Tomorrow is our fifth wedding anniversary! Here are some ideas on how to maintain balance with chores, parenting, and time.
It’s our 5th wedding anniversary this weekend!
It’s hard to believe that our 5th wedding anniversary will be tomorrow. I feel like two years have passed since that wonderful day! (We see Our wedding blog posts are here!) But all it takes is realizing that we have nearly four years of age to know that she has been way longer than we feel!
While it’s still five years for some of you in the newlyweds territory, I wanted to share some of the ways we’re keeping the peace in our home. From the start, Thomas and I “experienced life together” very well. We have similar habits, preferences, and goals that make working together easy.
zoning
Overall, I’m the CEO of the inside (organization, decor, design) and Thomas is the CEO of the outside (garden card, gardening, plants). While we might give input on each other’s space, I rarely step into the yard/garage/tools and don’t wonder when I’m reorganizing a closet. Play to your strengths! These just naturally make sense based on what we like to do.
Decide on the chores
While we share a lot of homework (vacuuming, general tidying up), we each have tasks that we started doing and turned into our “business”.
I: Emptying the dishwasher, laying out the kids’ clothes, cleaning the kitchen after breakfast, tossing boxes in the garage (HAHA!)
Thomas: making coffee, taking out the trash, making kids lunch, dismantling bins (🙂)
Then for cooking/dishing we tend to switch it up. “I cook, you are clean,” or rather, who does not do a birch bath cleans the kitchen. We tend to switch this task based on mood. Whoever works the kitchen and does not bathe, then tells the time of the tale.
Own your own money
In general, I’m a big fan of the “everything is ours” approach to money. While I know there are couples that separate their finances and love that setup, I’ve always been a believer in joint accounts. 97% of our funds are jointly owned and jointly planned through common goals.
But I think it’s really important to have some money that you can spend without anyone caring about it. Thus, we both have provisions for our personal expenses. If I knew every time Thomas bought a toy for himself or if he knew that every time I got a facial, we might start to annoy each other. But instead, we have our own credit cards which are ours to spend the way we want.
trade time
We all have sports and leisure activities that make us sane and happy: golf and workouts. We have a few weekly time blocks that are unofficial time trades.
Thomas usually plays golf one afternoon a week until dinner time. I usually go to my favorite exercise class on Saturday mornings and occasionally play women’s soccer on Sunday afternoons. When we have some personal weekly activities scheduled, childcare involvement feels balanced. We also swap naps on Saturdays sometimes so we both get a break now because Birch doesn’t nap himself.
Spend some time away from home
While this isn’t always in the budget, there are ways to make it work! (Important , Travel Rewards!) Sometimes we just need to go out to reset. Home slack gets so monotonous that even a quick one-night stay somewhere (with or without kids) can breathe a lot of life into our relationship.
Of course in a perfect world we’d have a weekly date night and a monthly weekend away. Maybe one day that will be more realistic. But we really try to budget for these things as much as we can because we know they are as important to our marriage as not fighting over the housework.
And speaking of time away, we have a very special trip coming up in December to celebrate our 40th birthdays and our anniversaries simultaneously. We can’t wait for some quality time together!
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