In search of a bit more time

Right now, I need at least three more hours in every day. I'm doing my best to carve them out of my existing schedule, but it's not proving all that easy. Regular work, editing work, my current manuscript, and the usual demands of housework/cooking/laundry were already keeping me busy. And now I've added another project (currently secret and therefore known as the Secret Project), and I'm not just struggling but fighting to fit everything in.

In the interests of saving time – or at least, rearranging time in a more efficient way – I've unearthed my old slow-cooker and am putting it to use. Monday's and Tuesday's dinners were slow-cooked bolognese sauce with spaghetti, and it was very good – and, which is more to the point, it was mostly thrown together in quarter of an hour at the beginning of Monday morning.

I nearly always cook two days' meals in one, I get all my grocery shopping delivered, I have a dishwasher, washing machine and tumble-dryer, and Sparkler's allowance is dependent on her tidying her own room once a week. And yet still, I really really need those three extra hours.

And yes, I am working out ways of getting them.  What, did you think this was just a pointlessly whingey post?  In discussion with Abstract, I've worked out that I need either someone else to do the cleaning, or someone else to do the laundry, or a robot vacuum cleaner (so cute, although I'm sure the cats wouldn't agree).  Or an unnaturally tidy family and cats who neither eat nor shed fur.

I'll keep you posted on which I get!