

4) Read Ensign or scriptures every day.

5) Clean Kitchen and Family Room before going to bed, so I can start fresh tomorrow. (This one comes from my wonderful mother who was always so good at this. I am improving in this area, but still need work.)

6) Bathe my children (at least) on Tues. Thurs & Sat. nights. Noel taught me this. Thanks Noel! That way, I don't fall into that confusion over "How long has it been since you last had a bath?" and the kids are at least pretty clean for church on Sunday. (By the way, in the summer, a late afternoon swim counts as a bath! Bonus!)

7) Monthly Food Calendar-- (I confess I don't even know what this is? What was I thinking? Let's just change it to weekly menu, shall we? That is even a stretch, but more doable.)

8) Paperwork and Budget Report every Tuesday-- Oh! I guess Tuesday was supposed to be my paperwork day-- but I had to change that all around so I would go to aerobics. At any rate, I AM trying to do this, but like I said, that is what I am supposed to be doing right at this moment.... so I guess this still needs improvement.

9) Fast Sunday-- make it a day of rest, prayer, reading & journal writing. This is my excuse for not having anyone to dinner on that one Sunday a month, which Curtis, being born of goodly parents, would like us to do at least 4 nights a week.

10) Read with Eliza every day. (I had to make that a rule, because unlike with Ian & Josh, I just keep letting it slip through the cracks & she needs to catch up. I was relieved when I found out that her teacher requires her to read 10 minutes for homework every night so we are doing just fine now.)

I think I might have to add one more: No blogging until my paperwork is done!

Do you have any good rules to share? :)