9. Take a vacation. Everyone knows that finances can be tight in the midst of an adoption, but even if you can’t afford a deluxe Caribbean cruise, you can still plan a last couple-only (or smaller family-only) fling. Putting your plans off into the future a bit (but not so far that they could possibly conflict with your adoption schedule) will give you something fun to look forward to and help take your mind off the wait. Plan a long weekend in a city within a day’s drive. Go camping. Go visit grandparents. If you can’t spare a few days or a weekend, plan a fun day. Shopping, dinner and a movie. Visit a museum. Go see a play or a concert. Whatever it is, make it something out of the ordinary and something that requires some advanced planning so it occupies your mind for a while. If you’re fortunate enough to have deeper pockets, take that Caribbean cruise! Go on a Church history tour. Go to Paris! Just plan, plan, plan, and make it truly memorable.

10. Clean and PURGE! This may not be your cup of herbal tea, but it’s one of my very favorite things – at least the purging part. Once your new child is home, you’ll have less time to accomplish deep cleaning, organizing, and ridding your home of clutter, so now is the time to dig in!

Over the summer months when we were waiting for our new children from Haiti, I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish in the house before they came home. At the top of the list was finishing our third floor into a master bedroom so children could move into our old room. Once that was done, we decorated the old master, redid the room that the bigger girls would be moving into, and did a quick overhaul of our basement to incorporate a schoolroom (since we’d recently decided to homeschool). Once those things were done, I moved on to the other items on my list. We went through the kids’ clothes and packed away outgrown clothes, organized their toys (which included donating and chucking many), and deep cleaning their rooms. We cleaned out our large linen closet and storage rooms, and took literally truckloads of stuff to the dump and the local charity shop. We emptied all the kitchen cabinets and got rid of useless appliances, reorganized, and deep cleaned. We overhauled the food storage room, finished our 72-hour survival kits, and gathered other emergency essentials.

If you need help knowing where to start, consider reading the book “It’s All Too Much,” by Peter Walsh of TLC’s “Clean Sweep.” Good stuff.

continued