Ep:8 How to be Organised with Elise Boyle Pt 4

The Full Life Podcast with Melanie Lynam

Elise and I talk about keeping our budget in mind each week, finding time to spend with God daily, how to keep ourselves full, refreshed and overflowing, and maintaining intimacy in our relationship with our spouse.
Budget

• Keep open communication with your spouse about expenses for the week and upcoming bills, what is left in the main bank account and what you still need to purchase that week.
• Mel and Dan have learned over the years to talk about their finances regularly instead of ignoring them.
• Consider your plans for the weekend, what you should probably go without this pay cycle.
• Think ahead about bills, expenses and birthdays coming up. Communicate.

Making time to spend time with God

• It's about the moments in the day. Including God in your day. Time alone in the car.
• Having a devotional book to meditate on scripture for the rest of the day.
• Sometimes over breakfast.
• Sometimes before you get up, while still in bed. Or at night after the kids are in bed.
• We make time for what is important to us.
• It’s about the moments. Have a continual conversation with God throughout the day, talking to Him about things that are on your heart.
• While washing dishes, folding washing.
• When we get up early but the kids wake up early and interrupt us, at least we’re trying, at least we’re getting something over nothing so it is always worth making that extra effort to get up earlier to have that quiet time but we realise it looks different in different seasons.

Preventing Burnout. Soul Care - how do we fit this in? What does this look like?

• Finding moments in the day - a quiet coffee alone, reading a book.
• Going out to get nails done
• Gym
• Elise says, “Spending that time away from your kids can actually make you a better Mum. Because you’re not burnt out and when you’re feeling run down and stressed it’s only going to result in bad responses to your kids so you need to spend some time away from them.”
• Have a hobby or something that we look forward to outside of being a parent.
• Going out for coffee on own to read book or watch Netflix.
• Sewing into myself and loving on myself is actually also sewing into our children and loving on them. They do reflect our moods and our responses.
• Going for a walk.
• Just having a break from the “demands” that children put on us and feeling overwhelmed from those demands and having a time out from that.

Spending quality time with our spouse

• Finding baby sitters can be challenging especially when you have more than 2 children.
• It takes a lot of organisation sometimes to go out. It is definitely worth making it a priority for your marriage.
• Be creative. Sometimes going out on a date doesn’t suit the budget but you can be intentional with the time that you spend with each other at home such as grabbing take out, playing cards and then watching a movie together.
• One friend of Mel’s has a jar full of ‘date night’ ideas including spending the night playing xbox because that is his thing. So one night he taught her how to play a game. Mixing things up.
• Run on the beach and then grab burgers.
• Picnic dinner
• Taking time out to be just the 2 of you.
• Mel and Dan have had times of feeling disconnected, being parents together but not working on our friendship.
• Let’s have some fun together.
• Even if you do feel far apart, you can take steps to get back to feeling like you’re close friends and intimate again.
• Keeping it in mind and being intentional about having fun together.

That concludes our 4 part series on Organisation. We hope this has been helpful to you.

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