Just Getting Things Done – Helping overwhelmed and exhausted moms break free from the chaos and feel like themselves again.

Flying Alone with Three Kids 5 and Under

December 28, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

Can you travel alone with three kids and not cry?

Spoiler Alert: It’s possible.

Flying Alone with Three Kids 5 and Under - Just Getting Things Done

When we came to visit Michigan in August, we tried something new –

I flew alone with the 3 girls and my husband flew out two days later.

People thought I was crazy.

I had a team meeting at work the day before I left and told them I was travelling alone with our 3 children 5 and under. They said things like,

He’s going to owe you.”

My husband’s coworkers said I was a “saint.”

I thought it was weird people would have that reaction to it. I mean, they’re my kids why wouldn’t I go somewhere with them?

We were going to visit my mom so it wasn’t like I’d have no help once I got there and we had a direct flight.

In fact, usually my husband is the one that does stuff alone with them. For him it’s not a big deal. He just hops in the car and goes. He took our two girls on a road trip by himself (when we only had two).

Despite what everyone else thought about it, I was excited because I wanted to do it.

Minimalist Moving Into a Bigger House

December 27, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

When we lived in Colorado we lived in a small wanna-be bungalow built in 1926. I loved it. I loved our neighborhood. I loved the house. I didn’t want it to be any bigger, even after we had 3 kids. I always said,

“I don’t want a bigger house, we’d just fill it with more stuff.”

Then we came to Michigan and looked at a house that we had fallen in love with online. Our first reaction in person wasn’t love, but we liked it enough that we came back and decided it was the house we wanted. We had it under contract before we went back to Denver, the same weekend we put our house on the market there.

We moved in before we even bought it and one of the things I noticed right away was that it seems like it’s always a huge mess.

There’s just so much room to make a mess, everything gets spread out!

Even my husband noticed. He was like,

“Have you noticed how messy this place gets?”

Um, yeah. Remember all those times I told you I didn’t want a bigger house? This is why.

Minimalist Moving Into a Bigger House - Just Getting Things Done — Actual photo of our new house

We have a ton more counter space in the kitchen and when we were putting away boxes before moving in, my mom tried to keep one little corner clear. I’ve been trying to keep that same space clear since then because I want at least one portion of the counter that doesn’t have something on it.

My husband keeps putting stuff there.

Now, we are really happy with this house for so many reasons, but it is a big adjustment for sure.

It was especially hard because all of the real decluttering I’d always wanted to do happened when we put our house on the market. That’s another post in itself, but it comes down to this, we had help and we spent a lot of time on it.

We went from a small, neat, uncluttered space to a larger space with boxes, clutter, and no idea where to put things. It’s even worse because we didn’t own it when we moved and we weren’t sure how we were going to make that work, so we didn’t want to make any changes just in case everything fell through.

We haven’t even bought anything!

We were also a little strapped for cash, since we hadn’t really planned this out long term but rather made it happen in a few months.

I don’t like to buy much in the first place, and I don’t want to just go around buying a bunch of stuff for the house without a clear plan. The only things I have bought are things that we really need. Lightbulbs, batteries, toilet bowl brushes and a couple lamps.

I don’t want more stuff, but I know we will get some new things.

I’m going to ask for help planning that out though. Interior design is not my strong suit, but it is my mom’s (stepmom’s) so I will ask for her help and I will take my time.

I believe you can be a minimalist even in a bigger house. In fact, I think that’s even more reason to be minimalist. When you have more space, it’s even easier to fill it with stuff.

We’ll have to see how this plays out in the long term of course, but for now it’s made me even more committed to having only stuff that we need, use, love and enjoy.

How I Quit My Job Of 10 Years

December 27, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

This is the story of how I told my company I was leaving after 10 years. I wrote it right after it happened and didn’t publish it right away, but thought you might want to know how it went down.

How I Quit My Job Of 10 Years - Just Getting Things Done

Well, I didn’t really mean to tell my boss yet that I was quitting to move back to my hometown, but it happened.

I had just finished a conversation with my friend and coworker about how give-a-shits were kind of low but I could just coast along because no one was saying anything when our director called me into his office. At first I thought we were just having that meeting we were supposed to have, but when he headed to his office and closed the door I knew something was up.

He opened with, “You seem disengaged.”

I was quiet for a minute and then said, “Yeah.”

The conversation did not go the way he thought it was going to go.

I’m direct. I couldn’t just lie to his face when he asked me about it. The second sentence out of my mouth was,

“I’m going to be quitting and moving to Michigan.”

It was not pretty. I cried when I said it.

Suddenly quitting my job was real.

We made the decision just like that, but it still seemed like an idea. I mean, in our heads we were like already there. We were picturing ourselves living in those houses we saw on realtor.com. But really we were still doing the same things we did every other day.

Then all of the sudden, I was really quitting my job.

I couldn’t take it back after I told him.

I had to call my husband afterward and I was crying so hard at first that he almost freaked out because he didn’t know what was wrong. I calmed down enough to talk to him but I was overwhelmed because I didn’t expect to do it yet.

That was yesterday.

I was asked to talk to my boss today (Friday). It took me most of the day, but finally I went and had the conversation with her.

It was easier than the conversation yesterday because I was prepared for it. It was also harder in that she was practically crying about it, which of course made me teary and emotional, but we both made it through.

I texted my mom yesterday and told her that I had told our director. She said, “Bring it on!”

That at least made me smile.

I know she’s cheering for me.

Well, my whole family really. My sister is just cheering with tears in her eyes maybe, but then again, me too.

Moving With 3 Kids – Expect the Unexpected Part II

December 20, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

Yes, I already wrote a post warning you to expect the unexpected, but some other things happened and I didn’t think it was right to leave them out. So I bring you Part II:

Moving With 3 Kids - Expect the Unexpected Part II: Just Getting Things Done

The movers called the day before our move to tell us they were changing the date.

Yup, that’s right. The day before the big move we got a call saying our driver wasn’t going to make it to town in time. They told my husband they could still come and get the stuff that day and then store it over the weekend.

He was going to do that until I was like,

“Does that mean they have to load it, unload it and then load it again? Because if they do, that is not ok.”

He had to call back.

The answer was yes, they were going to bring a truck, load our stuff, drive it over to some warehouse, unload it and then load it all up when the driver who was actually going to take it across the country got there with his truck.

We said no thanks. He can just come on Monday. Then he showed up on Saturday to scope out the situation before bringing his big rig.

All our plans changed last minute.

Stay at Home Mom – Is It Really Freedom?

November 28, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

For the first two weeks after I quit my job and we moved, I didn’t have any commitments. My mom would call up and we would decide what we wanted to do, and I would load the three kids up in the car and we would go do whatever I wanted.

It was great.

We got to see my mom every day or every other day. It felt great to decide what I wanted to do with my days.

This is what I pictured it looking like.

This was the freedom I was looking for when I quit my job!

Then we finished getting our 5 year old enrolled in kindergarten and they were ready for her to start and I was like

“Now I have to be at school at 8:20 and 3:40 every day?!? What the hell?”

I mean, we’re a short walk from the school, but still,

I didn’t like the idea of having to be at a certain place at a certain time twice a day every day.

We had also talked about putting our 3 year old in preschool (at the same school as the kindergartner). I made the phone calls to get it set up and then started questioning that too.

“Do I really want to have commitments on Tuesday and Thursday mornings too? If we do swim lessons or something, that only leaves two free mornings a week…That’s not enough free time.”

I didn’t really want to put her in preschool because I liked having all of our mornings free. I mean, preschool’s only for two and a half hours, and then I’ll have to be at school 4 times on those days. I can’t leave the baby with my husband 4 times in one day. He has to actually get work done. So that means I’ll have to take the baby with me at least 2 of the 4 times…

I enrolled her in preschool anyway.

Maybe because they want her to start after the holidays, so I haven’t really had to face up to it yet.

But it has made me wonder, am I thinking about freedom wrong?

I thought freedom mean that you have “free time” all the time but alas, it does not.

Maybe freedom means having the freedom to choose whether or not to put her in preschool. Or even that 2 half days of preschool are something we can do because we don’t need her in full time care.

Is it the freedom to decide what I want to do with my time, not just in the moment but ahead of time?

The freedom to schedule things during the day? Or even at 5:00?

I never even considered doing activities at those times before. Well, I did consider doing them but never did.

My oldest wanted to do dance lessons and I looked into it and never found a time that worked for us. Which is to say, I didn’t want to make any of those times work for us because it was just too much for me. Our days were already spoken for and we didn’t have room for anything else.

But now I do have the time and I find I’m still resisting making new commitments.

Even when I know that having “free time” all the time is not a good thing for me – because I will just sit around watching tv or reading (when the kids aren’t awake of course).

Forget about cleaning the house. I may pick up, but I’m not going to be accomplishing grand things while the kids are napping because in my free time I just want to relax.

Most of that “free time” I talked about before is actually time where I’m taking care of my children. Which also means that we can do what we want as long as we’re home by noon, or maybe 12:30 at the latest because my kids nap.

I have to adjust my idea of freedom.

It’s not the freedom to do what I want whenever I want with no responsibilities. I’m still married. I still have kids. I still have responsibilities in our home. I also still want to do things that are just for me. So I’m still working on the idea that I can have time commitments and still have freedom.

It’s the freedom of choice.

I get to choose how I spend my time and how my children spend theirs.

I have to make choices for myself and my kids. This is new for me. Defaulting to watching Netflix (thanks Offspring) is still a choice, but not a good one. I’m working on making better choices about how we spend our time, but I think it’s going to take awhile.

Transitioning to Stay at Home Mom

November 18, 2018 by Rachel Bowman Leave a Comment

Well, last week was week 1 of staying at home with the kids.

The funny thing is, I don’t even think staying home with the kids is the biggest part of the transition right now.

I quit my job so I’m no longer going into the office each day. My husband kept his job and is now working from home. I went from leaving the house by 7:10 with 2 kids to no one leaving the house before 8:00. In fact last week no one had anywhere outside of the house to be unless I made plans.

Transitioning to Stay at Home Mom - Just Getting Things Done — One of my favorite things about the new house is sitting across from the kids eating breakfast.

We’ve moved to a new house, which has brought lots of changes. The two older girls no longer share a room, but they are now on the same floor as everyone else so sometimes the baby wakes them up. There are still things in boxes and we haven’t figured out the right place for everything yet. A lot of things are in “temporary” places that don’t necessarily make the most sense.

We don’t own our new house yet, we’re currently renting it because we haven’t sold our “old” house yet so it doesn’t really feel likes it’s ours. We had planned to make some cosmetic updates before moving in, but that didn’t happen. Because we haven’t finalized everything yet, we aren’t doing some of the things we would do like painting, putting up shelves, basically making any changes we might want to make but would cost us money that we wouldn’t recuperate if for some reason the deal falls through.

We have bought several small things and are working on restocking the fridge. We thought we were going to pack all the condiments we had in the fridge, but in the end we just threw it all away. We didn’t want to be wasteful, but just seemed like too much of a pain to haul all of that in the car for three days.

The new house is in a very different type of area, but so far I love it. It’s more suburban. It feels secluded but is right near a lot of shops, so everything is really convenient instead of a huge hassle, which is great.

Our kindergartner is now enrolled but hasn’t started school, so that’s another transition to look forward to.

Despite all of those changes, I thought the week went pretty well.

Staying at home caring for the kids doesn’t really feel that different because, well, they’ve always been my kids and I’ve always taken care of them. Obviously most of that happened on the weekend/nights with my husband, and now it’s just me all day. But so far that part isn’t too hard.

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