Balance

Dinner seems to be getting later in our house, which is not good. Kids are getting grumpy because they are hungry, and then grumpier because they are later to bed. We are finding it so hard to get into a good routine in the late afternoon, and it feels like things are slipping rather than getting better.

We moved down here to have a more relaxed and simple life, and in some ways it is. But there is also a lot more to do and a lot more to contend with throughout the day. We have chickens and pigs to feed. There is a much bigger garden to deal with (and more vegetables etc too). Doing just about anything takes longer because of the distances involved. In our house, the kitchen is badly designed, and the stove is terrible so cooking just takes longer. There is no storage so everything is squirreled away in small drawers and cupboard all over the place (rather than one nice large pantry). The fact is that this house was built in the 1940’s and has not been updated much since then, so it is not really suited to our life.

I firmly believe that if things aren’t working, then it’s up to us to change so that they do work. We can’t change the house in a hurry, and I can’t move the farm closer to town, so in an effort to try and get things more on track, we have agreed that we will no longer start doing big jobs after 5pm. No vacuuming the entire house, taking the garbage to the tip, quickly just bringing in a mob of sheep etc. We need 2 adults on deck to get dinner cooked and kids wrangled.

As daylight saving comes to an end, we will naturally start to come in earlier as it gets darker earlier, but we still need to make some changes for both us and the kids.

Any other good ideas to get us more on track???