Case study: When Transitions Impact Your Schedule and Tasks

Life is always changing, but for long periods, you feel like you can get into a routine. Your general daily life is consistent and has the same tasks, for the most part. A large life event, such as a hospitalization, or a transition, such as a divorce, is bound to shake things up and leave you feeling lost, confused, and overwhelmed.

That’s what I’m watching with two friends who are going through divorces. One has no children; the other has two very young children. The process is painful for each and challenging them every single day. At first, I noticed the one with children struggling more because of the number of tasks. Her time is not her own; most waking moments are either work or her children and now, things like divorce paperwork and mediation. But now, the other one is moving to a new city, which is adding to her task load, too.

How do you manage it? Here is a mixture of what I learned from watching these two situations and my own, professional organizer advice, whether you’re going through a divorce or any other massive life change.

• Delegate. Pay someone else to mow the lawn and clean the house or do anything else you can afford to hire out. Your sanity will last longer if you’re not always worried about those annoying chores on top of everything else. You might even find a neighbor kid willing to do the lawn for far less than a professional service. (Done is better than perfect!)
• Create consistency out of chaos. You have a new “normal” to manage, and one way to do that is to find swiftly a routine that suits your situation. There’s no better time to make sure items have homes where you can find them or create a morning checklist of things you do before you leave the house each day. While some think it sounds boring, doing those things in the same order will make it easier, especially over time, to get through the “must-dos.”
• Prepare and plan! With limited time, this is challenging, but I notice my friend with kids always thinking about logistics. She sets out things the night before that they need in the morning. She plans ahead for one weekly grocery trip and simple dinner menus she can prepare while managing a toddler and breastfeeding an infant. (I’m encouraging her to consider ordering groceries online and picking them up, a service some stores now offer.)
• Let others help, but give direction. Friends and family want to help you, but they might need ideas on what you will find useful. For example, my friend loves having people over to help in general in the evenings, but often they move things around as they clean up after dinner. Then, as she gets ready in the morning, she can’t find the items she needs. Having stuff in the wrong place makes her morning more challenging. Don’t be shy about ordering people around in a nice way.

If you’ve been through a transition, what helped you? We’d love to hear you share via Facebook.