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By nature I am a creative, unstructured soul who, as a child was often found laying on the floor with legs propped on the bed reading a book after being told to clean my room. A dreamer. A budding rock band manager. Never mind that the members of the band didn’t know how to put two chords together yet. An idea person. Don’t bother me with the ticky-tack minutae of actually making the idea work. Just clear some room and let me run with it. And, if I’m in the middle of a project and something else comes up, that project could be there for a while. A long while.

My nature was not terribly conducive to studying, although I did quite well in school anyway. It definitely was NOT conducive to getting through college, especially living away from home, although I did that relatively well, too. But that required some tweaking of my nature and development of self-discipline. By the time I had gotten through graduate school and several demanding, fast-paced jobs in a row, I had developed a full-blown case of the “over-responsibles”. To do lists have ruled my world for years and I couldn’t function without my organizer. Once it was stolen and I swear my world was turned upside down. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. Or where I was coming or going! While developing self-discipline over the years, routines became a large part of what kept me on track and accomplishing what I needed to accomplish. Whether they were study routines or routines to include daily exercise to keep my sanity amid the frantic pace of my life, they gradually became such a part of my life that I didn’t even recognize them as routines anymore.

After Tater Tot was born, I continued to function that way. Like I was still at my former job. To do lists and schedules and “why haven’t I gotten that done yet?” were constantly at the forefront of my mind. Blech! Over the past year, I have gradually been able to let go of the “franticity” (yes, I did make that word up) that used to rule my world. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I still expect too much but I have gotten much better. There are also days when I recognize that I have gotten back in touch way too much with my kid on the floor reading a book!

There is a happy medium. A middle ground between frantic, produce-or-die-trying and slacker-haven’t-showered-in-three-days-let-her-eat-quesadillas-for-every-meal. And it involves routines. My unstructured nature (let’s call her Binky) balks at routines. She doesn’t like them. “Let me do what I want when I want.” she says. She thinks they are boring and evil. And sometimes I agree with her. They can be boring and it can feel like they are keeping me from doing what I really want to be doing. When The Tater Tot has gone to bed, I’d much rather be vegging out to the television or computer or working on one of my creative projects than starting the load of cloth diaper laundry or doing the dishes. And during the day, I’d much rather just “go with the flow” and do whatever I feel like doing whenever I feel like doing it.

Lately, though, I have found that our lives are running much more smoothly because of routines. There are clean dishes to eat off of because I start the dishwasher every night before I go to bed. Everyone has clean underwear because I start a load of laundry before Tater and I go on our morning walk. Clean cloth diapers are not hard to find because I start a load of them after Tater goes to bed and move them to the dryer before I go to bed. I am up early enough to load the diapers with inserts before Tater gets up in the morning because I go to bed at a decent hour. Our lives are much more peaceful when I am not running around like an idiot trying to do what I was supposed to be doing the night before. Each part of my routine only takes a few minutes but sometimes I just don’t feel like doing them. At all. But when I do, I see and feel immediate results. And when I am conscious of Tater’s nap schedule and schedule our errands around her schedule, our day is so much nicer! She knows what to expect. Consistency makes her a Happy Tot!

So, are routines boring and evil or the pathway to peace? Both. They are a boring necessary evil but they are the pathway to peace for This Mommy. If you’d like to find out more about routines and get some ideas for making routines of your own, www.Flylady.net is a good place to start.