How I write NorthHantsMum in 2015

Several people have said to me recently that they don’t know how I have the time to write NHM, with everything else going on in my life, so I spent some time thinking a little more about this over Christmas.

I wrote a post in 2013 about how I wrote NorthHantsMum then. I spent three months on my maternity leave setting up NHM (Miss NHM was a sleeper!), and although I’ve learnt a lot since then, I only really dedicate about 2-3 hours a week to blogging.

These are a few of the reasons why I think I have the time to write NHM!

I am “uber” organised

I’ve mentioned on NHM before that there are two apps that are fundamental to my organisational skills. These are Evernote and Remember the Milk. I still use Trello but I use this more as a reference tool for the boards that I set up a few years ago.

I use Evernote to draft out each post. I have two specific folders in Evernote for NHM. One which has post ideas organised by theme and one which has posts organised by month. I mainly use the month post, so I always have the current month and next month in my Evernote shortcuts. Evernote syncs to my iPad, my pc and my phone. So I can literally update a post when I get an idea and it syncs to all of my technology.

I used to have a schedule in Evernote but found I had to keep referring back to it. I’ve found it much better just to add the schedule directly into Google Calendar. I’ve set up a specific calender for NHM which has all the posts I have scheduled for the following month and any activities or meetings that are diarised.

I use Remember the Milk to organise my life. I use this for all of my “to do’s” as well as NHM. It’s a great reminder tool.

I also use Google Calendar. I have several different calendars set up, including one for NHM, one for my husband and another one for Miss NHM. Each month I spend about 10 to 15 mins thinking about which NHM posts I want to add in for that month and add in a calendar notice for each day, showing this. Then, if I don’t get around to updating evernote, it doesn’t matter as it’s in my calendar. This also syncs to my iPad, PC and phone.

I am crap at Birthday cards though. I really don’t seem to be able to get birthday cards out on time, even with multiple Google calendar alerts. I have stack loads of birthday cards that have been bought for people that I never quite got around to sending out. I am going to do my very best to work on this during 2015!!! lol.

We don’t have a TV

Yup, that’s right, no TV. So, when you would sit down to watch TV in an evening, I’m normally on my computer, catching up with people on Skype, working, organising things or doing NHM “work”.

Although, since Mr NHM stopped working shift in July 2014 I don’t get as much access to my computer as I used too. We now have alternate evenings between who has the study, as I can’t write NHM whilst he’s playing his computer games :-D.

However, we do still watch “TV”. We used to watch a lot of DVD’s as we had Lovefilm membership but we now have Netflix and Amazon Prime. I wasn’t planning to get both and I think next time we will stick with just Netflix. I love the luxury of being able to choose what I want to watch, when I want to watch it.

I am that person in the cinema who laughs at all of the adverts because I’ve never seen them before!

I try to only watch an hour of “TV” a day. It doesn’t always work out like that if it’s a good TV series that I’m watching!

I am very strict

I try not to let NHM impact my family life.

I’ve mentioned before that I work four days a week, so whilst my daughter is awake and not at nursery, I’m spending as much time with her as I possibly can.

I do most of my NHM work on Sunday nights.

I delegate and outsource everything that I can

I’ve mentioned before that we have a “lady who does“. Tracy, our cleaner, is my godsend. She comes every couple of weeks for an hour and a half and does all the cleaning that I can’t keep on top of. I learnt several years ago that as much as I love a clean and tidy house, I’d rather use my time to better effect than actually cleaning and tidying it myself :-D.

I have blogged about using online food shopping. We rarely go shopping in a store and I can’t imagine living without online shopping. It has been my saviour on many, many occassions. Oh and I also meal plan, which means I don’t have to think about what we are going to eat every evening.

I also delegate a lot of cooking to my slow cooker. I’m getting a bit of a reputation of being the “slow cooking queen” but it really is a fantastic way of being able to prepare two meals at once in half the time.

Facebook

I don’t like Facebook. I find it very insidious. However, most of my readers access NHM via Facebook so I have to use the tool.

I’ve “liked” a lot of Facebook pages. I’ve set things up so that I get notifications (not emails!) every time specific pages post something to Facebook. This helps me stay on top of what is happening in the area, and ensures that I can keep you informed.

I rarely drink alcohol and I have a good breakfast every morning

I hardly drink any alcohol anymore. Since Miss NHM was born I just haven’t had the energy. Especially when Mr NHM was on shift and I was looking after Miss NHM on my own, I didn’t want to spend the time with her hungover.

It’s not such a bad thing. I more than made up for drinking alcohol in my youth :-D. And possibly at a recent Halloween party, but the less said about that the better!!! lol.

I try to have a good breakfast every morning, to keep me going. I always have a fresh juice (or previously prepared juice that’s been stored in a SIGG’s water bottle in the fridge). I started juicing just over a year ago and I’ve hardly been sick since, compared to before I was juicing.

I also always have a bowl of porridge with either frozen fruit or maple syrup.

This is how I write NHM in 2015

I’m sure this is all deathly boring for you to read but at least now, when people ask me how I have the time to continue to write NHM, I can point them in the direction of this post 😉

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