Chaos Management For Bloggers By Zoey Martin

I think the biggest skill a blogger needs is chaos management. Especially when there are children involved. If you break down what I have to do on a daily basis it’s intimidating: get up, load of washing, dress the child, feed the child, feed the baby, get the baby to sleep, play with the child, think about what is going to be on for dinner, tinker about with some social media, feed the baby, feed the child, maybe I should have some lunch too, clean the house, bring in the washing, figure out what I’m going to blog about, have i taken any photos today, organise dinner, feed the baby, feed the child, get the bath happening, feed the baby, put the baby to sleep, put the toddler to sleep, clean up the house, do the dishes, eat and then . . . blog, twitter, blog, twitter, tweak that blog theme, respond to those emails, what am I doing on my facebook page . . . sleep.

I found writing that exhausting. Doing it can be similarly exhausting. Not to mention that I didn’t even account for grocery shopping, toddler activities or all manner of other things that just seem to pop up at exactly the wrong moment.

The key to chaos management is boundaries and plans. And the key mistakes are a lack of flexibility and assuming because children are the antithesis of plans that you shouldn’t have one.

Prioritise
On any given day there are certain things that are non-negotiable that I have to do. Sadly, blogging isn’t one of them. The non negotiables generally come down to things like feeding little people, toddler activities, playing with my babies and at least some effort into keeping the house clean. There are then the second tier of things I really want to find time for like blogging, hanging out on twitter while eating cookies and drinking coffee, decluttering that wardrobe and reading and commenting on other blogs. Then there are the backlog of things that I would like to have time for but probably won’t get to until the weekend like freelance writing stuff, guest posts, vlogging and some of the back-end blog maitenance.

Have a Plan
Sure things don’t go according to plan, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one. Know what things you need to get through every day to stay on top of the housework. Know which blogs you want to keep up with when you have zero time to read everything you’d like to. Don’t do that whole to do list in your head business, write it down. I like ticking things off. Sure I’m a geek, but you might like it too. Plan for down time. Yes, you heard me. Plan for it. Otherwise you don’t get it. And you need it. You need some of that bit in the afternoon where you’ve distracted the kidlets with something engrossing to spend relaxing in a corner – not cleaning the laundry.

Be Flexible
One day you might chuck the plan in because you need to catch up. Sometimes I let the toddler watch TV all day and I don’t feel guilty about it because it can take me that long to get back up to speed with all of the house cleaning stuff. It happens. Or you might want to forget about the house and just have a fun day down at the park, or shopping. Or you might want to stay in your PJs and just loll about on social media for the day. Having a plan most of the time means you can completely abandon it some of the time.

And how do you know if you are doing all of that right? Well you have reasonable expectations of what you can actually do, you don’t feel guilty and you don’t feel overwhelmed, for at least one day out of the week, anyway.

 Zoey is a Reformed Perfectionist, Parent Adventurer, All-Round Geek and Photo Enthusiast. She blogs over at Good Goog and can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.