Playing House.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I tend to go until I can't go any longer.  This is pretty much true for everything I do, including housework, which leads to a lot of overwhelmed freak-out moments on my part.  It wasn't easy to learn how to mitigate that partly because I can be an ox about things, and partly because I was too busy being overwhelmed by things.

What I finally did was create a cleaning schedule:
Monday is bathroom day, Tuesday is bedroom day, etc.

This has been enormously helpful because it makes me concentrate on one room at a time.  That way, I'm not looking at the entire house and saying, "holy cow, what a mess!" and wondering how I'm going to even begin tackling it.
Not only that but with cleaning in 30 minute to an hour intervals, the majority of my day is freed to do other things like play with the little one, or pay attention to the dog.

So now I recommend this solution to anyone who is having trouble because it has cut my stress level in half, if not more.

Keeping this house has been a learning experience all around.  It's been hard; whoever says being a stay-at-home-mom is easy has clearly never done it before.  Or they're rich and can afford to hire help.
It's difficult having sole responsibility for something so large, especially when things go wrong.
For instance, the sprinkler system broke because I was pregnant when I winterized it last year and I did it wrong out of sheer forgetfulness.  This resulted in the main valve freezing and developing a crack.  So until I can get it looked at, we have to water by hand.  It takes 3.5 hours to do that...  Most of it's down time, but every 30 minutes I have to walk outside and reposition the sprinkler head.  Annoyingly inconvenient, to say the least.  Not to mention it cuts into my nap time.

On the whole, having a house is nice.  Both hubby and I like to entertain, so having a guest bedroom has been pretty awesome.  One day I'll be even better at managing my time.
The goal is to be able to do something fun for me at least three times a week, if not every day.  Because if I can't get me time I tend to be overwhelmed faster and with more fury.