The Women Who Have it All Together… Meet Abbie

Hello there! This week is flying by. I can hardly believe this time last week I was leaving for Ecuador, and now I’ve already been home for 2 full days! If you’ll remember, last Wednesday I started a series on “Women Who Have It All Together… But not really.” My first sweet interview was with Kathy from Sparkles and a Stove (you can read it here!) and this week I’ve got Abbie from M is for Mama.

I grew up in the same (teensy weensy) town as Abbie and our families were connected through a few different channels. We reconnected a few years ago through our blogs and I’ve enjoyed getting to know her again! She really is a woman I admire and who seems to “do it all.”

What all do you currently have on your plate?

5 kids. Sometimes literally. If I’ve got something good on my plate, they’re probably hovering around it, trying to sneak a bite. They are: Ezra, 7 (“and three-quarters,” as he is fond of saying), Simon, 6, Della, 3, and identical twins, Evy and Nola, 18 months. As far as the “other stuff,” I teach group fitness classes 2-3 times a week. I also home school my boys on Mondays and Fridays (the other days, they go to a very small, very sweet Christian school about 1/2 an hour away from us). I’m also in the very, very, very slow process of trying to eke out a book on motherhood. Only, the whole mothering business keeps getting in the way of my book-writing attempts. Apparently, you’re supposed to, you know, feed your children before you write a chapter about embracing your calling as a mama. My husband and I do children’s church about once a month, and I’m involved in a women’s Bible study that meets 3 times a month. I’m about to start volunteering once a week at our local pregnancy resource center. Oh, and my boys are in soccer, so most of our Saturday mornings are spoken for at the moment.

What would you say to a woman who envied you because she thought you had it all together?

To the woman who thinks I “do it all,” I would say, “Um, please come to my house at 10 AM and see for yourself just how much I DON’T do.” If she took me up on my offer, she’d find a very messy home on some days, controlled chaos on others, and, if I’m really on top of things, decent but certainly not sparklingly clean floors and counter-tops. Don’t get me wrong. I do care about the state of my house, and I’m constantly in the process of cleaning up some mess or another, but I have 5 kids who are coming behind me making another one. And even though they are learning to clean up for themselves, none of us are OCD sorts, so there’s always something a little out of place or not perfectly polished. It’s called Life, and I’m good with that.

With a woman who has a lot going, time management is a reality. What is your top piece of advice you can give on effective time management?

My key to effective time management is definitely lots of list-making. I’m not the most organized list-maker (or anything, for that matter). On any given day, you can find little lists scribbled on scraps of paper and stuck to the fridge with a magnet or tucked in with my grocery ads. But even if I don’t get everything on there or checked off, knowing what I want to accomplish definitely helps motivate and keep me on task. I also have a big whiteboard adhered to my refrigerator (oh yeah, it’s sexy), and I write all the important stuff on there. The funny thing is that,once I write something big down, I don’t tend to forget it, so I rarely look at the whiteboard once it’s full. Again, though, the process of writing things down is so very powerful. I can definitely tell that my work/focus suffers when I don’t. Also, I do best when I have five different tasks whirling at once. I get a lot done when I can flip a load of laundry, then answer an email, then scrub something, then change a diaper. Maybe it’s who I am, or maybe it’s because this season in life has trained me to be a multi-tasker who can’t realistically expect to ever finish much of anything in one sitting, but it’s how I roll now.

Since no one is able to “do it all,” what is one thing you have consciously given up (or should give up? 🙂 ) in order to do what is most important to you?

One thing that I have consciously given up is any attempt at gardening. HA! Okay, so I haven’t consciously given it up, but seriously y’all, my flower-beds can be really abysmal. I can get them all planted and pretty, but unless I plant invincible flowers, they don’t stay that way very long because I just plain forget about them.

Sorry. I’ll try to be serious now and answer the question like I’m supposed to (although I meant what I said about my poor flowerbeds). At this point in our family dynamic, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to be involved in a lot of different things. I would love to…play/sing on the worship team like I used to and organize a women’s retreat and host monthly crafting sessions at my house.

But I know that, realistically, while all of those things sound like no biggie when I first consider them, the closer they get to having to happen, the more stressed I’ll get trying to add one (or two or five) more things to my load. So, right now, things are pretty streamlined. What you saw on my list above is pretty much what there is, with an occasional play date or girls’ night or hot date with the hubby thrown in here or there. I don’t do MOPS. Our family doesn’t do small group (although that may change soon). We even had Simon bumped up an age category so he and Ezra could play on the same soccer team. See? Streamlined.

If you had time to squeeze in one more activity, what would it be? (could be something practical, or completely fun!)

If I could squeeze in one more thing, it would definitely be learning something new or getting better at something. Top of my list? Hip hop dancing classes. And no, I’m not kidding. (Followed closely by advanced photography classes + graphic design classes). I’d also like to find more time to read.

Thank you Abbie for sharing your heart- and that you don’t do it all! I think it’s refreshing to know that none of us have more hours in the day, and that we all have to prioritize! (Although you do make it look super easy! ha!)