Clutter...

I have to admit, I'm a little bit all over the place lately. It's re-contracting season at JET, and we decided to stay one more (and final) year. I'm happy about this because I love my job, but our upcoming vacation in NYC, the little hints coming from random family members, and my urge to settle down for good so that I could be at home with my daughter, all make my head a place of chaotic contemplation of various possibilities of the future.

Truthfully, if there would be any way to stay in Japan and make the same amount of money, but with James working and me staying home, I probably would jump at the chance. But that would make learning Japanese that much harder, and I really want to learn Japanese well enough to communicate with minimum mistakes.

Would I miss my job? Sure, but I probably would get over it. Though I do wonder if I could be as productive in a home setting as I am at work. I have on several occasions stayed waaay too late at my job because I wanted a job finished, but had not planned ahead properly enough.The job environment urges me to be productive (and stay late), which is something I won't have at a home setting.

I guess then it's a good thing that we're planning on moving to Hungary after Japan, where I hope to learn how to actually run a household from my aunts and cousins, and of course, my dad. I think that's probably what worries me the most, not being able to run a clean and sufficient house, with good home-cooked meals daily. I have this image in my head of how I'd like to be once I become a stay at home mom, and I'm a bit scared that I'm not going to be good enough or won't have talent for it. Because that's what I think homemaking is: self-motivation and a fair amount of talent. Neither of which I have much of.
Cleaning I can do and do it fairly well, though maybe a bit slowly (darn perfectionism), but I suck at decluttering and organizing, and so far haven't been great at planning meals either. By planning meals I mean meals that flow into one-another somewhat over days, so that we wouldn't have to buy little bit of every ingredient daily, making cooking a bit more costly than I'd like. Of course, Japan is the country of buying only a little daily, because it's fresh and there's no space to hold 5kg of anything in such a tiny house, except maybe rice.

On the other hand, the memory that popped into my head just now reassures me. When I was on maternity leave, around week 6 or 7, I started doing something that I haven't done in a long time: wash dishes. After getting through the first few weeks of taking care of a baby, settling into a routine, I found myself... well, I guess bored with a pinch of nesting. So instead of waiting for James to do the dishes when he wants to, one morning I just started to do them myself, because I had nothing better to do and wanted to do something nice for my husband, who has until then gone above and beyond to make sure Rini and I were comfortable. And the funny thing is, I didn't mind doing it. Washing dishes has always been one of those chores that I rather avoid given the chance, but to my surprise it was actually soothing.
So my point is, who knows what happens once I'm not working for long enough? Right now I feel like a couch potato because I'm tired from the rest of my week. But if there's no other work....

And now I feel like even more of a lazy bum... Thinking about all the other parents who work all week and still manage to keep a clean and organized house, with good meals to boost. Or is that just a myth?
Either way, if I could be anywhere close to as good as our neighbor is about running her household, I'll be quite happy. Maybe I'll ask her for some pointers before we move away.