For many of us, it was the dream — working from home.

“Ah, I can put the laundry forward, throw something in the crockpot, and gently guide my children toward adulthood while putting in many productive hours at the computer!   It’s perfect.”

Even with all the warnings out there, the fantasy persists — possibly because, while it’s not even close to being so simple, working outside the home is no picnic either.

One way or another you have to keep the bills paid, food in bellies, children alive, pets fed, and clothes clean.  While working enough to pay for it all.

I tried for years to be a housewife who made money.  Then I tried to make money while also keeping up with the house.  I’m not sure there was any detectable difference in the two.   Maybe with the second one I stopped making pancake syrup and bread from scratch.

Anyway, regardless of how you try to manage it all, you may be feeling overwhelmed.  You may even have plummeted into full fledged despair.

The best advice I can give you is this:

Something’s gotta give.

Seriously, unless you can arrange to connect with the two quirky, mysterious old dudes that wander through the night dispensing super powers (and I’ve tried), you have absolutely no shot of being able to freeze time or give up sleep completely.  You get exactly 24 hours a day, and around 70-80 years of those days but no guarantee on that last part.  That’s how big your canvas is.

What’s worse, you have to use a third of your canvas for nothing — for sleep.  Such a wasted.  Believe me, I’ve fought this one.  You can resist for a while, but it always wins.  So if you get 90 years, you really only get 60 years plus 30 years of blank space used for sleeping. (What a RIP OFF).

Do I ever mention the necessity of sleep without going off on a little rant?

Anyway, make a list of all the things in your life that you have to do.  Write an estimate of how much time those things take you.  Remember to include sleep.

Now do math.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll see that you have too many minutes of things and too few hours of day.  That’s when I would always go back and start revising reality:   “Oh, come on — laundry doesn’t need to take four hours.  I can do it in two.  I’ll just . . . make the washer go faster.”

Spare yourself the decades of frustration that will bring you.  Because, for real, you can’t make the washer go faster.  Chances are, if you allotted three hours to finish your work project, it will take six.  That’s real life.

Instead of fighting it, accept it and deal with it head on.  Make tough decisions.  Borrow my wisdom, attained the hard way, instead of earning your own the hard way:

Figure out how much sleep you actually need.  Arrange your life so that you can sleep until you’re done sleeping.  That may mean going to bed earlier, or, like me, making sure that life doesn’t require anything of you until 10 am.  85% of the time, I set my alarm for 8 1/2 hours from whenever I go to bed.  I usually require 7 1/2 hours of sleep, but if I don’t leave enough time to fall asleep, I try to fall asleep quickly, which stresses me out and keeps me awake.
Sorry, but Number 2 is also about sleep.  There are a few people on the planet who only need 5-6 hours of sleep a night.  Statistically, you are almost certainly not one of them.  So . . . seriously.  You have to allot yourself enough time to sleep.  Sleep deprivation makes you dumb and fat.  Research supports this.  So does my personal anecdotal evidence.  Somehow, you have to find a way to be amazing in your life while still sacrificing close to a third of it to the darkness.
Television is the worst kind of time suck.  I’m not talking about your family’s Sunday night Walking Dead ritual.  Family time is everything.  I’m talking about you being tired (didn’t get enough sleep, huh?) and depleted from the sheer volume of your evening to-do list.  I’m talking about the mental and physical collapse that involves eating Oreos out of the package and watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that you’ve already seen four times.  If your days feel too short, turning off the TV might lengthen them by quite a bit.   (If I seem too holy here, remember I’m sharing wisdom gained by sad experience).
Decide what matters.  If you have a choice of cleaning the bathroom or snuggling with your kid, snuggle.  If you have a choice of marketing your company or scrubbing the kitchen floor, market.  If you have a choice of taking off for the weekend with your spouse or spring cleaning, take off.  It’s becoming evident that this tip is actually — work as hard as you can and hire help for the house as soon as you can afford it.
Trust yourself.  Like many people, I’m super sensitive to criticism.  I used to live for approval.  I wanted people to believe I was doing a good job with everything, that I was mature, a good mom, a good person.   That was then.  Disapproval still briefly jars me, but over time I’ve flexed my “trust myself” muscle a lot.  It’s the one and only way you can describe me as buff.  Check out these “trust myself” guns!  Mwah!

Life is so very short — it’s a shame if you waste some of it making the same mistakes I have.  Take what seems useful to you, and then maybe you’ll have more time to make mistakes that are uniquely your own.