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  • Week 2 Overwhelm

    So now I’m going into week two of this new “thing” right… Well now I’m super overwhelmed and I’m not sure what on earth to post about. I was going to do a post on getting back on track with my health and fitness goals and the tools I’m using to keep me accountable to myself. But then I wasn’t sure if it would work right…. Then I though well I just made some goodies for my kids portion of the fundraising bake sale for them to go to a church camp next month….but I forgot to take pictures of the end product all packaged and everything… so to me it wasn’t complete. Then I thought how about maybe something about how I keep my productivity going at work. so here’s a little more about me and where I’m at and why make myself feel overwhelmed.

    I mentioned in my previous post that my husband and I own two Batteries Plus stores. When we bought these it was for my husband to run. and he did for about the first year. Then I joined in with him and my step-son was working with him. I mostly just ran the back office and worked like half days and home schooled my kids as this was all during the beginning of covid. We were considered essential so we did not have to close down. and neither did the home improvement stores here either. So i spent my time working part day and then homeschooling and then doing home remodel projects. It was amazing and more of wat I like to do. I even started looking into starting a homeschool You Tube Channel. But did not have the confidence for it. then with the store doing amazingly we decided to open a second store. By this time schools had re opened and to be honest I did not trust the system where we lived and I did not want to send my kids back into the public school system so continued to homeschool. The location we looked into opening our second location was in the neighboring and larger town to my families hometown. Where my grandparents live. We could move to a smaller more conservative area and open that second spot. It was all amazing for the first year and a half. We sold our house and my husband stayed with his parents while we started making the adjustment to move and I moved down where my parents and grandparents are with my kids so they could start school and I could run the setting up and opening of the second location.

    Now in order to open the new location and hire help[ I had to know all of the aspects of the store. all of the tings we do and not just rely on the “guys” to do it. So I did the trainings and got certified in device repair as well as learning how to do auto battery installs. how to determine the correct battery for what customer might be using it for. How to talk and educate people on solar batteries and golf carty batteries. I had to learn enough to answer any questions and educate others on deep cycle vs auto. or 6v vs 12v. we also did key cutting and programming at the time. as well as watch and fob battery replacements. we do SLA batteries for apc and security systems we do wheel chair/power chair battery replacements and many more things.

    Both stores were doing amazingly for the first year and a half. and my husband started the transition of moving from the original store to the new one and was with me a little more and a little more. once he had moved to the new location full time with me the original store we noticed started having a decline. so we started doing an alternating week for him. one week there and one week at the new store. It was extremely difficult for us but we didn’t really see any kind of increase, but the decline slowed. But he got really tired of traveling so much and we decided to start alternating so we would each go once a month. But the store was still declining. We were in the middle of trying to figure out what we needed to do when my husband was approached by a friend of his who happened to work for the company he worked for when we bought the original store. They were going to have an opening for a manager position in the town where we opened the new store. After several long discussions we decided that the guaranteed paycheck was a large comfort for us which sales in both stores declining steadily and we couldn’t figure out what to do.

    So August of 2023 he started this new job and I had to take over running both stores by myself. It was a lot actually. I was now running back and forth to the original store every other week. I was down to my step-son and one other guy filling in in the main store and just me and my uncle in the new store. with me being gone I needed a tech in the new store so I hired my nephew. and he did a great job. I was now running all of the back office and running the floor and doing all of the ordering for both stores and running all of the commercial sales for both stores… while training my nephew. We seemed to be holding steady but my one employee in the original store really needed to go. He was damaging peoples devices when working on them charging people the incorrect amounts causing losses for the store and in general was getting us some bad reviews. But we had a family vacation that we had pd for the year before when things weren’t too bad that we had to go on or we lost all of the money for it. So we went on the 10 Day Hawaiian cruise with 27 of my family members….. lol and then when we got back I had to buckle down even more. Things weren’t great before we left but at least I still had weekends. lol after we returned that last employee left and I started working 7 days a week. I did Mon, Tues, Wed, in the new store and then I did Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun in the original store for about 14 mos.

    During that first winter right before winter break I found out that my son was flunking out of 7th grade. So for Christmas that year he got homeschool curriculum. He then was homeschooled by me at the shop. He want back and forth with me and we were together 24 seven. He worked the shops with me and homeschooled. It was a lot, but you have to do what you have to do. I did hire a kid who had worked in another store for a few months so training didin’t take as long. That left two in my main store and two in my new store with me filling in and going back and forth. The whole point was to keep costs down. So I was working for almost free. My husband saw how hard it was on me and the stress of the slow slow winters. Since we are a more seasonal business where we are the winters were the absolute hardest. the two most stressful winter seasons I’ve ever dealt with My husband saw that it was starting to take a toll on me and insisted that I start working a bit less and letting the guys work more.

    This whole time I’m killing my self working, trying keep all the books, doing all the payroll, trying to strategically pay bills so that I have the money to pay them. Trying to keep up the stores because none of my employees can clean up after themselves or restock the shelves, and I was helping every customer by myself. Doing all the harder repairs that my other guys were not comfortable doing because I was trying to make every single sale. I was homeschooling and trying to teach my son how to help me. I was trying to cater to all of my commercial accounts and getting them everything they needed asap. Trying to figure out if I’ll be able to order and when I can place them that I’ll be able to pay them because I need product in order to make sales so that I can pay the bills. It was a vicious cycle. and it was taking a toll on my mentally and physically. My husband asked me what I needed to help me. I told him I missed working out, that I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit it in but that I always had felt much better while keeping a regular fitness routine and eating properly and not eating out every day.

    So I signed up with Planet Fitness because it was the one gym that was in both towns so that I would only have to pay for one membership. And I’m not sure I was actually getting that much out of it I wasn’t following a plan or anything like that but I was moving my body and I felt so much better, my son was going with me and getting the benefit as well.

    Then my Aunt invited me to go to Rome. Now my aunt and my cousin always take these crazy trips and always ask if I want to go and I always have to say no because of the costs and the time off that I can’t take because of coverage. Well this time they didn’t even ask me they called my husband and said hey we found this crazy deal.. We want to take Chaleenah. and he said book it!I was so freaking excited only after that did they call me and say “hey your going to Rome and we already asked Jeff so you have no excuse now.” we booked it for Feb and started making plans this was probably early OCT 2024. Unfortunately in Nov of 2024 my aunt got sick. It was something that should have been minor but ended up with her in the hospital for something like 32 days. Where we all live they aren’t as equipped as the larger area where my original store was so she was up here which made it so that I could go see her every day while I was here. She was in through Christmas and they told her that she would still be healed enough to go on our trip but would need to take it easy. MY cousin was with her the entire time as was my uncle which meant my cousins family had to basically skip Christmas, She was supposed to she released a few times before that and it kept getting extended. So on Christmas Eve when they said she wasn’t going anywhere till med next week me and my daughter closed the shop at 4 as we do and then went to she store and bought Christmas presents for my aunt and uncle and my cousin, her husband, and her two kids. We already had everyone’s presents at home but we didn’t know that they were going to be stuck in the hospital so since we didn’t have anything for them we started from scratch. We wrapped everything and took it over there so that they had it to open Christmas morning. Since we were at my mother in laws and staying up here for the holiday my mother-in-law made extra food and we took it over there so they could all have a good Christmas meal! they released her three days after that.

    I tried to swing over to her house as much as I could but my schedule made it hard. then after 2 weeks at home they put her back in the hospital where w lived where she stayed for another like 18 days or something like that. It was crazy. This time they said cancel Rome it’s not going to happen. Since we had already paid for it there wasn’t much we could do. It was a combo dela air and hotel. so we lost all the hotel funds and only got a credit for half of our airline tickets. we ended up getting back 400 credit to use at a future date. Now one of the reasons we wanted to go this year (2025) was because it is the Jubilee year. (which I will talk about in a different post). She gets out of the hospital and is now fully focusing on getting better and healing.

    That brings us to the spring of 2025 and my husband kinda forced me to step back. I was able to take an actual weekend and even leave early two of the other days. By early I mean around 3-4. I was actually really starting to love this schedule my husband earned and amazing trip to Florida through his work in feb and it was all expenses paid we only had to pay for my airline ticket. It was amazing and a much needed break it was only 4 days and worked well with the schedule we were working now. I was able to be fully committed to the fitness plan I had been committing to for about 3 mos. It wasn’t perfect with all the travel but I mostly stayed on track. Then when we got back the catch up was brutal. I still worked a bit while I was gone but it was till a lot. I got right back at it. My crazy schedule and fighting more and more with my son whi refuesed to cooperate with homeschooling anymore.

    During the last few months of this our dog who had been having hip issues as almost completely immobile and I couldn’t leave him home by himself so our puppy (14 years old) was now traveling with me back and forth and was now permanently in a diaper because he was losing his ability to control himself….. I was asked a lot why I didn’t put him down and honestly because he was still fine. His brain was still completely there and he was a very spoiled doggy and loved to be with me all the time. For me it wasn’t an option.

    My son was becoming more difficult and I didn’t have the time or patience to baby him through his work so I enrolled him in a public charter school. He has been doing amazingly there.

    Then in April and all the extra hours for catchup I ended up getting really sick, (not sure how, I kind of put it down to exhaustion causing a weakened immune system) I still had to work the first few days until I could make arrangements to get coverage, and it was extremely hard. Then two of my guys who were students within a week of each other let me know that they were going to be leaving me mid and end of May that gave me two to three weeks with help.

    At this point I pretty much had a break down. I was already struggling really hard with working this much and this hard in something that I’m not incredibly passionate about. Working almost for free felt like this was all a huge waste of my time. I’m killing myself working my ass off and the stores are still doing badly. I can’t get my guys to help me out in keeping the stores clean and organized they both look like complete and utter crap. After a small breakdown I called my mom and she came over to the newer store and helped me clean organize and throw stuff away. It took us two weeks since I was only able to be there two days a week at the time. The stress of not knowing how I’m going to keep it going and still working all these hours and bending over backwards to try and help people. Every time I turn around it’s something, they guys made this error. This customer is pissed about this issue and stuff that is out of my control but always makes more work and harder situations and the entire time all I want to do is something else.

    I’ve tried a few times to start some other side hustle to make some extra cash so we aren’t struggling so much and I’m working so many hours doing this that I can’t make it happen. I can’t keep up with the work I’m doing and my health and fitness goals and learn all this new stuff. On top of this I did find that one of my biggest struggles was a yearning to get closer to God to share my faith with others. I want other people to see the greatness sand goodness of God. to understand the true meaning behind the Catholic traditions that I believe so fully in. I started feeling helpless. I told myself that I couldn’t keep doing this to myself anymore. I gave it to God. I had two guys leaving and had no idea what on earth I was going to do with the schedule with only myself and one guy in each store…. I gave it all to him. Then one day after I worked out and I was in the shower it came to me. I would work Sun, Mon, Tuesday in the original store. This means that I don’t have to leave my house at 4 am to get to the shop intime to open. By this time my schedule had been Mond, Tuesday, Wed in the 1st store meaning I had to be 2 hours away by 8 am. SO i had to be up at 4:30 to get to the shop in time to open then working till close at 6. then 8-6 on Tuesday and 8-2 on Wednesday so I could drive home. Then working Thurs, Fri. in the newer store.. The changes I came up with once the two guys left would be Sun (10-4 so i wouldn’t have to be up as early or work as many hours.) then Monday and Tuesday 8-6 and then drive home Tuesday night and work Wed-Fri in the other store. I’m working more days but not having to kill more hours

    Then in May….wow May was alot…. I’ve basically come to the conclusion that I need to be 100% in with the stores. I can’t secretly hate being there all the time. The second Thursday was my youngest step-daughters college graduation. Sat that week was my God son’s college graduation back home. Then that next week was the Corpo Convention that we were forced to go to, with funds we really didn’t have. then next Thursday was my nephew’s (who worked for me and was leaving) high school graduation, and that afternoon was my son’s “Promotion” to high school. Thankfully my nephew stayed until I got situated, into the new schedule.

    May was chaos. My daughter leaving Junior year and starting her Senior Year. which is a whole nother thing.

    Since November of 2024 up till June 2025 I was also actively trying to build a brand on TT. I was going really well for the most part. However I noticed it was pulling me away from God and Peace. I will do a separate post on what to watchout for on Social Media but for now, lets just say it was a big part of my time. I was trying to “side hustle” with it building audiences and followers, hoping to bring in some extra. It took a ton of energy. Making videos for the shop and for my own page and personal; brand. it completely wore me out. I noticed I didn’t like logging in anymore. It stressed me out more than anything and it made me feel out of control and like I was failing at everything. I have since deleted all of my accounts and taken a long much needed break from it and focused on my faith and getting closer to God! It has been an amazing Month for me emotionally!

    If you have made it this far WOW!!! You are amazing for listening to me ramble, but I wanted to share exactly where I am and where I’m coming from so you can see me for all that I am!

    But now I decided that I can’t keep pushing aside the things that ae calling to me, my purpose is not to do this forever, I need to feed my soul with building my relationship to God, being a better mor present Wife and mother, and sharing the goodness of God with others!! That being said I’m stuck now and don’t know what to say! Welcome to My Overwhelm!!

  • How I Got Here

    Hi, my name is Chaleenah. I know its looks hard to say. Just pretend that there is and S in the beginning instead of a C… There you go that’s it. Anyways Hi Nice to meet you, and Welcome to my new Blogg. I have been wanting to Blogg for several years but have been too intimidated to try it. I have finally decided what do I have to lose? So let me introduce myself and I’ll tell you a bit about me!

    I’m a 36 year old wife, mom, step-mom, and dog-mom. MY husband and I have been married for 5 years but have been together for 11 years. I have two children a 17-year old Daughter(Hailey) and a 15 year old son(Brenton). I also have 3 step-kids 33(Gavin), 28(Morgan), and 22(Maya). We have one dog now. His name is Baxter(14years).

    Me and my husband currently own 2 Batteries Plus stores in AZ. Now let me tell you, this was not what I saw myself doing for a career, however it has been a very educational and rewarding experience. I have been playing around with the idea of a separate blog for all the work things since it does indeed take up so much of my life and time. But I’ll let you know what I choose to do with that one. Currently I am running both of our stores myself as my husband is currently working outside of our stores. It’s a long story and if there are requests for the details I will share but I should move on into what I want for this blog and how it pertains to me and who I am.

    I want this blog to be an outlet for myself to share all the things. I want to be there to help inspire others in all different aspects of life. I’m going to try and break it down .

    – Books are among my favorite things! I am a big reader, I love most all genera’s to a point, however I will say romance is a favorite. I currently have over 600 books in my library physically, not counting my kindle and Audible and I would love to talk books with you guys!

    -I am a big DIY’er and though I haven’t had much time to really get some projects in recently I am chomping at the bit to get into some. But I will share my past projects!

    -Healthy eating and fitness are very important parts of my life and though I do struggle with some of it I will always be real about it. my struggles, my successes, and any recipes!

    -I used to be a big baker and have lots of fun cute cakes I would love to share.

    -Throwing a party for one event or anther is one of my favorites. I love seeing them all come together and will always do it on a budget and a lot of it will be DIY’d

    -I’m a large crafter and have some cute and sometimes super easy ideas mostly for gifts or decore and have lots and lots of fun easy projects to share with you guys.

    -I’m always striving to keep my house a home and no “aesthetically pleasing homes’ are not always a reality but if you want one and want to do it on a budget I will help with that the best I can. My house is not perfectly aesthetic however it is a work in progress and we can do it together.

    -Now being a big DIY and crafter means I have a lot of crap. LOL so getting and staying organized and cleaned up can always be a challenge and I would love to share all my tips and tricks I’ve picked up over the years.

    -Another large part of my life is my journey in my faith. Being a Catholic is a large part of who I am, and I am actually working on building a platform on educating the Facts of Catholicism and what I do to keep building my faith am doing to continue to grow closer to God.

    -One thing I also love is clothing and dressing cute with accessories and jewelry, which is kinda a struggle with my job so I really enjoy making my boring work clothes cute and fun, and if you have to wear a uniform and have no real way to show your individuality, I hope I can help give you ideas on how to do so!

    -I mentioned in the very beginning that I was a dog mom. Now Baxter is my baby and he is very spoiled! I will share all the fun stuff I get for him or do for him, he is really old and I feel like he deserves to be a bit spoiled!

    -Another thing I love to talk about is hunting, We are a large hunting family and though I haven’t’ been drawn much this last year I will share all my tips and tricks and gear that I use to try and be successful in living off the resources the Lord left us, and looking cute and comfortable while doing it!

    _In the first paragraph I mentioned that my Daughter is 17 and this is going on her last summer of highs school and her senior year, and I am struggling with it, so I have determined that I will do whatever I can to make it memorable for her, that will include some cute fun senior crafts and some fun trips!

    -Traveling with my family is something I love to do but really don’t get to do very often! But when I do its going to be on a deal or a budge and it will include some serious planning as far as packing and to do lists for the trip! And I will share it all! Right now I have three things planned …Aug should be a trip to San Diego with my husband, Oct is a concert with my daughter, and Oct is also a trip to Rome with my Daughter, Aunt, Cousin, and Neice… so stay tuned for some amazing stuff!

    That being said I am not saying that I am perfect in any way and I struggle just like everyone, and this blog will be my journey.

    As you can see I have way too many interests and hobbies. Which is why I have struggled in the past to make this blog happen. But I can not be the only one. I know I’m not the only woman in the world who loves all these different things. So here’s to all of you! I hope I can bring us all a little closer together, maybe keep you motivated, help you reach some goals, maybe give you a few ideas, possibly recommend a book you fall in love with, possibly help someone who needs to feel the love of GOD to do so! I’m so excited to take this next step and I hope you come along for the Ride!

    Always, Chaleenah