Time After Time
“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.” – Harvey Mackay
I taught the kids how to shuffle cards last month while we were on vacation. You know the way, where you stack them on top of each other and form a cool flippy bridge? They were enthralled and spent the entire week practicing.
This vacation turned out completely different than we planned. Zach and I were going to go to Hawaii together. Our first trip, just the two of us, in nearly a decade. We saved for nearly eight months and were so excited. Instead, we ended up driving 18 hours with four kids and my mother-in-law to South Carolina and it was better than I could have ever imagined.
It got me thinking a lot about how when everything is stripped down to the bare essentials you are given back your TIME.
“This is a wonderful day. I have never seen this one before.” – Maya Angelou
Zach and I have been on a minimalist journey for a few years now. We do good, then stop and suddenly our house is full again with things that don’t matter. Things that take away from our family time. Things that I have to manage, care for, keep track of, and clean.
Before this trip we spent a couple of months going through the whole house, basement and closets included. We pared the kids down to 7 outfits and 3 pajamas each, we went through the books, I went through every single thing of “mine” in this house until it all fit on the one (small) shelf of my closet. We took countless trips to Goodwill.
I just need you to know that paring our house down to the most important things has made so much difference to my own mental health. I am more present with my kids. Packing for the week long trip was a breeze. We had two duffle backpacks and one other small bag with diapers, wipes, binks, and a bottle. That’s all we brought. I packed for my whole family of six in a little over an hour. And my house was spotless when we left.
On top of getting rid of anything extra, we also implemented a cleaning schedule that is so simple to keep up on. Everyday, the kids and I work in a different room on top of each of us having regular daily chores we are responsible for. Altogether chores take us about 30 minutes a day (weekends are free!), but the difference in my home is life-giving. The kids take pride in our clean home and even if every single toy gets pulled out, when we band together, our house can be back to “mom’s standard” in about twenty minutes. Don’t get me wrong, my house still gets TRASHED, but it doesn’t take much to pull it back together and that is worth everything to my mental health.
“If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day ‘til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you”
I guess my point is, this mom thing is hard sometimes. It’s time consuming. But by figuring out what was important to me, what my goals were for myself and for my family, how I wanted my home to feel to my kids, the kinds of memories I wanted to make sure my kids had, and getting rid of anything that stood in the way of that, I’ve been given back my time. I’m chipping away at my goals again. We are planning trips and adventures again. We are saving money and teaching our kids that people and going on adventures together are more important than things. And also, that you really don’t need much to be happy and content. Now that all of the clutter is out, we have time to really enjoy our favorite things. My kids are playing again, really playing, and I am the relaxed mom I wanted to be all along.
