{keeping house and LAST DAY TO ENTER GIVEAWAY!!!}

Aside before I start my post for today:  TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO ENTER THE PURPLE AURA JEWELS GIVEAWAY ON MY BLOG!  Go here and leave a comment so you can have a chance of winning a STUNNING piece of jewelry from my friend's collection.   

Now on to today's story:

My husband and I got married in August.  It was a glorious day full of joy and merriment.  After our wedding, I was fortunate enough to have a whole month off (no school, no work) to just be a wife.  It was so amazing.  I had absolutely every single meal cooked and ready for my husband--a hot breakfast everyday, a sack lunch to take to work, and a nice dinner on the table when he got home.  I was getting our apartment all set up, everything was always clean AND I got to watch tons of tv and read tons of books.  It was basically my ideal life.  

I started looking a little something like this.

...and this.

and our apartment was looking something like this (this is not my apartment, by the way...this was taken from the Container Store website...it is for illustration purposes only.  Isn't it beautiful?  :))

So then in October, I started working.  I was SO excited to finally be earning an income after, count them, 20 years of school.  Managing life (housekeeping, exercise, etc.) and work was going really well at first.  I was still making a good effort to get up in the mornings and make breakfast and attempting to make dinner at night.  Our apartment was staying pretty clean and I was continuing to get organized.  I was SO proud of myself for being able to maintain this elusive work-life balance.  I was even exercising on a regular basis--in the mornings with my husband and sometimes even in the evenings with my friend Kristin.  Go me!

But then, something weird happened.  This is how I would describe it--it's sort of like when someone has a really bad injury and they are so traumatized that they don't even feel the pain at first.  And then, hours later, the adrenaline from the trauma wears off and all of a sudden they realize that their leg has been chopped off and they start freaking out.  Yeah, that's what happened to me.  Okay, well, maybe I'm being a bit extremely dramatic.  But for real...I started realizing that this was just not sustainable.  (And everyone reading this who has worked for more than 8 months now has my permission to say "duh, Katherine.")  While I would like to appear as though I'm a behind-the-scenes Martha Stewart all the time, I have to say that it's really hard to be a good attorney (oh, p.s. that's what I do for a living) and be super wife too.  And let's face it, I'm just starting my career.  I have a lot to learn, and that requires putting in a lot of hours and a lot of focus and attention to my job.  

So, my house started looking something more like this...

haha, just kidding. It's not that bad.  But I do really love Whataburger and ate a lot of it there for a while. Pic came from this article. 

To make a long story short (let's be honest, this story has already been too long), I had to get it together.  If you have ever met me in person, one thing you will certainly know about me is that I have some obsessive compulsive tendencies.  I am very particular about where things go, how they're placed and whether they coordinate.  This whole nutso housekeeping situation was driving me batty.  So I came up with a plan.  I wrote down a list of all the things that needed to get done around the house and I assigned each task a day over a two-week period.  I figured that if I had a plan, then things would actually get done and I wouldn't have anxiety about not doing a bunch of household stuff when I got home each day.  And guess what?  IT WORKED!  (I'll do another post at some point to give you my plan.)

But, just as is characteristic of life, not everything always goes according to plan.  I have started to slack on my daily duties and over this past weekend, I was just overwhelmed by how much needed to be done.  I convinced myself to get off the sofa and do most of it, but really...some days I just wish we lived in Jetson times and could have a robot housekeeper to make all the mess go away.  

What do you do to keep up with the balance of home and work?

haha, awesome.