Climbing out of a Hole

Having recovered from morning sickness sooner than I expected (Deo gratias!), I am now working on climbing out of the hole where several weeks of neglect have left my housework.  Where did I start?  Mostly by accident, I started with prayer.  I was so overwhelmed by the mountain of things left undone that I didn't know where to begin.  At the same time, I was feeling the need to rethink my prayer life, which was also suffering from neglect.

Working from my favorite breviary (the Monastic Diurnal), I abbreviated the hours to be short enough not to overtax my baby's attention span, and laid out two days of prayers:  Sunday, and weekdays.  I am also hoping that this will be repetitive enough that after my little girl begins to talk, but before she is able to read, she will be able to pray with me.  I assigned times throughout the day for each of the hours of the Divine Office, arranging them around naptimes and mealtimes.

After doing this for a couple days, I realized that I now had a working schedule for my day.  I could now use this framework to schedule times to do brief daily household chores like dishes and laundry, so that I can keep those aspects of the household running smoothly (instead of getting buried every few days).  So far it seems to be working.  There are a lot of other things that still need my attention, but the task has become a lot less overwhelming.  I guess it really does work to start with prayer!