Time Management for the Busy Homemaker: How do you find time? (Part 2)

This a 2nd of a series, if you missed part one please check it out!

In my own personal life right now, I have been delving into the area of time management.  It started when I read this fantastic book from Jim Wideman (a children's ministry guy) to help me get more ministry done in my short 32 hour week.  I have been leaving daily with undone tasks, and consistently feel like I can not finish my work in my allotted time.  However the principles are things that every homemaker needs to know.  You CAN find time in your schedule, I promise!  In part one we dreamed about what we would do with our extra time and our goals, now it is time to look at how to find the time for those things.

Here are some basics for how to get started.

1) Track your current time.
How do you currently spend your time?  Take out a piece of paper, and actually write down what you do and when you do it.  Do it in 15 minute (or smaller) increments.  Do this for a week.  Seriously track your minutes, physically write it down and track what you are actually doing with your time.

2) Evaluate your current time usage.
Are you getting sucked into menial tasks that can cause you to loose time?  What are things that you can cut out?  Do you really need to watch 5 hours of TV per week?  I found that I was watching TV out of habit, during scheduled blog time, or hubby hang out time.   Do you spend 2 hours doing something that should take less?  Do you not do things you should be doing?  Ask the hard questions.

3) Figure out your needs versus your wants.
I would love to zone out for an hour or two a night before bed to decompress and just enjoy some TV (yes, I'm picking on TV here because it is my issue, however for you it could be pintrest, apps on a portable device, video games etc). How much of this down time do you need?  Is it productive?  Is it eating time away from other things you need to be doing?

4) Eliminate the time wasters.
Here comes the hard step.  Getting rid of or seriously limiting the things that you don't need, that don't add to your life and things that are a distraction.  It is as simple and difficult as that.

5) Discover your "free" time
There are some other ways to create more free time (I will discuss those in a later post).  However, discovering and changing your habits that are sucking time out of your day, will give you "extra time" to do the things you want to do.

Cheers!

Ashley