Eimear Hutchinson: Anyone else finding September  utterly overwhelming?

I AM sure ours isn’t the only household that finds the month of September utterly exhausting.

While there are pockets of reprieve from the chaos of school and after-school activities, in those few moments of peace it’s hard to stop the long list of to do’s from filtering through your frontal cortex.

September is full on because you move from the calm of the summer, where little dictates your daily routine, to suddenly every hour is eaten up and life moves at a pace you’re rarely well prepared for. The summer sports like camogie and football tend to continue well into October, especially as my girls get older, and the winter sports and activities like athletics, swimming, piano, art, drama and soccer, have all started back.

It’s a lot to get our heads round, and I for one can find the month utterly overwhelming – which is no good to anyone because being overwhelmed makes me cranky.

I would love to say I have all the answers for creating the perfect, calm and organised home, I don’t, but I have a few. Some might seem obvious but it can sometimes take someone reminding you of a good habit, or someone saying this simple change works for us, and then you make that tweak and it brings a little touch of calm where previously there was chaos!

A couple of years ago, fed up with trying to keep track of who needed to be where, I got a small pot of chalkboard paint and painted a large rectangle in an obvious place in the kitchen. Probably not the most aesthetically pleasing thing I have ever done, but it has worked wonders at keeping track of the girls’ activities in the evenings.

When I was younger, my parents provided the four of us with every opportunity to try different activities and for a variety of reasons I feel like those opportunities they afforded us were hugely beneficial. As a result, I have been sucked into letting the girls try their hand at whatever their heart desires – apart from my junior infant who just does swimming and art so as to not overwhelm her in her already busy first year of school. It means the evenings are busy but we wouldn’t have it any other way, and being able to see at a glance what the evening holds is much easier than it constantly running around in my head.

I am also a huge fan of reminders on my phone – I put them in for meetings, phone calls I need to make, appointments that need to be attended, things I need to send into school with the girls, and birthday parties the girls have been invited to. 

These work much better for me than a to do list so it’s often about finding what works for your brain and your house.

If you are not a convert to the slow cooker revolution, it really is the key to managing our evenings. I use a large casserole dish to the same effect, but it is essential that I am able to make dinner most days before I collect the girls from school. I meal plan around the girls’ activities so I know which days have to be slow cooker days and which I have some breathing space to make dinner later in the evening.

I could recommend plenty of meals that work well in this house, like bolognaise, pasta bakes, curries, and shepherds pie, but each household is different. It is worth having a good rotation of meals that can be made at lunchtime and eaten when needed, or served in portions as required throughout the evening.

Bedtime is the trickiest thing in this house to get right, the three older girls are less susceptible to a disrupted night’s sleep when they are over-tired but the youngest went through a phase when she started school of coming into me several times a night.

A chat with a friend by the side of the pool proved hugely useful this week so now I have the small lady in bed by 7.30pm, which is a classic example of me knowing she needed to go to bed earlier, but the chat with my friend being the kick I needed to actually do it.

We have gone back to reading the two older girls a book before bed, which we haven’t done in a long time, they usually read themselves but the act of sitting back and letting the words wash over them is proving useful for helping them wind down.

Perhaps the most important tip is cut yourself some slack. We are probably all guilty of looking outwardly and thinking every other parent seems less stressed than we are, but in truth we are probably all just ducks; calm on the surface but below the water we are all paddling away furiously trying to keep it all afloat.

Don’t forget to do something for yourself, no matter how small it is. I go to a sewing class in Glounthaune with Joanna’s Feeling Crafty and I thoroughly look forward to that time to be just me.