How to Achieve Quilt/Life Balance – It’s Easier Than You Think!

We’ve all heard about the importance of Work/Life balance… but what about Quilt/Life balance? How can you get in enough quilting time when you have so much other work to do? By the time you get home from work, make dinner, help the kids with all the things they need, pay the bills, do the laundry and more, how does the stitching inclined have any time left for quilting? Here are some ideas:

• Dishes? You don’t really have to wash them every day. You are just going to have to wash them again tomorrow so why not double up a day, or three?
• What about laundry? Just pick one day per week to do laundry and do it all. What if Little Suzy doesn’t have her pink tutu ready on Tuesday? If she is old enough to care about what she is wearing, she is old enough to wash it herself.
• Bills? Don’t even look at the mail every day. It’s all full of bills and thus is too depressing. Throw it all in a big box and go through it once per month. I know what you are thinking, “There might be something really important in there!”. If it were really important, they would have sent an email.
• Dinner? Didn’t I just make that yesterday? I think the worst realization of adulthood was grasping the fact that I had to make it every night forever. Don’t do that. Every time you cook, make a double batch of everything (for tonight and tomorrow) so you only have to spend half as much time cooking.
• Work? Boss emailed and said they need that report by tommorrow morning “or else”? Google “wage theft” then get back to your basting!

The greatest thing you can do to make your Quilt/Life balance better is to not leave quilting to be the “reward” that you get to do once everything else is finished. Instead, pick a time that is dedicated Quilting Time and work everything else around it. For example, Wednesday is Quilt Night and everything else comes after it! Your Other Half can make dinner or make it Leftover Night. While you are at it, make it Kids Clean Up Night as well. So what if they do a bad job, at least you didn’t have to do it!

Other people have Book Club Night, or Gaming Night, or Some-Kind-of-Sport Night (sorry, I don’t know any…) so it makes good and proper sense to have Quilt Night where you spend the whole evening quilting, completely ignoring all work and household responsibilities. Quilting, or any crafting for that matter, reduces stress and wards off the dreariness of everyday life. A vigorous round of quilting will leave you with renewed vigor with which to take on the world!

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