This was an exercise suggested by Pilgrimage to Self
A time log of my week. Was not supposed to be this long!!
My Background
Work Part time
Run an online retail business
Mother of a 3 year old
Monday (Work day)
7am. Wake up. Get out of bed at 7.30. Make a few phone calls and sort out flight details for Father in Law. Have shower
8am. Get daughter up, shower, breakfast and get her ready for nursery. How come I can never find matching socks in the morning. Note to self. Have everything ready the night before.
9.15. Leave house and drop Lopes off at nursery at around 9.45 and get to work for 10am.
10am – 2pm. Work, work and more work. Loads of spreadsheet analysis. What fun. 15 minute meeting, Should have been about an hour but I left after my bit on the schedule. Hate meetings, especially those that don’t really impact on my role.
2.15pm. Off home. Nice work if you can get it.
2.45. Stop at Brent Cross for some shopping.
4pm. Get home. Have a snack and start making dinner. Offload dishwasher and give the dishwasher a clean with the new fangled dishwasher cleaner. The jury is out on that product. Sucker for advertising, me!
6pm. Where has all the time gone? In the last 2 hours, I have cooked dinner, laid out some clothes and downloaded, formatted orders for packing and printed out labels. Sent emails etc. Did some grocery shopping on Tesco.com. Absolute Godsend.
DH and daughter arrived around 6.30pm. Dinner and some writing practice for Lopes and TV on in background.
8pm. Lopes and I had a long soak in the bath. What decadence! Dragged wrinkly selves out of bath at around 8.45 after topping up bath twice with more hot water.
9pm. Story and bed for Lopes. Sang three verses of Harry Belafonte’s Try to remember. This has been Lopes’ lullaby for about a year now!
9pm – 11pm. Pack orders, weigh orders and stamp orders. Put in mail bag for mailman (DH) to take to post office tomorrow.
11pm. Prayers and Sudoku and Bed.
Tuesday(Home day)
8.30 am. Wake up to kisses from Lopes. “It’s wake up time, Mummy!”
Quick shower and breakfast for Lopes. I have a shower while she eats breakfast.
9 – 10.30 Clear out kitchen and sitting room (We had decorators in last week) Get extra junk bagged and put in bin for bin men. Sorted some laundry.
10.45 Breakfast for me and then loaded clean dishwasher and loaded washing machine.
11.30– 12. Some writing for Lopes. Dot to Dot is such fun. Did some colouring and painting as well.
12.30. Off to Lopes Class
1pm. Drop Lopes off and as I have to pick her up at 2.30, I go to a friend’s house nearby. Leave at 2pm to get the bus on time. I will start driving soon, I promise :)
2.30. Pick Lopes up and head home. Take bus to station and taxi home. I could have gotten up 2 stops before the station and we could have walked home but Lopes fell asleep on the bus. I must start driving soon, please God.
3.30. Get home and get Lopes some Lunch.
4 – 5pm. Emails, orders, blog visits.
5pm. Get some soup out of freezer in readiness for dinner and then veg out in front of telly. Cbeebies is such fun! I am sure I watched some reruns of Diagnosis murder as well or was that a dream.
7pm. Dinner for DH, Lopes and I.
8pm. Bath and Bed for Lopes. Storybook( Emily’s busy day) I must wean her off this book. We have read it so many times but she won’t budge.
9pm. Go up to pack orders but needed some stock from shed. Gave up and went to bed instead. Read till about 11pm
Wednesday (Work day)
Same as Monday except for some reason, I was totally exhausted and left work at 1pm. Stopped at Brent Cross Marks and Sparks for some chicken etc and then came home. Dropped shopping and went to check on Old Lady across the street I had not seen for a while. She had apparently fallen down the stairs around 9 weeks ago (Shame, Kemi!!) so stayed and had a chat. Got back home around 3pm.
Came home and watched Columbo while eating lunch. Refused to get off the sofa till the end and then started making Dinner. I love M&S. Chicken, clean add ready to roast, veggies ready to microwave, stuffing ready to roast and mash potatoes all done. Perfect comfort food for wet weather.
6.30. DH and Lopes get back some
8pm. Lopes bed time routine. Tried a new book and failed.
9pm. Packed all the orders, weighed, stamped etc.
Was up till around midnight. Decided to do some admin and listing and stuff.
Thursday (My day off)
8am. Got out of bed and crept downstairs to put clothes in drier, from Tuesday, and more washing in machine. Laid out breakfast for Lopes
8.30am, Woke Lopes up and got her ready for nursery. Shooed DH and Lopes out as fast as I could.
9.30am. Quiet, peace at last. Put doors on my new workstation which is great. You put all your junk in and then you can close the doors and everywhere looks tidy. I love Ikea. Spent the next 5 hours (I kid you not!) sorting out the sitting room. All Lopes toys go in bottom of workstation, books on top and the middle section has my laptop, printer and all my business bits and bob. Packed a whole box of toys for the loft and another box of Hubby’s tools.
2.30. Sit down to breakfast or should I say lunch. Stay on Sofa after that till around 4pm. I have earned this break.
4 – 5pm. Wash bathroom, mop floor and intended to wash the kitchen floor. Gave up when I could not find the water compartment for the floor washer. Grrrr. I moved this when the painters came in and now cannot find the bits, Oh well.
5.30. Dinner. I love the fact that I got soup in the freezer from the caterer. Makes some days easier than some.
6.30. Day off over, DH and Lopes back.
DH gave lopes her dinner and a shower while I vegged out some more. She got a story but no bedtime song!
9pm. Hotel Babylon and Dinner and then bed.
Friday (Lopes and Mummy Day)
Forgot to pack orders last night so I packed them this morning.
No work, no nursery.
Did not log today as we played and watched videos and ate such junk food. Spent my day so inefficiently, I loved it! Read and napped and surfed and emailed and caught up on phone calls and admin etc.
Summary
Must be an African thing but it’s usually me who does all the looking after my daughter and the house and I must admit that rankles a bit. Will I have another child???
Housework takes a lot of time so a cleaner might be on the cards once I get the house tidy enough!
TV
I have the attention span of a gnat. I have only watched about 5 programmes from start to finish this week. All others are on in the background. Even my favourites, CSI and all other detective and forensics programmes are being relegated. I find www.tv.com invaluable as I read up on the storylines I have missed.
Business
I must find an efficient way to answer customer emails. They just ask stupid questions sometimes!! Need to do some more market research and supplier info etc. Need more time. Might take a week off work and see what I can come up with.
DH
We do not spend enough time together as a couple. Hmmm. Babysitting anyone?
10 comments:
... and who got her 'Emily's Busy Day'?
Of course you will have another child... that too is an African thing. I'm happy to swap Saturday baby sitting/date nights with you.
So interesting to read. Glad you decided to try it - it does help in giving you a visual of how you use your time. My sista, me too I have been scratching my head over how come I get stuck with doing the bulk of looking after our daughter. I don't think it's an African thing though because I have none African friends who complain about exactly the same thing.
I work part time as well! So we have that in common. I'm really interested in your online retail business - what do you sell and any links? {if you don't mind sharing that is :-) }
Have a great week
Omara darling...
i truly understand o...even with 2 jobs, i still have to come home and do grocery/cook/run bath/read several stories/run through activity for the day etc...
i think its a woman thing period...not necessarily african!
re another child...thats a decision only you can make!!! I know my answer to that is HELL NO!! i am done with my 1!!!
oh boy, just reading the blog made me dizzy!
It also made me curious about all these packages you are sending off...
What's the business about...
On looking after a child....it will always be seen as the woman's job unless the couple makes a conscious effort to reverse roles.
At one of these women in business events, one of the female CEOs there said one of the reasons she was successful in her role was the fact that her husband had a less stressful and more flexible job.
On the time log, both you and pilgrimage to self make me feel really lazy cause all I seem to do after work is loaf in front of the TV and surf...and maybe occasionally cook and clean.
Thanks Kemi for your comments... I will get in touch
End of April...no problem at all.
@Omara, Will be getting another copy as the book is getting a bit tired.
@PTS. Great idea of yours. I still keep a mini log so I can see what I am doing or not doing with my time. Working parttime is such a misnomer, just means DH thinks I have more time for cooking, housework and childcare! Link to my shop is www.organzabags.co.uk (Definitley don't mind sharing :)
@bluntremi. I for vex that you are calling me Omara but I know you a busy and it is a compliment really :)
@Roz. I am in vegging out mode at the moment. I think I have a bit of my daughter's bug so we are both resting :) Shop is www.organzabags.co.uk. Trying to get my website off the ground as well.
@lolaojiks. Thanks for visiting and the lovely comments. Don't feel lazy, I definitely have weeks, nay months, where my log will read, eat, sleep ad infinitum! Batteries need recharging
Thanks! You prevailed where no one is yet to! Yup! You made me all broody and now I want my own baby and Man and still be a super woman! You made is sound so easy and so pleasing. This is how it should be, really. I just marvelled at how swift it all went you know, no hickups. And aren#t you just grateful for the dishwasher? I have to get one for meself pronto!
I luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurve your blog!
Came over from the referrals link on my site meter. I love Hotel Babylon too.
Babysitting Saturday nights huh? No Way!! LOL!!! My time log would be a lot shorter only it would have loads and loads of hrs spent in front of PC catching up on blogs after work. Does that have anything to do with the fact that I've got no young un demanding my unconditional attention yet? LOL!!
Loving ur blog. Will be back.
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