Never ending chores - when do you do them?

[MaverickSnoopy]

Our life feels so full on and we're both exhausted. For some context. DH works full time and is on his feet all day and I work 20 hours a week from home. I am however in the process of retraining as a childminder and so setting up my own business (as well as currently about to launch an entirely separate blog) - but both of these are a bit on the back burner because of said busy life. I am also expecting DC3 so pretty tired at the moment.

I fit in most housework during my non working time and that is left to do at the weekend is a bit of washing and usually food shopping. To add to this list we usually do garden related things at the weekend and any house maintenance tasks. DH is great and cooks dinner 3 weeknights (when I am working) and either 1 or 2 weekend nights, he sorts the bins and does the hoovering. He also sorts packed lunches. I do all of the life admin (finances/meal planning/present organisation/holiday plannning/clothes etc). I feel like we have a good split and we are both mostly happy with what we each take on.

What we are not happy with is the relentlessness of it all. We feel as if we never stop and that we never sit down. DH who is on his feet all day for work especially feels this. Other people don't seem to be so busy all the time. His work colleagues have commented that he uses his lunch break to make phone calls to sort out tasks (organise doctors/call garage about car etc), in a sort of "we feel sorry for you sort of way" and most of our friends are out at the weekends with their children doing fun things but we really struggle to fit this in.

So what I'd like to know is how you organise your time? I am an incredibly organised person (DH says too organised and perhaps this doesn't help with how much there is to do) and have a good system in place to help me plan/track/organise. It's just that I'm starting to wonder if I'm not organising my/our "time" in the right way.

Apologies if there are no paragraphs. My phone occasionally decides they're not needed. Although I promise I have used them!

I think you are both being quite ambitious- you need (together) to look at your big list and choose one or at most two things which you are going to push forward on.
So- pressure washing and childminder trying. That's it. You've chosen your two and the rest wait!

(We are the same as you, except my DP ends up drifting into working in the evenings if I am not standing there going "what's on the list! What do we absolutely need to do this evening!" I am not good at following my own advice...)

Also don't underestimate the amount of work you are going as chief of life admin!!
And yeah "those" people have cleaners and grannies and childcare and au pairs and get a man in (which takes admin...)

Well how I do it is I put a value on my time and this helps me justify outsourcing services. I am an economist so this is just how I think. My 'price' is $50 per hour. If something like supermarket shopping is taking 1.5 hours off my weekend then that's worth $75 to me. I'd rather pay an extra $0 - $74.99 for an online delivery and have that time back. Same goes with cleaners. If it's saving me an hour and a half then I'm happy to pay for the privilege. I work, DH works, we have three kids and time is valuable.

This period in your life where your kids are small and you're just racing, racing, racing is hard. But it's short. So take the small hit in your finances, get some help in and win at life.

In summary, FGS pay a man to come and spray-clean your deck. It might cost you a few quid but you'll be so relieved it's done and you will be free to enjoy your kids. Time is precious!