Finding Time for Girlfriends

Do you balance your life to make time for your girlfriends?

Or do you struggle with balancing work, life, family, friendships and life?

Girlfriends make women healthier, happier, less stressed, live longer and feel more beautiful. Those wonderful benefits of female friendship improve our quality of life and are substantial to our level of happiness. So why don’t we work to have not only a life/work balance, but to have a life/friendship balance?

Probably the most common excuse for not making time for our girlfriends is that we don’t have the time. We have kids, jobs, homes, relationships, dirty clothes, meals to prepare, dishes to do and all the wonderful other things that women do on a daily basis. We constantly juggle deadlines and budgets, try to take care of ourselves and our families, and often don’t even sleep well to be rested for another day of responsibilities and expectations.

Here’s our girlfriend advice for being a better friend and maintaining a life friendship balance:

1. Make time with your girlfriends a priority. Put it on  your calendar. Schedule time together – and don’t change  plans. Examples: Every Sunday night: call up a girlfriend and catch up on her life. Check in at least once a week or month with different female friends. Send a birthday card to all your girlfriends on their birthdays. Show your girlfriend(s) how much their friendship means to you – be the kind of friend you’d love to have!

2. Make plans with girlfriends in advance. Monthly Book Club, an upcoming concert or sports event, a trip together. Plan ahead and balance your schedule around it. (See #1!) Sometimes we have to plan far ahead to make arrangements and get on everyone’s schedule. So, plan ahead for some great times with your girlfriends!

3. Multi-task: Spend time together and ‘get stuff done!’ Run, work-out or take a yoga class together. (It will motivate you to get exercising and make it much more fun!) Volunteer together – do good for others and spend time with your favorite BFF(s). Even plan some of your ‘chores’ together – meet to go grocery shopping, go to the garden/home store together and work on home projects together, cook meals ahead of time (together, of course) then split them so you both have meals prepared.

4. Get into a routine. As we mentioned above, call your girlfriends every Sunday afternoon or evening. Plan a girlfriend’s happy hour for the last Friday of the month and book a babysitter in advance. (Then possible share the babysitter with our girlfriend’s kids!) As shared on our Facebook page, Amy from Cincy Chic, has a standing girlfriend get-together – aka: “Champagne Tuesday.” (Does that sound fun and like you’d love to hang out with Amy and her girlfriends every week?!)

5. Look out for each other. Just like you need some work / life / friendship balance, so do your girlfriends. If your friend is working too much, invite her out to dinner to spend time away from work and with you. Talk about work some but also make the conversations about fun stuff – like reality shows, shoe shopping, upcoming travel plans, etc. If your BFF is a busy, busy mom, hire a babysitter for her and surprise her with a night out with you (and the girls). (Check out BabySitEase for a babysitting service provided by our girlfriend,Peggy Murriner.)

Happiness is found in balance. Balancing our time allows us to allot for our needs – working to follow a passion (and affording us the income and free time to enjoy the rest of the hours in our lives), spending time with people we love and maintaining a sane life work balance.

Build some time into your schedule for your girlfriends. It’s important to your happiness. It’s important to the balance of work and life.

http://girlfriendology.com/blog/3304/be-a-better-friend-finding-time-for-girlfriends/

Today I want to take the time to introduce you to one of my new girl friends.  Her name is Heidi and her blog is Made by Heidi. If you like craft projects you will love what she is doing right now. Made by Heidi has a contest going on. She has 18 craft projects posted and she wants you to vote Heidi says “I need your help! Take a look at the contestants and vote on your 5  favorites over in my sidebar. The voting will be open until Friday, August 6th at midnight. You are allowed 5 votes, per person, per day. Go to her site and get some great ideas. Vote while you are there.