busy moms have 30 hours of leisure time

I know, I know. What! I stumbled on this article by Brigit Schulte in the Washington Post, The Test of Time: A busy working mother tries to figure out where all her time is going.

Before I even read the article I can tell you there is no way I am wasting 30 hours of my week. I mean come on, there are meals to be made, clothes to be washed, kids to be fed, husbands to well hang out with, a house to clean, dishes to be washed, carpets to be vacuumed…

Not to mention an online store to maintain, blog posts to write for lifetimemoms.com, momsofhue.com and here at bizziemommy.com. I didn’t even mention the things on my “to do” list that I never touch like that dusty old treadmill or that EAS Sports game still sitting in the box.

Did I mention sleep?

There is no way, no how, do I have an extra 30 hours of LEISURE TIME.

Before I even read the article lets just think about this.  There are 168 hours in a week and only 120 hours in work week (5 days).

I work from 9am to 5pm, 5 days a week, which is an automatic 40 hours a week.

I commute approximately 2 hours, 5 days a week, so that is 10 hours per week.

From 6:00pm to 8:30pm we are eating dinner and getting the kids off to bed – that’s another 2 1/2 hours 7 days a week, which is 17.5 hours per week.

From 6:00am to 8:00am we are eating breakfast, getting dressed, and getting the kids ready for school – that’s 2 hours 5 days a week and probably the same amount of time on the weekends. That’s 14 hours.

So you are supposed to sleep 8 hours per day – but in actuality we are getting roughly 6 hours if we’re lucky. So 6 hours, 7 days per week, is 42 hours.

So far we have 123 hours spent just on the bare minimum.

Now let’s factor in the other duties that take up my time.

Washing Clothes – I do laundry once a week and it usually takes about a day to run all of the clothes through the wash. That’s about 5 loads of laundry – we will say it takes 15 minutes to separate the clothes, put them in the washer, then the dryer than back in the house. Folding, that’s got to be at least 2-3 hours out of my day (if I were to actually put them away) 4 1/2 hours to do laundry.

Working – I try to squeeze my business transactions and blogging in between my kid’s bedtime and before I pass out myself – so that’s between 8:30 – 12:30. That is 4 hours every weeknight. 20 hours total, and probably another 8 hours on the weekend

Cleaning – Wow this is hard to judge because it’s done sporadically throughout the day. It must be between 1-2 hours per day, more so on the weekends. So I’ll say 2 hours per day for 7 days. That’s another 14 hours.

I am already at 169 HOURS that sucks up EVERY HOUR and then some in the full week and surpasses the hours of a work week.

So it’s obvious that I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT HAVE 30 HOURS OF LEISURE TIME in my day!

Next in the Series
do busy moms really have 30 hours of leisure time, part 2