Nursing and Home Life

How is it that my nursing job and my job as a mother are so similar and yet, most days, I  find it easier to find contentment in the former?

Both jobs:
-require me to run around all day, with rarely a chance to sit down
-are demanding physically and emotionally
-require me to serve needy, dependent people
-require the cleaning up of bodily excrement
-need me to be at constant beck-and-call
-require an enormous amount of listening, patience, and explaining

Yet at the hospital, I know that my work is compensated, I see progress very quickly as patients recover from surgery, and I come away from work (even on bad days) knowing that this is my calling.  I love serving people.  I love caring for them, helping them, providing cups of cold water and focused attention.

Why, does this not translate in the same way at home?

I wonder if it's partly because my main frustration at home is all the other things that pull me away from my main relationship to the kids.  If I only had the kids, I think I would find great joy in playing, teaching, holding, and mentoring my children.  Yet, groceries need to be unloaded, dinner needs to be made, laundry needs to be folded, the phone answered, the garden weeded, the list goes on.

At the hospital, my only job and focus is patient care.  Oh, there are a hundred million other things that make up the profession of nursing and that's why I love it so much.  (Education, critical thinking, tasks, skills, planning, caring, etc).  But my one job is to run myself into the ground for the betterment of other people who are sick, dying, and in desperate need of care.  Until 7 pm, that is.

Why do I not see my home-life in the same profound way?  

Maybe it's also because most days I feel like I am holding back the tide of utter chaos.  If I don't clean, and organize, and order this little world of my home, my sanity literally explodes.  I feel constantly torn between home maintenance and little lives.  If I favor one, the other is grossly neglected.  I simply cannot do both simultaneously and herein lies my frustration.  How do I focus my main objective on caring for my children, while also keeping up all the other tasks?  

How do you keep up a busy life of ministry, work, children and household upkeep?  
Tips? Tricks? How do you keep it all in balance?