Put Your Plates Down! Simplify Your Schedule and Reduce Stress

Ah the analogy of the spinning plates.  How many plates can you keep successfully spinning all while maintaining your attention on the necessities of life.  Although this analogy can be applied to anyone, I know it  especially should echo for my fellow mothers who are currently raising kids.  We just have so many plates!  Of course there is the meal plate, making sure everyone in our family including ourselves get fed, the raising our kids plate, the relationship with our spouse/significant other plate, friendships plate, job(s) plate, home cleaning plate (not to be overlapped with the home organization/purging plate which can be a whole other category), kids activity plate, extended family plate, pet plate, health plate, spiritual plate, and a whole list of specialty plates which varies depending on each family.  Bottom line:  We have a lot of plates.  We drop a lot of plates, and that's OK!  I love when I see encouragement from one person to another saying, it's all good, I dropped that plate last week, let's pick it up together.  (Little Challenge:  Do that for someone this week.) 

There is no doubt that decreasing the amount of plates you have will simplify and reduce stress in your life.  But what do you do when you are just strapped and can't get rid of a plate?  Or maybe you see that it is possible to get rid of that plate, but you have to keep it spinning for another 6 months before you can put it down?  Let's do this instead:  During such times when we simply cannot get rid of said plate, give yourself permission to put the plate gently down for a while.  It doesn't have to crash and shatter into a million pieces that you will have to pick up (in addition to all of the other things you picked up today!).  Just simply put the plate down and pick it up later.  Also try rotating the plates you put down.  For example, on a Sunday evening you look ahead to what is on your calendar for the coming week.  The week is like Grand Central Station of events, volunteer commitments, and meetings.  There is just no down time to keep up with housework that week.  So, place the housework plate down for the week.  Be sure not to leave it down for too long.  Look at future weeks where you can put the events plate down and pick back up the housework plate.  Beware of the critical point you may find yourself hitting if there just does not come a week where you can put the events/activities plate down.  That then indicates that you need to make some decisions to find the plate a new home. 

Put more simply:  Declutter your plates and rotate the ones you have so they do not all come crashing down.