Hey there, friends! Happy February and Happy 2021! Between the holidays and New Year scramble, I got a little out of my Coffee Break routine. But no worries! I’m back on schedule now, so you can look forward to these behind-the-blog breaks on the first Friday of each month. This time around, I’m chatting about my personal goals for 2021, my daily/weekly routine, and a new household item that has changed my life. So grab your favorite beverage and a snack, and let’s catch up!

Catch up on past Coffee Break posts HERE!

A Look at My (Personal) 2021 Goals

Back before the New Year, I sent out a Sunday Short newsletter titled: My Secret to Getting “Everything” Done. In that email, I shared my #1 tool for actually getting stuff done despite an often busy and chaotic life: PowerSheets. I’m not going to dive into why exactly I love this goal planning system so much or how I use it (because you can read that HERE), but I did want to show how my personal goals shaped up for 2021 (since a few of you asked!)

The beauty of the PowerSheets process is that you don’t randomly list out goals that sound good or right or trendy. Instead, you work through about 20 pages of prompts, reflections, and self study to truly uncover what, at your very core, you want to work toward each day, each week, and each month. I personally use my PowerSheets to track both work and personal goals; and many of my priorities this year ended up focusing on that elusive work:life balance.

After almost 10 years of being a Mom, I think I am finally recognizing (or giving myself permission to accept) that while my family is very important to me, so is my work. And I have learned that I simply cannot work and be Mom at the exact same time. Juggling the two together leaves me frazzled and stressed, and honestly doesn’t do justice to either my family or my tasks.

I inched closer to this self-realization in the last year, but now having fully accepted this about myself, almost every single one of my 2021 goals is somehow related to moving toward a place where I am either working or “Momming”…but not both at the same time.

There are two components to this overarching goal that go hand-in-hand. The first is increasing my dedicated work hours so that I can truly accomplish what I want and need to, without feeling the too-familiar pull to work during “off” hours. The other (more important!) part is finding ways to bring more value, peace, contentment, and joy to my non-working hours. It is my intention…as hard as I’m finding it some days right now…to pick up my phone and sneak off to my computer less and move, read, play, and interact more.

Our Daily/Weekly Routine

Quite a few of you asked about what my daily/weekly routine looks like; and on the heals of sharing my personal goals for the year, this seemed like a good time to dive into it!

I am very much a creature of habit (I literally eat the exact same things for breakfast and lunch every single day), and routines are my lifeline. While a life with kids can’t be 100% scheduled, here is what most of my weeks look like these days!

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (“Work Days”)

  • 6-7 am – Exercise (you can read more about my routine HERE)
  • 7-9 am – Get kids up and ready, breakfast for all, play and snuggle time…all while watching The Today Show (I think I have literally watched The Today Show every day of my life…even when I was little!)
  • 9-10 am – Take kids to school (on school days), shower up.
  • 10 am – 2 pm – A sitter watches the kids while I work. During these 4 hours, I primarily write blog posts and newsletters, work on projects, and take photos.
  • 2-4:30 pm – Nap time for the two little boys. I continue to work, and usually use these afternoon hours to answer emails, edit photos, finish up projects, etc.
  • 4:30-6 pm – Snack and play time, start making dinner. (During non-COVID life, this is usually when sports practices are.)
  • 6-7 pm – Family dinner.
  • 7-7:30 pm – Everyone works together to do dishes and tidy up the first floor (mainly: put toys away).
  • 7:30-8 pm – I handle bath and bed routine for the two little boys while Greg helps Henry with schoolwork, as needed.
  • 8-10 pm – Greg and I usually read or watch shows before heading up to bed right around 10.

Tuesdays and Thursdays (“Mom Days”)

Almost everything is the same except for these changes:

  • 7am – 2pm – Play, snacks, outside time, playdates…on repeat until nap time. When the little boys actually play by themselves, I can sometimes squeeze in simple/small projects like hanging pictures, cleaning out drawers, or running projects through the Cricut machine.
  • 2-4:30 pm – During nap time, I sit down to work for the first time all day. I primarily focus on answering emails and other easy stuff since my brain is usually scattered and fried after a whole morning with the kiddos.
  • 8-10 pm – Since I don’t work much during the day, I dedicate these two evenings to work, usually focusing on “back end” stuff like fixing broken links, optimizing old posts, updating photos, or working on the “business” side of the blog.

Weekends

  • Fridays are “Pizza & Movie Night” and are fairly sacred around here. We order the same thing every week from a local place, and the kids get to pick the movie. It’s usually a 50/50 chance that I make it through their selection without falling asleep!
  • Saturdays are usually reserved for “family fun” and bigger house projects that need more time or Greg’s help. We almost always grille dinner, making it another easy prep and cleanup night. Greg and I watch our own movie after the boys are in bed.
  • Sundays are our weekly prep day and includes grocery pickup, haircuts (Greg has to get one every week), laundry, picking up the house for the start of a fresh week, and leftovers for dinner. I usually spend nap time on Sundays checking in with my PowerSheets and planning out the upcoming week’s work and projects.

Professing My Love…for a Vacuum

I received a Christmas gift that has seriously changed my life. Friends…I’m talking about a robot vacuum. I’ll say it again: life.changing. Am I being a bit dramatic? Only slightly.

You see…I hate…like hate hate hate hate hate…crumbs on the floor. The look, the feel, the crunch, the mess…all of it. They drive me cra-zy. But I have three (messy) children; and I just don’t have it in me to clean my floors everyday. I jokingly told Greg what I really wanted for Christmas was a little elf who would vacuum my floors every night, and that’s exactly what Santa brought!

We now have our robot vacuum set to run each night while we’re putting the kids in bed. I come down, every night (and the following morning), to pristine floors. And it’s magical. I can’t overstate the difference it has made not just in the overall cleanliness of our house (everything just looks better with vacuumed floors, right?!), but in my mood too! I keep telling Greg that our little robot is seriously the gift that keeps on giving!

Ask Megan!

Curious about something…anything? Ask away in the form below, and I’ll answer in a future Coffee Break!

Thanks for catching up with me! Here’s to a great February!

See You Soon!
Megan