Calendar Fail!

No one is perfect.

Even the blogs that look like someone has everything perfect...its not.  Life happens and none of us can keep everything perfect.  Do you remember getting a gold star on a test in grade school if you got a perfect score?  Well, I don't get a gold star this time, but I did get through the situation.

I had a fail with my calendar management this week. 

 Here is the story of how this situation unfolded.  My kids are away at a youth camp this week.  All of last week as we were painting our livingroom, I was keenly aware that the packing for this trip was looming in the background.  If you have been following my blog, you will know that the painting was an all encompassing project.  In addition to the painting we had the party on Saturday for my birthday, which is actually on Thursday. 

In any event, I kept telling myself that I will get to the packing list for the kid's trip, and that I really only had to buy bug spray and sunscreen anyways.  Imagine my dismay when I realized the day before the trip that I had FAILED on 2 big things.

1. We needed sleeping bags to borrow.  Ours are old and jumbo sized.  Not suitable for a camping/portaging trip.
2. My son had outgrown all of his swim shorts.

I managed to borrow 2 sleeping bags from a friend (whew!), which saved us a very unnescessary expense of buying them.  So I managed to side step that emergency quite quickly.

The swim short problem was more difficult.  First of all, the last day before the trip my time became occupied with visits. We had family visiting, from the party the night before that slept over and stayed until almost noon. It was a real treat to have them there and I enjoyed every moment with them.
Then I had to borrow the sleeping bags, which had the added bonus of a cup of coffee with friends.  All of these events just take good honest time to do. The next thing I knew, it was late in the day on Sunday and the family and I headed to Wal-mart to try and find a swim suit and grab the other supplies.  By this time of the day there wasn't any other stores to shop from that would be open, so we were at the mercy of the inventory in one store only.

My son needs a mens small or waist 28-30.  This is not a size that they stock very many of at Wal-mart.  We searched the racks for what felt like forever, and finally found 2 pairs of swim shorts in his size.  Of these, only 1 pair fit.  That's right, my son had the choice of 1 pair of swim shorts, or have nothing at all.  He opted for the swim shorts, of course!

I was so upset with myself.  This is exactly the sort of problems I am working away from.   This is why I am working so hard to be organized, is so that I am no longer the Mom standing in the department store at the last minute with the emergency shopping and no choice on price or selection.

Let's look at how to fix this....what was going on here?

1. I was too ambitious with my calendar.  I honestly thought that painting would be done by Tuesday, or Wednesday.  It took until Friday to finish painting both our living room and Mom's.  This paint project, plus planning and hosting a party, and preparing for the camp trip was too much in one week.
2. I did not work back from my due date.  I already know this, and you probably do too, but if you work back from the due date, you can usually figure out when you need to start something on your calendar.  I should have started to look at that packing list on Wednesday or Thursday, and this trouble could have been avoided.
3. I didn't check my calendar daily while on holiday.  It was a working holiday week, as we were painting and I let the disruption cause my daily routine to de-rail.  You will save yourself so much heartache if you enter things in your calendar and then really, really....check it daily, and get your tasks done.
4. I didn't adjust my calendar.  If you refer to my page titled Organized Calendar you will see that I state there that you need to check your calendar each day and if you did not get something done, you need to transfer the task to a PLANNED date when you will complete it. 
When I realized the painting project was taking longer than anticipated I should have made a plan to move some of the painting to the next week so that I could still allow proper time for party preparations and packing for camping preparations.

This is how we learn to change.   We must stop and assess the situation and ask ourselves what is happening here.  If we can understand what is happening, then we can see the steps to change. 

I hope that sharing this story will encourage you to keep on learning and that with intentional changes and practice you can MAKE YOUR LIFE ORGANIZED! I'd love to hear from you if you have a story of how you have learned the value of being organized and how it can set you free to do the things that are important. 

Thanks for reading my blog!
Cassie