when household chores get in the way of parenting

Are your household chores preventing you from spending more time with family? As for us, there are indeed times when they do and it can sometimes send a bad feeling of guilt from within. As parents, we want to be able to give more of our time on weekends with our kid. We feel like we owe it to our child to spend quality time with her whenever we are not at work. Because of our busy schedule, though, our time off from work is sometimes spent doing household chores. In fact, the way things are going right now (and if you have read my previous post about the unattended laundry), it looks like a brand new washing machine is already a practical and a long overdue expense  since doing the laundry by hand can eat up most of our time. Someone we know actually convinced us to buy their 4-year old laundry machine at a price 40% cheaper than what it would normally cost us if we bought it brand new. However, husband said that if we buy the used appliance, the likelihood of needing washer repair service earlier is obviously greater than we would normally do when we would acquire a new one. We figured it's going to cost us more in the long run if we didn't invest in a brand new appliance.