Do you ever have a question of fit?

Do you ever have a question of fit? Fit is a major issue in my life. I have a purse that I LOVE. The problem is, my IPhone 6+ doesn’t fit in it. I can’t think of a time when I’m going to use my purse when I don’t need my phone. The only time I don’t need my phone is when I’m swimming… (perhaps a water proof case could help here?). When I am out, I need to be available in case my kids need something, like if my mother has trouble and they needed to contact me. Or my car can alert me when someone breaks in. (Now I wonder if my car does that or did I just make that up… that could be a helpful feature with all the break-ins in San Francisco.)

Here is my purse that requires LOTS of editing.

Here is what is my every day purse stuffed as usual.

It is obvious that everything will not fit in my little red bag.

My daily summer tote is in the back. All the stuff I lug with me everyday to make sure I have whatever I might need while chauffeuring my kids around. I look at it as my portable life. My jacket in case we go to San Francisco and it’s cold, a baseball hat (a basic necessity), a book, a project I am working on, a snack, extra glasses for reading in the sun (sans prescription), etc…

There is just no way I am going to get all that into my stylish little bag. I need Hermione’s bag… remember that bag from the Harry Potter movies? She had room for absolutely EVERYTHING. I need a magical bag like that.

What about my life? How can I fit everything I want to do into my day? Right now my days feel like the little purse… I want to do so much more, but I can’t fit everything in. I have read about these “miracle mornings”. I am a lover of mornings– but mornings come at a price. If I want to wake up at 5:00am and be super productive: meditate, exercise, eat a healthy breakfast, and get on with my day, what time do I have to do to bed? Remember, sleep is one of the three fundamental necessities in life: sleep, eat, move. The vast majority of people need 7.5-8 hours of sleep. I’ve read that less than 1% of us can continue to be productive with less than that amount of sleep*. That means bed by 9:30 max!!!  If you’re used to going to bed at 10:30-11pm, you lose 1-1-1/2 hours of time. It’s suppose to be ok, because you tack it on the other end of the day, but the things I’m doing at night aren’t the things I would be doing in the AM. When I am tired, laundry is easier to do, folding, ironing, etc. Oh. Maybe you don’t do your own laundry so that’s not how you use your time. When I am not doing laundry, I catch up on computer time, or read a book. I’m not a TV watcher so I have no idea what is going on with Game of Thrones or Modern Family. (Unless of course Grace and Frankie have a new season… Love that show!) More importantly, evenings are a time to catch up with my husband and the kids. If that time is no longer available because I have to get to bed because I’m going to have a “miracle morning”, what becomes of that precious time with them?

Miracle mornings come at a cost of lost nights. So how do we fit it all in?

The answer is not a larger bag because longer days are not an option. Editing is the solution. Editing is necessary as is prioritizing. Losing the Boy Scout mandate to always be prepared. How can we always be prepared when our bag has limited capacity? What are our priorities?

These issues come up as we prepare for the new school year. Now my 16 year old girls will leave at 6:45 am and get home at 7pm. That means dinner from 7:30 to 8:30pm. Then homework. If they can get to bed by 10:30 that’ll be a miracle evening! Realistically, 11:30. Then up at 6am. That’s 6-1/2 hours of sleep. Clearly not enough for growing minds and bodies. What’s going to give? Dinner with the family? Eat on the bus on the way home? (So not happening…)

And what about me? If the kids need to be up at 6am, then breakfast needs to be ready to go by 6:20. Which means I need to be in the kitchen by 6am to get that set up. This means I definitely need to wake up at 5 to get in my meditation, shower and dress before the kids get up. So bed for me has to be at 9:30pm. Otherwise I’ll be dysfunctional. For me, the kids are the priority. Meditation is the priority. These schedules are like putting a puzzle together…finding all of the right pieces and putting them in the right places. With 6 people, this is not an easy puzzle. And as a mom, my pieces seem to come last… I do remember the airline advice: put my mask on first. Take care of myself first. The question is: What does taking care of myself entail?

It entails going to bed at 9:30. Not to have some sort of “miracle morning”, but a basic necessity morning: meditate, get the kids and husband fed and out the door, get my mom to church, clean up the chaos, and progress on with my day. That will be the Mom’s Miracle Morning: a miracle if it all gets done and I don’t lose my sanity in the process.

I know what you are thinking… I can hear the voice in the back of my head speaking for you: “let the kids get their own damn breakfast. They can get themselves up and out of the house. You are creating this stressful morning yourself by trying to be the ‘miracle mom’ who gets it all done!”

To that I say “OUCH!”. I think of myself as a slacker mom. I’m not the mom baking fresh cookies for my kids. I’m not the mom preparing delicious gourmet meals for my family. I’m not the mom who anticipates all of their needs and miraculously have it in my (Hermoine) tote bag. No. I’m a mom who wants a miracle morning for my kids so they can start the day on the right foot. Give them some protein and hot tea prepared with love. I can at least remind them to bring their tennis socks and a towel for after water polo. I can ask if they’ve remembered to pack their homework.

It’s the small things that make us a family. Time together. Research shows (again with the research?) that families who eat meals together are more likely to have kids who well grounded*. That is something I can do to make a difference in their lives. We can have meals together. We can fit that in most of the time. We can wait for the girls to get home from school to have dinner. We can wait so everyone can be together, be a part of Team Bjorklund. That is the price of success in the parenting department for me. Gourmet meals, no. Dinner together, yes. Breakfast together, yes.

Sacrifices are what it takes to fit it all in. People who are not parents don’t understand the choices. They don’t understand the real costs. A miracle morning is a morning when we all get to sit at the table together and have our tea and prepare for our day. The conversation is not deep, but we are there for each other, supporting each other, loving each other as we at the same time harass or nag each other about the little details of the day, the week, the month. This is our time together.

And it passes too quickly… the girls will be off to college… and then the three of us will sit at the table… then two of us. The time goes so fast. We have to enjoy our time together. Sit together and eat the slightly burnt toast smothered in jam.

We can fit in what’s important and that’s what’s important for me.

What’s important for you? Are you making your decisions every day based on what’s important for you in the long term? Make sure you know your overriding priority so it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle of chaos of daily life. Don’t miss the precious moments with your kids because you are so busy with things that don’t really matter in the long run.

What fits in should be what matters most. Stick with the essentials. And toss it into the tote bag of your life.

Notes

1. National Sleep Foundation said teens need between 8-10 hours of sleep to function at their best.
2. American Academy of Sleep Medicine says adults need 7+ hours of sleep a night to function at the optimal level.
3. Anne Fishel of Harvard Medical School has written extensively on the importance of family meal time together.
4. Miracle Mornings, by Hal Elrod.
5. If you are interested in meditation, you can join my 21-day mom’s motivating meditation challenge which begins September 10. It will help you develop a meditation practice. If you want to find out more about it, ping me back and I will put you on the list! It includes information about meditating, the benefits, different methods, and a chart for the challenge.  Contact me at info@aliciaberberich.com.