Sound Familiar?

Have you heard anyone say "I need a vacation from my vacation?" That about sums up where I am at today. I need a weekend from my weekend!

Even the most organized (me) find they aren't the most organized all the time. I had a great start to my weekend on Friday afternoon after meeting a high school friend who I haven't seen in 20 years! Yikes, 20 years! We re-connected via Facebook, how cool is that? It was a 3 1/2 lunch reunion and the best time I spent on myself all week. It was "good-for-the-soul" time!

Now, my time "mis"management starts. My biggest challenge for the weekend was to get a mailing out for my speaker-client. I had a 700 piece mailing that had to get out in Saturday's mail. Out of the 700 pieces I had 300 printed, collated, stuffed, stamped and sealed. A good start but I still 400 to get done. Upon my return from my re-union lunch I was still waiting for the remainder of the letterhead to arrive via UPS from the printer. This would have been a quite easy task to get the mailing completed if that was all that I had to do once the letterhead arrived! But by now my internal stress thermometer was at a 9 out of a 10. My children needed me, my husband was having his own reunion with a long lost friend, my daughter had a friend over, no plans for dinner were in the works, and I still had to purchase gifts for 2 kid-birthday parties for Saturday morning and it was already 6:00 pm. Good Govenor.

Anyone who works in or out of the home can relate to the Friday night I had. Needless to say it was a very late night and thankfully, after successfully bribing my husband to collate, stuff, stamp and seal 400 envelopes with me until 1:30 am, it got done. All tasks were complete, but I--okay we-- were exhausted.

Did I learn a lesson or two from this experience? Oh yeah, a whole slew of them. For starters, I should have looked at my Saturday schedule earlier in the week to get the gifts for the parties. Next, I should have ordered letterhead and told the printing company that my "absolute need it by" date was a week prior to when I actually needed it. Additionally, I should have given my husband a heads up on what I needed to accomplish and would require him to be on kid and dinner duty (not his fault, I love being on kid duty, so it is hard to pass this off to him to stuff envelopes!) Finally, I should have recruited four friends to come over to help me with the mailing. I could have bribed them with Sangria, chocolate, anything so my envelope stuffing time was cut in half!


If all of your weekends sound like this, let's figure out a way to avoid this in the future. Here are some things I normally do (but didn't do this weekend)!

1. Look at your whole week calendar, not just a day at a time

2. When relying on others in order for you to meet deadlines, set their deadlines a week before you actually need something (i.e. me needing letterhead from the printer)

3. Give your spouse a head's up on what you need from them so they can adjust their schedule

4. Avoid overbooking your time, your kids and family time

Weekends are to reset your clock, relax and enjoy the fresh air!

Make your week Simply Amazing!