Keeping Focus...or trying to anyway

I am not a full-time working artist, though I would love to be.  I have an alternate full-time job as a food chemist during the off-shift.  I also have two small children and a husband.  I have a house and multiple projects (not art related) that also make demands on my time.  Not to mention eating, sleeping, grocery shopping, and all the other things necessary to life.

I've read the odd book here and there about commitment to one's work (which I think I have) and scheduling it into your day.  Some of them warn against the "distractors" like laundry and paying bills.  I laughed and to an extent agreed with them.  These are necessary things but they will take all your time if you let them.  But how do you manage to find time to be creative when you have millions of other demands on your time?  Do other mommy artists suffer from the same problem?  I  don't feel I have enough time for the important things in my life (this blog being a new addition to that list :) ), and my time machine has broken down again.

Prioritizing helps.  I have committed 2-3 hours, 3 days a week to what I call "art time".  This is the time I can lock myself in my "studio" and solely focus on being artistically creative.  I also spend a lot of the free time I do have (bathroom breaks, waiting in lines, etc) to come up with ideas for my "art time".  I almost always have multiple ideas to take into my studio, which I then have to break down into something I'd really like to do.  More often than not though I have multiple projects on the go.

The other thing that I find gets a lot of focus is learning about art.  In my case drawing in pencil, conte, and ink, watercolour painting, etc.  There are just too many resources out there to read from and I keep coming across more basic skills to learn.  I'm always worried that I'm missing some important skill that I should be developing.  I think it might be developing into a bad habit (who knew learning could be a bad habit?) that is distracting me from actually doing and practicing and creating.

I am always looking for new ideas and tips (another distractor I expect).  But I'd love to know that I'm not alone in this.  If you're a full or part-time artist, what do you do to keep your focus in a world of distractions?