Come Play In The Kitchen!

I often find that at the end of the hour/day/week/month, I look back and try to figure out what in the world happened! Where oh where did all my time go?! Well…I have to say that, as a person who was brought up kind of on the cusp of the multitasking generations, I spend a great deal of time UN-able to multitask. I feel that focused attention is important…But I also find that most of my focused attention is time wasted on racing down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of media (mostly internet) interests. I mean, it’s not the only thing. But it IS pretty significant. I kind of noticed that this was, indeed, the truest way I was squandering my own time when I did a fast back in January (yep, 2024). I did a combination of fasting from certain foods and severely restricting any time I spent on media. It was almost glorious, recovering that much time! Like a secret remedy I didn’t know I needed. But boy did I!!!

So how can you get back those little time stealers that seem to creep in unawares and rob you of one of the most precious commodities there is? I mean — there’s no way to retrieve even a second of time you’ve already spent. So what’s a person to do??

Obviously, this answer is going to be specific to you and where you find yourself losing seconds or more in your life. Therefore, the first step is to track your time. Nope, not kidding. Write it down, every minute you’re spending doing anything. Keep a log. Include everything from the moment you wake up. You can kind of categorize if necessary.

My day may look something like:

personal hygiene 30 minutes

devotional/prayer 30 minutes

breakfast and clean-up 30 minutes

business tasks (which I do break down so I can see how productive I am in each area) 60 minutes

housekeeping 60 minutes

errands 180 minutes

internet searching 90 minutes (I get specific so I can see what I was actually doing and if it was worth that or not)

grab fast food 15 minutes (because, internet…<sigh>)

phone calls 45 minutes

prepare supper 45 minutes

French lesson 15 minutes

Prayer video 60 minutes

Supper 30 minutes

Clean-up and breakfast prep 45 minutes

Television 180 minutes

Personal hygiene and bedtime prayers 45 minutes

That is 16 hours out of a 24 hour day — and is pretty typical for me! I am working on streamlining some business processes so they run more smoothly, but you can see I waste more time on errands, and media, than on actually getting stuff done. Although I know this may not look too bad to some — but this was after more major adjustments in my lifestyle after my fast. I have an iPhone and it tracks how much time you actually spend on it. So my average back in January pre-fast could be 10+ hours, and likely I was “trying” to multitask. But now I have gotten it down to a more manageable rate. There’s still room for improvement.

So once you’ve discovered in your own life where your time is going, how can you recapture it? Well, I find that I’m much more focused if I (1) prepare a to-do list with items ranked by importance, always checking off what’s gotten done and moving things to the next day/level of importance when they are not completed and (2) enlisting help with some of the items and (3) getting my house organized so it’s easier to streamline chores and meal prep times. For example, if I spend an hour one day a week looking ahead at my calendar, making a menu and prepping my food for my week, then I’m not spending quite as much time every day prepping meals because more of the work is already done. I do this with household chores and business too. If I need to write thank-you cards (I believe in being personal), I try to do multiples at once so I have them done. Or sending emails. Or grouping other like tasks. Then every day I am focusing on something different, whether it’s organizing my podcast outline, my Pampered Chef shows, getting my recipes in order, or setting up my marketing plan and menus for my baking business. And I schedule days for errands so I’m not running around every day (which also saves money!). Keeping my life focused on one group of tasks instead of trying to jump from thing to thing, I find I spend less time overall being just busy. So — more time for me to serve, to spend with family and friends, or to make room for things that bring me joy.

I also have cut back on the internet scrolling. If I’m looking for something specific, I will search and find it and write down what else I might find I’d like to look at on another day instead of click-click-clicking away my time. And, although it’s a fun way to de-stress sometimes at the end of a crazy day — I try to use more of my evening time for other things on my list, reserving special space and time for the little TV I now actually watch.

Finally, I find it helps to pray about your time and your schedule. I feel much more peaceful about the order and priority of things when I bring them before the Lord first. Sometimes there are things that are good…but maybe not BEST for the time and season you are currently in. That can be a process of seeking God and His will for your life, and sometimes it can feel uncomfortable if you are a person who always says “yes” or who likes to retain control. But sometimes it’s important to give quality time to the things that are BEST in the season you’re in and save other things for a different person to accomplish or for yourself to pursue at a different time. I found this to be true when my children were young. I wanted to say yes to everything, but it was not realistic and ended up being stressful. I knew that, as a stay-at-home mom, I needed my family to be my priority even though I wanted to serve others more. But childhood is fleeting, as much as some days drag on — so if you’re a mom still in those seasons and you are frustrated you can’t say yes just yet, it won’t be too long before you have that ability. My youngest son graduated last June (2023) after being homeschooled all his life, and I found myself with much more time to give to others. I would have missed so much if I’d given in to every ask when God was clear to us about the direction we were to pursue with our children. I am grateful I listened. But I am slowly filling that empty time with other things (as seen in my not so great example above). So I need to pull back and make room for what is BEST in this season of my life. (And I’m pretty sure too much media time outside of business is not that!)

I hope that these suggestions are helpful to you. These tips may sound like common sense, which isn’t quite so common these days. But I really have found that I needed to be reminded to actually IMPLEMENT them. It is one thing to make a plan — but you still have to follow through with it. If you merely set all these tips in a notebook but then close it and forget, you’re probably going to continue spiraling out of control — and time. Taking a moment to look at what systems and restraints you need to put into place and practice will do wonders for reclaiming your precious time, which is better spent doing things that can bring you and others around you joy than anything else.