Y’all, why is it so hard to be a grown up?

Sometimes I feel like my life is one big to-do list that will never be completed, and if you’re a list-maker like me, you know that when you aren’t able to cross items off, you can start to feel defeated.

And lately I have been feeling defeated. Like I’m never going to get ahead. Do you ever feel that way?

Part of it is the neverending winter malaise. Part of it is that I’m still trying to find my feet as a working mom of two. And part of it is just my nature. I’ve never been all that put together or disciplined. But I used to be (much) better at faking it.

I’m embarrassed to tell you how many nights lately I’ve gone to bed without washing my face. And I know that when I don’t wash my face, I pay the breakout price. And yet … .

So I knew I needed to do something. I needed to enact some order in my home, so I decided to go the Being an Adult for Dummies route and made an actual list of the simple things I need to do on the daily.

At the top?

Make the bed.

I’ve found it is the simplest way to make our home feel more orderly, and it helps me feel like I’ve started my day off on the right note. This morning, as I was rushing about getting ready I thought, “Oh I don’t have time!” But then I stopped, remembered my checklist, and did it anyway. I timed myself and it took 3 minutes. Three. Three minutes.

And only second to making the bed is cleaning the kitchen. Waking up to a dirty kitchen is the pits; when I come downstairs in the morning to a chaotic kitchen, it just makes me feel blah. And on the days Aaron doesn’t get a chance to clean it after the kids and I leave, and I come home to a dirty kitchen? The worst.

Now that the sun stays up later, we get streams of light in our back windows in the evening. Beautiful end-of-day bright sunshine that highlights thousands of little golden Bulldog hairs littered all over our hardwood floors. Oh, it feels Sisyphean to clean them up every day, but if I don’t, we would surely be overtaken. So Swiffering had to make the list as well.

The other tasks—daily Bible reading and making sure I get a decent amount of fruit and veggies—nourish my soul and my body. My entire day is lifted when I read the Word. It recalibrates my spirit and my mind. I feel more purposeful about my work, and more in tune with my life. And what reading the Bible does for my heart, eating well and drinking enough water does for my body and energy.

I shouldn’t have to write these things down and look at them every day. I’m not that far from 40; shouldn’t I be able to order my life and stay on top of simple daily tasks? Maybe. But maybe the people who seem to have it all together have little cheats like this too. (And if you don’t, don’t tell me!)

It’s helping. It’s even helped in our marriage too, because who can argue about cleaning the kitchen before bed when it’s written right over there?

How do you bring order to your life when it feels unordered? How do you fake it at being a grown up?

(And yes, we had to put giving Posey her reflux meds on there, because we often forget. Which makes me think she is starting to outgrow it, because she doesn’t seem any worse when we miss a dose.)

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And in other grown-up tasks, I finally set up a Blog Lovin account since Google Reader has gone the way of the Dodo. If you’ve made the switch too, you can follow These Prices here >>> Follow my blog with Bloglovin