Things Are Not As They Appear

I generally consider myself a glass half-full kind of girl. I am usually optimistic and tend to search for the silver-lining in every situation. The other day while chatting with a friend about the many things we have to do to run a household I realized that this is one area where my glass is half empty. I spend my day reflecting on the many things I am NOT doing rather than focusing on the things I actually accomplish.

I think this stems from running a household that consists of 8 people and two cats. I am never DONE with all I want to accomplish and when I focus on that I become discouraged and frustrated and tend to take it out on my family.

After my conversation with Kariann where she mentioned all the things she had done that day I decided I needed to shift my focus and inventory the things I actually do get done and where they are taking our family.

So, here's a fun list of everything I did yesterday:

Exercised
Drove Eli to Seminary
Made Breakfast
Did two loads of laundry
Prayed
Read Scriptures
Read Scriptures with Jack
Listened to a great talk on scripture study on my ipod.
Cleaned out my side of the closet and filled two bags of donations to our YW garage sale
Had a visit from my visiting teachers
Straightened main floor of the house
Made dinner
Made homemade icecream
Went on a Relief Society Visit
Attended Eli's student led conference at the school
Volunteered with Emma at the Ronald McDonald House
Family Scripture Study
Read to the kids

For the past couple of months I've been focusing on prioritizing my daily duties. I went to a great Relief Society training meeting in SLC right before general conference and Sister Beck talked about the three ways we can prioritize our lives. She again spoke about this very thing at BYU's women's conference and I was struck by it both times. Here are the categories:

1. Things that are ESSENTIAL:
prayer, scripture study, service to others, sharing the gospel, attending the temple, etc.
2. Things that are NECESSARY:
preparing meals, smiling, showing love to children, laundry, running our households, living within our means, preparedness, family activities and family home evening.
3. Things that are FUN TO DO:
hobbies, going to lunch, shopping, movies, basically anything that doesn't save us. (I love that definition)

As I shifted my priorities I initially felt like I was getting less done because it was a huge shift for me to really do things in the right order. But now that I've been doing this daily prioritizing for about 6 weeks now I feel like things are starting to fall into place and there is a snowball effect happening and I am able to get more done each day by doing it in the right order.

It's so easy to look at the backpacks and socks on the floor or the pile of school papers on the table or the dishes on my counter and feel like I'm spinning my wheels. But I need to remember that things aren't always as they appear and the best work we do can't always be seen or measured.