Feeling Overwhelmed: The Benefits and Nuances

The Blog series, Helpful Steps to Address a Sense of Being Overwhelmed, is one I thought I would write to share some ideas and steps that may help others.

It is a series that may hopefully help someone address, what occasionally strikes us all, that sense of being overwhelmed on the home administration front.

Feeling occasionally overwhelmed, has both its benefits and nuances.

Feeling overwhelmed can result in making you feel emotionally down.

It can result perhaps even in making you feeling really despondent, about how things are going for you as the home administrator.

Feeling overwhelmed can, in itself, become crippling on the home administration front.

However, I would like you to perhaps consider the following:

You can choose to view a sense of feeling overwhelmed as a healthy, helpful sign.

You can choose to view a sense of feeling overwhelmed as one that may actually be beneficial to occasionally have turn up.

You may well ask: Why?

Why? Because it can be viewed as a clear sign that there is a current, can't-be-moved-past need for taking stock of where things are at and how things are functioning on the home-front.

It is a clear sign that there is a need for the whole family group, the whole household of people linked together by this specific environment you all affectionately refer to as home, to take stock. Now.

It is a sign that there really is a need for re-thinking.

There is absolutely a need for re-thinking, as soon as is really possible, and re-addressing some of the routines and systems that are perhaps now, quite obviously, proving to be not at all useful and appropriate for everyone in your home.

That's right. Everyone.

For some of us, perhaps due to health reasons, feeling overwhelmed may kick in more so than it does for other people.

To experience feeling overwhelmed, is a clear sign that things need to be directly faced. That expectations need to be re-set.

It is a clear sign everyone in the household needs to re-think, re-group, re-assess their contributions to allow everyone to experience the home situation as being workable.

Feeling overwhelmed is a clear, direct, helpful human signal that unless we, the team of people in this household, stop and take stock now, someone's health (whether it's their physical, mental or emotional health or all three), is going to continue from this point on to greatly suffer.

Feeling overwhelmed is a clear, direct helpful human sign, that unless the team of people in the household take stock now, someone is going to unduly suffer health-wise, due to unrealistic time restraints being set in place for that particular person to work within.

Feeling overwhelmed is the body and mind's signal that a human being is not coping with unrealistic, pre-designated standards and expectations. The standards and expectations simply were not realistic!

Feeling overwhelmed on the home-front, is a clear sign someone has carried way too much of the household load.

It is time for team time.

It is time for all to honour the home as being a safe, peaceful, relaxed place for all it's inhabitants.

Having myself had to process having limitations at times, due to being a person who seems to periodically experience quite severe anaemia, and therefore periods of debilitating physical exhaustion, I fully understand that some people can experience feeling overwhelmed more so than others.

Feeling overwhelmed can simply come about due to health limitations dictating what can actually be done, within any given period of time.

Feeling overwhelmed can simply come about due to health limitations kicking in to limit what can be done with actual energy had.

I personally very much understand what that particular predicament can be like!

To try and do what you can, when you can, as you can, I understand more so than most may.

If you experience being overwhelmed, and wonder who might really empathize and understand your predicament, (and not just think you are lazy and totally disorganized), you have come to the right Blog to read for sure!

Be encouraged.

Be kind about what has, and is, and can be reasonably achieved, due to time and energy available to you.

Be kind.

Sometimes, as it has been previously said via this very Blog, you the home administrator have to just take time to breathe.

Just breathe.

I hope that you will read through this small series titled Helpful Steps to Address a Sense of Being Overwhelmed over the next little while, and find perhaps one or two ideas that spark a possibility for a positive break through for you and your own household.

Feeling overwhelmed.

It's a challenge that can be worked through.

What do you find most overwhelming on the home administration front?

• Keeping up with the continual cycle of laundry? 

• Keeping up with a morning routine?

• Keeping toys and books stored in an organized fashion, yet still accessible for the younger members of your household?

• Letting go of actual objects and items from the past that having strong memory associations? 

• Knowing how many clothes, toys, books, etc it is reasonable to store away for your children?

• Getting children on board, in an age appropriate fashion, with chores and routines?

• Balancing the need to keep the home tidy & functional, against simply having fun and creating positive family memories of home-life together also?

I would really appreciate your feedback & comments to help me determine what other Posts to possibly include in this Blog series on addressing being overwhelmed, particularly if someone has an area of specific focus they would appreciate some ideas being offered for.

The online community is a community that can be a great source of support and resourceful ideas to help us all navigate how best to administer our own unique household logistics. 
Let's encourage each other by that very means!
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Rhonda


Coming next in this particular series: The value of a Household Directive to Address a Sense of Feeling Overwhelmed.
 

Helpful Steps to Address a Sense of Feeling Overwhelmed: Part One De-cluttering

Feeling overwhelmed can strike us all at some point, when it comes to administrating a household.

Living in a household with real people and very real everyday daily busyness and activity results in messes.

It results in cycles of cleaning, sorting and putting away that sometimes do not flow exactly as systematically and routinely as they were intentionally set out to.

Sometimes it can seem that from the moment you open the front door, you can face a visual testimony of a sock, a shoe, a discarded sweatshirt, toys, books.... even a school bag, all haphazardly thrown aside at some point on to the floor or any other free surface.

Why does it seem to repeatedly occur, when everyone knows where these very things go, where they belong and should be put, once they are no longer required?

It can feel like you are repetitively reminding those it concerns to put x,y and even z on the designated hook, in the designated drawer or cupboard, in the designated room to no avail.

It can seem at times that somehow you have not yet figured out some effective means to create the same flow of routines, household organization that others seemingly have mastered somehow.

You may well often wonder: How do they do it? How do they manage it?

How often, do you honestly just feel overwhelmed?

Let's be real. Let's be honest. It can feel like there is always a lot of catching up to be catching up with.

A part of the home may well seem to perhaps not yet have a system of organization that is working best for that area.

It does take time.

Our homes are places where a specific group of people, linked by love, meet and greet each other. Our homes house are a unique small community of people who laugh and cry together, play out tussles and imaginative play, eat meals and fellowship together and make resulting messes.

Our houses, for all their occasional messes, however big or small they may be, are those unique special places we lovingly call home.

One step that can be most beneficial to addressing a sense of being overwhelmed and can help to make the administration and management of that very place everyone calls home perhaps a little more effective, is to take time to do some de-cluttering occasionally.

Having recently hosted a Kitchen Swap Party, which helped me focus on de-cluttering the Kitchen Area, I am now working towards do a more general de-clutter about our home.

As time and energy allows, the aim at present is to sort and purge those no longer required items that can be offered at a Letter 'B' themed Swap Party I am going to be hosting soon.

Such surplus, and no longer required items, as books, baby & boys' clothing, bathroom items, bedding, building blocks, BBQ items, even items that are now surplus that are coloured blue, brown, beige, black.... anything from in and around the home that starts with the letter 'B', can all be quietly purged and put aside for this next Swap Party with the letter 'B' theme, if it is time to part with them.

De-cluttering is a helpful step to take to address a sense of being overwhelmed.

A general sort and purge occasionally, which helps to de-clutter the home, is beneficial.

Having a cardboard box or two put aside to collect the items as they are purged, means it is very clear what is being removed.

Whether you choose to use a cardboard box, a surplus plastic bag or the like, it is good to determine from the start a place to put aside those items you have selected as you go about de-cluttering when time allows.

It is very clear then, that they are now put aside and no longer available to simply clutter their original storage place in the home.

You can decide to focus on de-cluttering just one specific area of the home per week, per month.... or do a more general de-clutter like I am choosing to presently do. Do whatever works best for you and your household.

Other household members can be actively involved also, in an occasional de-clutter about the home.

Children can be encouraged to go through their books and toys.

What now seems to be no longer needed and age inappropriate, could potentially through a Swap Party, a Garage Sale, a forthcoming School Fair Collection, a local Charity or being sold online, be passed on to other children who would now enjoy and make good use of them.

If one household member engages more than another in the household's upkeep of the garden and outdoor area, they might like to take some time to actively de-clutter the Garden Shed, the Garage Cupboards where tools, seed packets, BBQ equipment, etc are kept.

An occasional de-clutter that engages all household members encourages joint responsibility for maintaining the homes physical environment, plus the care and administration of it's resources.

De-cluttering is a good starting point for helping to address any sense of being overwhelmed that may occasionally arise. I highly recommend it.

Next in this small series titled Helpful Steps to Address a Sense of being Overwhelmed: Setting A Household Directive.

What is a Household Directive? What does it entail? How often can it be set? Who can be involved in creating it?

This next Post in this Blog series will share the idea of a Household Directive with you and how you might like to create one also.