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Subject: |
Why You Can't Get Anything Done |
| Date: |
2008-11-17
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Why You Can't Get
Anything Done
Real Life Support for Moms
By Melissa Stanton
www.lifesupportformoms.com
Have you ever asked
yourself, "Do I Have ADHD?" It's a thought that crosses the minds of
many stay-at-home moms. Why? Because they think about the number of
chores they need to do but don't get to, or the projects they start but
don't finish, or the tasks they actually do but don’t do well.
"I don't have a job. I'm home all day," you may tell yourself. As such,
you think you should be able to complete a simple task like sorting
through the bags of hand-me-downs your neighbor dropped off. But you
can't get to it. Or you actually do start working through the clothes,
but by day's end your bedroom is filled with piles of clothing, which
your kids then find and jump in. Since you now have to sort all over
again, you herd the clothes into a large pile for dealing with on
another day.
When your husband sees the mess and asks, "Why did you start sorting
the clothes if you weren't going to finish it?" or "What's so hard
about sorting clothes?" you either get really angry or you can't
answer, because you can't think of a good reason why you didn't finish
the job. You hadn't left the house all day, except to drive the
three-year-old to and from preschool, and later to meet your
kindergartner at the bus stop. You haven't even made dinner, because
you've been so busy sorting the clothes. What happened? What happened
is that instead of accomplishing a big task, you've performed dozens of
tiny, uninspiring, seemingly meaningless tasks and chores and errands,
each of which took a little bit of time but, when added together,
consumed the entire day.
For instance, imagine you’re at your computer, trying to pay bills
online while your toddler is entertaining herself nearby with toys.
About five minutes into the banking your child approaches you with a
runny nose:
- You get up from your chair to get a tissue.
- You return to your child and wipe her nose.
- You see that your child's shirt is messy, as are your fingers.
- You remove the child's shirt.
- You go to the kitchen sink to wash your hands.
- The sink has dishes in it, so you rinse the dishes to put them in
the dishwasher.
- But the dishwasher is full of clean dishes. So you empty the
dishwasher and then fill it with dishes from the sink.
- You tell your child to play with her toys while you go upstairs
and get her another shirt.
- On the way, you toss the shirt into the laundry room.
- Passing the bathroom, you realize you actually need to use the
bathroom. You do, and you use up the toilet paper.
- You go to the hall closet and get more toilet paper.
- You return to the bathroom to replace the roll.
- The bathroom trash is full, so you grab the bag and replace it
with another.
- You go to your child's room to find a new shirt.
- While there, you see that a sippy cup, full of milk, is in her
bed, and that she’s left a wet overnight diaper on the floor.
- You put the diaper in the trash bag you're carrying. (Wow, that
was efficient!)
- You make your daughter's bed and gather the sippy cup.
- On the way back downstairs you pass the laundry room and realize
you should do a load of wash.
- You open the washing machine to discover there's a wet load
inside.
- You start to put those wet clothes into the dryer but the dryer
is full.
- You pull the clean clothes out of the dryer and put them in a
basket.
- You put the wet clothes in the dryer.
- You put the dirty clothes in the washing machine and start a wash.
- Since you don't have time now to sort the clean clothes, you
leave the basket of clean laundry on top of the dryer.
- Back in the kitchen, you put the sippy cup into the dishwasher.
- You try to shove the bathroom trash into the kitchen garbage but
the pail is full.
- You take the all the trash to the garbage cans in the garage.
- You come back into the house and put another bag in the kitchen
trash container.
- You find your child.
- Her nose is running again, she has gotten into the bills and
papers you were working with, she needs a diaper change and it’s
lunchtime.
How much time did it take to wipe that
child's nose? Fifteen minutes? Twenty minutes? A half hour? Imagine
variations on this scenario playing out dozens of times a day. Imagine
that same scene, except with additional offspring in the house. You're
not incompetent, and you don't have ADHD. You have children!
Melissa Stanton is the author of The
Stay-at-Home Survival Guide: Field-tested strategies for staying smart,
sane, and connected while caring for your kids, published by
Seal Press/Perseus Books (www.stayathomesurvivalguide.com). Prior to
becoming an at-home mother of three, Stanton was a senior editor at
LIFE and People magazines.
Her articles have appeared in The
New York Times, Glamour, Parenting and MotherVerse, among other
publications. She is the founder and editor of "Real Life Support for Moms" - (www.lifesupportformoms.com) and lives with her family outside of
Washington, D.C. Permission
granted for use on DrLaura.com.
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