what worked and what didn’t in 2018, part 2.

Hi friends! So I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath for the things that didn’t work for me in 2018!

Have no fear, I am back and ready to finish up this series.

 

 

What didn’t work:

Running

Yes. It’s true. Running did not work for me in 2018, and I have no one to blame but myself.

Here’s the secret: I just don’t like running.

I’ve tried for years and years because I know it’s good for me, and because, as my husband tells me, it’s the most time-efficient form of exercise. I’ve also tried because, in all honesty, I want people to think I’m a runner.

Runners are so cool!

People assume a lot of things about me, one is that I’m athletic. I think because David is athletic. I enjoy that assumption, but let’s be real here. I’m not athletic. I just want people to think I’m athletic.

Case in point: two of my neighbors commented on feeling guilty sitting from their porch or living room noticing me out walking. But the thing is: all they saw was the warm-up. I wanted to jump in, “Wait! I’m not out walking, I’m a runner! I run! You just live in the wrong part of the neighborhood to ever see it! You should be even more impressed than you are!”

Sigh.

That was a good wake-up call.

People around here think I’m a walker, apparently. So why am I doing all this dreadful running?!

This year I’ve decided to become a walker.

I want to exercise. I need to exercise. So I really am committing to walking. Now that I’ve given myself full freedom to be a walker, I try to walk fast, to get my heart rate up. With all the hills in our neighborhood I pretend I’m on a hike. I do like hiking! And also, if I’m committed to being a walker, I really have no excuse not to do it every single day.

So that’s my goal. I’m on about an every-other-day pace for now, but baby steps, right?

 

 

Outdoor plants

In the last five years, I’ve mastered the art of keeping a variety of indoor plants alive, and this is quite an accomplishment! Early-thirties Julie would kill just about any plant I was given.

I love indoor plants, but I really want to extend my knowledge to outdoor plants — both potted plants and in-the-ground plants.

I started fresh in spring with the best of intentions, as I do every spring. I got some inspiration from Pinterest, then hit up Lowe’s and a Seven Oaks Plant shop and found some quirky pots and set up our front porch and back yard with plants. It looked so pretty!

But alas. Now they are all dead. Again.

I’m not super attentive to outdoor plants. Probably because: I don’t spend a ton of time outdoors.

Aha. There’s the kicker.

Thanks to David, our backyard landscaping has thrived, but he stops short at potted plants. Those are my domain. And more often than not they are left away from my watchful eye and in the gleaming, overly watchful eye of Noah, who literally loves them to death.

 

 

A cleaning schedule

I’ve tried just about everything when it comes to a regular house-cleaning schedule. I’ve spent way too much time poring over Fly Lady’s blog and typing out my own custom weekly schedule and printing out neatly-typed sheets and putting them into page protectors (why page protectors, Julie?).

But I never stick with it. Once again, in 2018, cleaning schedules went ignored.

I’m sort of a spontaneous cleaner. I clean when the mood strikes. Usually that’s when we have people coming over.

So a cleaning schedule did not work for me this year but can I tell you two things that did work, or is that cheating in this post?

1. I listened to a Lazy Genius podcast in which she talks about house-cleaning and recommends simply starting with the thing that bothers you the most. What’s one area of your house you can clean for 30 minutes and feel better about your home and life in general?

I love that. For me it’s usually countertops and floors.

 

 

And 2. Giving my kids daily chores.

Isn’t it funny that I don’t like a cleaning routine but I make my kids follow one?

A friend gave me the idea of assigning them one extra chore a day, beyond the usual chores. It’s been wonderful. Judah and Amie know their daily chores by heart and if I make sure to add a reminder to their school task list, they do it without complaint. A goal for this spring semester is to start Gabe too.

So throughout the week, they’re at least dusting their bedrooms and the living room, wiping down both bathrooms, taking out the trash, recycling, and compost, and taking their sheets off their beds.

Daily the older kids feed the chickens, make both breakfast and lunch for their brothers, wash lunch dishes, and all the kids make their beds and put their laundry away.

What on earth do I do with all this free time, you wonder? Why on earth am I not more punctual with blog posts!?

I have no idea.

If you have any other house cleaning or kids’ chore tips, please share!

 

 

Using a natural cleaner for my shower

Okay one more while we’re on the topic of cleaning.

Natural shower cleaner did not work for me in 2018. Or any year before that, really.

I tried everything, you guys. Every brand in the grocery store. Homemade cleaners. Vinegar. Essential oils.

But the mildew that creeps up those pretty white subway tiles in my shower beat me back down this year.

I know bleach is terrible, and I actually think I have an allergy to it, but I finally caved in and bought 409 cleaner last month, and it’s pretty awesome.

Now, if only I could keep the mildew off the shower curtain liner . . .

 

Reading too much

This is strange to say.

It’s not exactly that I read too much, it’s just that I want to diversify. I’d really, really like to do something with my hands that lets me hang out with my people and not be off in my own world.

 

 

I want to learn to knit!

That’s right.

I desperately want to become a knitter this year. I think it’s so cool! I want to be able to make beanies and fuzzy socks and maybe a scarf. I want to be the wife who’s wisely and serenely working away at a knitting project while David drives us across the country on an adventure.

But the reality is, this is how I do hobbies:

I make a plan. I look at a few blogs. I scour Audible for awhile and pick out the perfect audiobook to listen to during my future knitting project (only when my family’s not around, of course). I take the kids to Hobby Lobby with my trusty 40% coupon. I buy yarn and knitting needles and a very cute slouchy basket to hold my project. We come home and look up a few YouTube videos. We learn how to make the yarn into a ball. I try to cast on. I fail. Many times. With all my kids gathered around peppering me with questions.

I get exhausted and find a fun spot in the living room for my slouchy basket.

And that’s that. It’s sitting there right now, as I write.

Every so often Gabe or Amelie will say, “Hey . . . so when are you going to start knitting?”

I say, “Go away, I’m reading a book.”

Just kidding.

I’m stuck. I need help! There are football games on all weekend, so after I finish writing this post, I am bound and determined to sit down with my knitting project and learn to cast on, for Pete’s sake.

 

 

Agoraphobia

So, change of subject.

I’ve talked a good bit here about my journey with anxiety and depression. I don’t like labels, but it appears there are a few that apply to me. Generalized anxiety disorder. Panic disorder. Agoraphobia.

My longtime psychiatrist recently retired, and I started seeing a new one last week. I liked him a lot.

I realized, leaving our hour-and-a-half appointment, that it’s always nice to have fresh eyes looking in on your life and challenges. I really appreciated his questions and observations about my mental health.

But I also understood once again, in talking to him and telling him my story, how much my anxiety disorder is still apart of my life. It’s apart of every single day.

The great news is that for the most part, it isn’t debilitating like it once was. I’m able to function almost like a normal person in my life, and that’s a beautiful thing after you know how it feels to not be able to function.

But the reason I can do it is because I’ve learned how to allow myself to function, how to manage my life around this disorder. And the mental energy and planning that takes up can be tiring.

I really have developed classic agoraphobia in the last four years, and that is what is just plain hard, because it feels like it directly interferes with the life God has called me to lead — which is all about people and all about social situations.

 

 

But by God’s grace, I can be involved with people and social situations.

It takes work. It takes manipulating surroundings so I can be present and not panic (you’ll pretty much always find me sitting right at the edge of a group or movie theater, rather than smack in the middle), sometimes it takes medication.

A really helpful thing has been to learn how to be at peace with my anxiety, to coexist with it.

Anxiety disorders do not define me and they cannot separate me from God, ever.

They’re apart of my life but it can’t threaten or rule my life, because my life is hidden in Christ.

As you can tell, I don’t mind talking about it, and that helps too. Bringing a struggle out into the light and talking about it — and admitting you need help — lessens its power over you, whether it’s a sin issue or an illness. I even joke about it, there’s a lightheartedness that the gospel brings to trials because I live with hope. I’m not a victim.

 

 

This week I shared with my new doctor that, Lord willing, David and I will be taking a trip to North Africa this summer. And I’m so very excited about it. But I’m also scared. I don’t want to get on a plane. And certainly not for 12+ hours.

This makes me a little sad, because the old Julie never thought twice about jumping on a plane to travel. To be very honest: I didn’t have much patience for people with a phobia of flying. Now I understand. And I’m sorry I dismissed their struggle, because it’s real. Completely, wholly irrational, but real.

I’m choosing to take a step of faith and plan this trip.

God is bigger than my agoraphobia. He’s used it these last four years to humble me and bring me closer to Him. He’s also used it to make me more compassionate. I wouldn’t trade the Julie I am now for jump-on-a-plane Julie.

I feel hopeful, because my doctor was very encouraging about the plan and had some ideas to help me.

We’ll see what this year holds!

 

 

Distractedness

I’m an introvert and an over-analyzer who has a tendency to live too much in my own head.

I’ve done a good job of learning to pace myself and whittle down our schedule so that we’re all rested. But I’ve realized more and more that my human nature is to live in a mindset of busyness.

The way I describe it is, it’s hard to be a full-time wife/mom/homemaker/home educator and not feel constantly in Task Mode.

I like Task Mode. I can do it well. It keeps us all running and fairly organized. It gets the job done, you know?

But really life is about relationships, not tasks, and it’s easy for me to sort of move through my day in this perpetually distracted state, getting the next thing done and probably fretting about what’s not done, and not really see the people around me.

I’m not good at multi-tasking, so I do well with a set-aside time to see someone — a coffee date or a phone call. I give them my full attention. But generally, in life, that practice doesn’t come naturally to me.

 

 

How do I live in my life, with its tasks and routine and to-do lists, and at the same time see and enjoy the people around me?

How do I make them feel like they’re my first and best ministry, my most important thing? But also get the laundry done and dinner on the table?

I’m taking two very small baby steps, but if you have insight, please share.

The first is, of course, to read a book! We recently bought Practicing the Presence of People, by Mike Mason, and it’s right up my alley. I’ve just started but can tell already it’s going to be helpful in this journey.

Second, I’m trying to find pockets of time in the day to just stop and sit in my house. With whoever’s around. If Gabe’s looking at a nature encyclopedia I sit down and he crawls on my lap and reads to me. If Amie is drawing I stop and sit at the table with her.

I did this with Judah last week, sat down on the sofa while he was there. We chatted for a minute and then were just silent. My skin felt itchy because there were about a dozen things I needed to jump up and do. But I lingered, and a minute later he shared something he was struggling with that I had no idea about.

I almost missed that moment!

 

 

I don’t want to be Distracted Mom.

I want to be fully present, here and now, first with God, and then with my family and the other people in my life.

 

Google calendar

Finally, Google calendar did not work for me in 2018.

And the bullet journal didn’t work in 2017.

I gave Google calendar a good try, but I just couldn’t remember to check my phone and enter appointments. Part of the problem is I don’t generally keep my phone on my person — we have a shelf in our house where phones stay when we’re home. And I usually turn my off during our school morning.

I guess I just couldn’t get into it.

So halfway through the year, I bought a $12 Blue Sky Target planner, and have been very happy ever since.

I use the calendar spread for my scheduling, and from Modern Mrs. Darcy, I got the idea of using a large lined Post-It note for my weekly to-do list. I love having a list to mark up without cluttering my calendar, and then switching it out for a fresh one.

The daily pages in my planner are where I record what we do in our homeschool, which is a legal requirement.

I like having both there together, sitting on the buffet in the dining room where I spend a lot of my day.

 

 

There you have it, my friends!

And because you stuck with me to the end of this post, I’ll share the Gentino Secret S’more’s tip: use a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup instead of chocolate. It’ll change your life.

This series has been fun, and has given me some good goals for this year.

Now I’d love to hear yours!