Life spinning out of control...

16 hours isn't long enough. The end of the day comes before I'm ready for it every day. Simple tasks like folding and putting away laundry sit untouched all morning, all afternoon, all evening until the day is spent and I realize that once again the opportunity to sit down to the pile of clean laundry simply never came. Where does the time go?
It's not as if the rest of the house sparkles because I spent my time instead vacuuming, dusting, sweeping and washing. It's not as if Christopher Robin and Peanut Butter made strides in reading and math because I devoted several hours to their instruction. Nope, I barely made time to read to them today.
Raindrop has an ear infection, so we visited the doctor, which ate up half our morning. I made cookies and visited briefly with friends at our weekly moms' group and took our garbage to the dump. I administered medicine, made lunch, read to the boys, put them down for naps, tended the fire in the wood stove, dumped the ashes and brought in more wood, swept up the dirt and ashes and sawdust, looked through the mail and read the Operation Christmas Child update, recorded a bit more of the book I'm reading onto CD for My Hero, played with Raindrop on the floor for a little bit, put the gate up in front of the stairs because she's crawling everywhere now, planned and made supper, cleaned up afterward, put the boys to bed, worked out using the Wii Fit with My Hero, then went to bed.
I have too much on my plate, and I'm just a stay at home mom. I have immediate goals I'm not accomplishing because I can't get to them, and yet I'm barely keeping up with housekeeping, and I'm not finding time every day to work with Christopher Robin's reading or do his little math book or read a small book to Peanut Butter.
One step of progress I have in mind is to make a chore chart and enlist Christopher Robin's help. He can empty the dishwasher...he was doing it himself a year ago when I was horribly sick with pregnancy. He can also make his bed in a way, which is better than the usual state of not being made at all. The reason I haven't started this is that I need to make time to make a chore chart and figure out a system that's easy and sustainable. And I think it will involve a new form of payment. Right now they each earn a nickle every evening they help clean up toys before bedtime. Which, by the way, is amazingly helpful to me, to have all of us work for 10 or 20 minutes on cleaning up the endless toy mess, so when we wake up the next day the house is clean for a little bit.
The other solution I'm beginning to see is my own need to make the things I do as quick and efficient as possible. Make small changes to the way I do things. I'm thorough rather than quick about a lot of the tasks I do, and I can improve there in order to make time for the things that matter more to me.
And finally, I need to prioritize. The most important things need to get done first.

I'm off to work on figuring out what's most important to me and try to make a realistic set of goals for today.