Can you please help me organise my life. I am so overwhelmed and ignoring everything.

[FailingAtAllOfIt]

I need to support my 2 youngest children with school as they are really not progressing at school as well as they should be. Not achieving expected attainment or whatever you call it.

I am doing a course which I have completely checked out of because I became I am so behind in work and the course coordinator emailed today asking if I am still doing it.

I hate cooking and so every night I just get some crap from the supermarket / takeaway / insert some other crap.

My house is tidy but not clean as I would like it and it really stresses me out.

I have no dp.

I am so overwhelmed that I am just not doing anything and instead wasting my time online. The more I have to do the more I don't do anything!

@FailingAtAllOfIt that sounds a good plan.

When I did CBT, part of it was to write a plan for each day and I really relate to that feeling of emptying it out of your head onto the paper.

Don't throw your phone in the river or you won't be able to update us! Pout it on a high shelf of something 🙂

Oh and appreciate the small things you have done!
everyone has a uniform ready for school this morning? Win! Appreciate it & congrtualte yourself (not with chocolate then you’ll need to lose weight too)

Five disciplines needed here:

1. Meal Planning + online shopping. Book Thursday evening in your diary every week to do it, after the kids have gone to bed (on the assumption you book a slot for Friday, so Thursday is when you finalise your list)
2. Write a list of all the household jobs that need doing then each day pick two/three things from it and focus on those.
3. if any jobs feel like big/hard jobs say you’ll get 10 minutes done per day and see how many times you can manage a ten minute section in a day
4. With helping your kids, first book meetings with their teachers to establish how best to help them, then arrange evenings so your kids each have twenty minute slots with you each night to work on their own areas 1-2-1. They’ll be too tired for more than that, and you can do a lot in twenty minutes.
5. Some of your kids are old enough to help with chores. Set up a rota and stick to it. Privileges are earned through chores.

Are your kids happy, OP? School stuff aside, btw you could ask the school what THEY intend to do about those issues, because they also have a responsibility to help your kids.

I agree With meal planning. It takes the mental load off - no daily question of ‘what to buy? What to cook?’ Clears headspace.
better still - if you can afford to - subscribe to something like hello fresh / meal delivery service.
it’s expensive but even if you do two nights a week for eg, it will ensure you have a healthy meal which is easy to cook and everything in stock for.
i’d ditch the course - or ask to pause it until you are in a better head space.
Use the time to help your kids with their homework / reading. But don’t sweat it - if it doesn’t get done - so what. Your children will be fine.
be disciplined with your phone / time on line. It can be a huge form of dissociation (as others have said - it’s. Its not laziness - it’s hiding because your overwhelmed) - but it doesn’t serve you. Allow yourself a set limit a day - and try and stick to it.
im going to try and do some of these things too. Your not alone

Hi OP, I have not a lot of practical advice, but I am a procrastinator and avoider which sometimes might affect my work. The technique that helped me is called a Pomodoro technique. You can Google it and even find a timer on the web when you Google. https://pomofocus.io/ The idea is that you plan a task and set a timer for 25 minutes. Focus only on that task. After the buzzer goes, you take 5 minute break. You then may repeat 25min if the task is not completely finished.
It can be really overwhelming sometimes, but I find Pomodoro really rewards me as I feel a achieved when I tackled something I was putting off. This may work well with homework/school support for your children as well. Good luck!

Oh, another tip for phone usage. There is an app called hold. You earn points for not using your phone. Also fairly rewarding and helpful to me with Pomodoro. 😀

Start small.
Each child must have jobs.

my 8 ds is responsibility for the washing. He was told how to do it and now does it when asked. He takes the clothes into utility sort a dark wash and puts it on then after 1.30 he takes it out and puts the next light one on and then returns the wash basket.
he also keeps his room tidy. He feeds to dogs in the morning and evening. He also empties the bathroom bin and his bin into the main huge kitchen bin. The opens the curtains in his room the lounge and the kitchen in the morning and shuts them at night.

my 15 dd is responsible for putting all the washing up away. Hanging all the clothes on the line and bringing them and the pegs in the putting them in the right persons room. She also hoovers them kitchen, hall way and lounge once a week. The cleans the dog water Bowls daily and puts out all the recycling and puts the bins at the bottom of the drive.

both get their uniform ready the night before and snack etc

so me - I help them strip and make their beds. I sort out the mental load and diary and lifts. I cook the meals and I do the washing up.

they have a cooked meal at school - so normally we have a light tea except the weekend. The kids are both happy with a nice soup and toasted sandwich in the week for tea. Other easy wins are omelettes, etc
about this time of year we have a slow cooker feast. Chicken various vegetables etc left on overnight (if from frozen) on low or in the morning is not frozen meat. Or sausages etc.
I do a huge one and we have it over two nights with rice and then mashed potatoes. Etc

in terms of work both of mine I crack the whip and do multiple activities and hobbies during the week but they do this by conditioning now.
youngest does a page of handwriting day - he does it before or after breakfast same with English and timetables.
we read together.

m there is no tv Monday to Friday none.

me - I do the garden, car, walk the dogs , washing up and clean the bathroom and kitchen

I get like this. I have ADHD (only discovered as an adult) and I just can't stay on top of life admin, it all builds up and gets overwhelming and then I seem to feel like I get on top of it and then it just all suddenly seems to build up in no time at all and I feel like I'm drowning again.

But this is what has helped me:

• Prioritise. You can't improve everything at once, it's too much. Pick three areas to focus on/improve and cut absolutely everything else down to the bare minimum. Drop the guilt on everything else. It helps.
• Simplify. For example, for household stuff it's easier to keep clean and tidy if you have less stuff. You don't have to be a minimalist or anything, just have the amount of stuff you can actually handle. I've been listening to Dana K White's podcasts and she is great for anyone who is overwhelmed by just "ordinary" cleaning. Another example: I only cook with fresh meat 2x per week. Sometimes once. That means that I am less likely to forget to use it and let it go bad. The rest of the time, we eat something that is long-life (shelf/cupboard stable, like pesto, tuna, jarred sauce, chickpeas, frozen nuggets, frozen pizza, frozen salmon fillets etc) or something that lasts a bit longer than a week in the fridge, such as eggs, mushrooms, other veg, or already-cooked meat.
• Outsource. That might mean asking family members if anyone can sit with the kids 1x per week and work on maths. Or looking at seeing if there is an online course (Khan Academy? Hairy Letters?) that is appealing to them and might help. Is your kids' dad/dads around? The worrying about their schooling should not all be on you. Also, going back to food - spending a bit more on stuff like pre-prepared veg or pre-cooked chicken is worth it if it means that you actually eat that stuff, instead of leaving it in the fridge to go mouldy and then throwing it away.

For the phone, there are lots of things now which can help reduce and manage screen time. You may even have "screen time" settings which can allow you to set a max limit (per app or generally). That will send you a notification to remind you or you can set it to totally lock.

Turn notifications off on all apps so you only see them when you open the app. Also the "red dots". These are in settings somewhere.

Consider setting your phone to greyscale as that makes it less rewarding to your brain.

Move the icons around and take distracting apps off your home screen. It helps break the automatic thumb memory loop. Even consider removing the app(s)?

Try to redesign your phone as a productivity helper, with tools that are helpful (calendar, chore app, to do list, shopping list?) visible on the home screen as widgets.

Also recently listened to the How to keep house when drowning" by KC Davis audiobook after a recommendation on here. For me or wasn't so much the housekeeping hacks more the attitude adjustment that helped from that.

I find listening to things helps me get through jobs too. She makes a good point about not taking on a massive reorganization project when you are already overwhelmed, that would have been my go to before. A thought process of it's messy, I need to minimise and getting distracted with that