Kat's Arbitrary Thought Processes

“Information written down is information you can put out of your mind until needed. This automatically reduces the stress associated with a busy life.”

–from Gayle Graham, How to Homeschool: A Practical Approach

I found this little quote while going through some articles for help with writing a mission for our homeschool. And wow! Talk about hit with a two-by-four! This is why I have so many lists! Currently on my desk, you will find 7 spiral bound notebooks. I will guarantee you that there are at least two lists of things to do in every notebook. Not necessarily completed lists, but lists of things that were running through my head, that I had to do, so I wrote it down.

I’m mildly ADD. I was trained as a child (before ADD was well-known) to focus on the task at hand. The result, I have a tendency to hyper-focus on some tasks, completely ignoring others. This is why I have get so irritable with my kids when Mommy is this close to beginning finished with a project on the computer, and they start hassling me. This is why I often find myself ignoring the “Mom, Mom, Mom?” until I get to the point I snap back, “What?!?” *sigh* I don’t mean to. And I always always kick myself later for doing it. I try to apologize if I catch it right away. The guilt of this eats me up at times.

But this is also why I can never seem to finish the laundry.  I can get it in the washer, but because it takes so long to go through a wash cycle, I’ve often forgotten all about it by the time it’s ready for the dryer.  Often times, my DH will head into the laundry room to wash the kids clothes, on ly to discover a stanky wad of wet nastiness in the washer.  It’s gotten so that I don’t even attempt laundry anymore.  I’m blessed with a DH who knows his way around a washing machine, and isn’t afraid to pitch in and do the laundry.

So I make lists.  Lots of lists.  Things that I need to do in the next month, things that need to be done each week, and things that need to be done in the next several hours.  I’ve even been known to add things I’ve accomplished to my list, just so I can cross it off and feel like I’ve done some thing.