No, I Don't Have a Broom Up My Bum!

Why being the person who does everything isn't a badge of honour.

Have you ever noticed how some people seem to think you possess magical powers? Apparently, I can answer emails, cook dinner, remember everyone's appointments, find the missing PE kit, feed the dog, order birthday presents, make packed lunches, clean the bathroom, reply to texts, pay the bills, put a wash on, and somehow smile while doing it. Oh... and if I could just pop to the supermarket on the way home because someone has run out of cereal, that would be lovely.

After all, I'm "good at organising things."

The truth? 'm not superwoman. I'm just the person who kept saying yes. One day, I caught sight of myself rushing around the house with a vacum in one hand, a shopping list in the other, mentally planning tomorrow's workload while answering someone's question over my shoulder. I remember laughing and thinking,

"People must think I've got a broom shoved up my bum!"

I couldn't stand still for five seconds. I was permanently sweeping, tidying, fixing, organising and firefighting. Not because anyone forced me to. Because I'd slowly trained everyone to expect it. I’m your typical, ‘If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself’ person or else I would think, ‘If I don’t do it, it won’t get done properly….actually, I still think like that!

The Dangerous Habit of Being Reliable

Being reliable is a wonderful quality until it becomes expected. Before long, you're no longer appreciated for helping. You're simply expected to help and then you become the family diary.

Oh yes, and also the taxi driver, meal planner, memory bank, the emotional support line, the cleaner, the organiser, the one that remembers the birthdays, fills in forms, books the holidays, the one who remembers where everything is and the old favourite, putting the dishwasher on

Funny how that happens isn’t it. The rest of them seem so busy – not!!

The Guilt Trap

The worst part wasn't the workload, It was the guilt. If I sat down for ten minutes, I felt lazy.

If I said no, I felt selfish. If I asked for help, I felt like I'd failed. Somewhere along the way I'd convinced myself that my worth was measured by how much I could get done. It took me a long time to realise something important. The world doesn't fall apart because you leave a basket of washing until tomorrow. My family for the most part, could give a monkeys whether the washing got done – that is of course when they realised it wasn’t….

Learning the Two-Letter Word

No. Such a tiny word yet one of the hardest words many of us ever learn.

No, I can't do that today. No, you'll have to sort that yourself. No, I'm already stretched. No, I'm having an evening off.

The first few times felt uncomfortable. I thought I could feel the air of frostiness if I hadn’t completed some task that someone else would take for granted I would do. Then something unexpected happened. People coped, the washing still got done, Dinner still appeared appointments were still attended, life carried on and nobody died. The only difference was that I wasn't running myself into the ground.

That's Why I Am Creating This Next Journal

No, I Don't Have a Broom Up My Bum! wasn't born from a clever marketing idea. It was born from exhaustion and from real life. From standing in my kitchen, broom in hand, wondering how I'd become responsible for absolutely everything.

This journal is designed to help you:

• organise your days without organising everyone else's lives,
• decide what genuinely deserves your time,
• delegate without guilt,
• stop carrying everyone else's mental load,
• and become comfortable saying no without feeling like a bad person.

Because being kind doesn't mean saying yes to everything. Being organised doesn't mean doing everything yourself and being loved shouldn't depend on how many jobs you can tick off in a day.

One Last Thing...

If you've ever found yourself making three meals at once, answering a work email, searching for a missing school shoe, reminding someone about an appointment they could have remembered themselves, while absent-mindedly sweeping the kitchen floor...

Don't worry. You don't have a broom up your bum. You're just overdue for putting yourself somewhere on your own to-do list. And perhaps... it's finally time to say,

"No."