The Big Routine - Part 2 only took 2 years!

I amuse myself. Someone has got to be finding this funny.  I decided to trawl back through anniversary posts - somewhat in disbelief that I've been blogging for 2 years!   Around this time two years ago, this was the post I came up with:

The Big Routine - What do I need?

Vegetable gardening week has thus far been an abyssmal flop.  I did have one day of planting, and managed to acquire some cuttings of Nasturtium, that are excellent for keeping away pests.  So instead of updating on the nonexistent veggie progress, I’m taking sometime out to review my month’s blogging to see what kind of routines that have been on my mind.  Hopefully it will give me some idea of a daily cleaning routine that I can then experiment with next week.

A personalised summary of routine cleaning and organising from previous blogs shows the features my cleaning routine needs to have:

1.       Using the electronic diary in the phone for all family commitments works

2.       I like to make cleaning fun, with games, aps and fun sounding things like 27 fling boogie.

3.       I can’t clean ‘all the things’ at night late, it leads to insomnia!

4.       Focussing on one area a week works well to remind me to prioritise cleaning

5.       It would be beneficial to have regular visitors to keep a level of cleaning frenzy going

6.       Whenever possible, always leave every room brighter (eg pickup rubbish/junk) throughout every day

7.       Regularly cleanout the fridge before bin day, pay bills as soon as they arrive (I’ve had some disappear into the paper piles!), upload pictures at least monthly, send greetings quarterly.

8.       Spend at least 2 hours everyday on cleaning until the chaos is controlled.

9.       Have 2 days in a row alone in the house to clean every fortnight at least, again until it is controlled.

10.   Keep on top of my teeth and hair care to keep me feeling presentable to the world

11.   Make effort to have some ‘emergency’ supplies to be prepared for changes.

 How to apply these criteria is coming up in part 2 of the big routine!

I find it incredibly funny and interesting to read this post. Some of these realisations have been such important mainstays in my life during the past two years, and others I am highly amused at the wishful thinking involved!

1. Using the electronic diary in my phone - this was a terrific thing, although I'm a feel it see it kind of person, so I reverted in 2014 to a funky paper diary that was heavy and annoying but didn't break when it was dropped. Right now I'm struggling by with day-to-day keeping it in my head, but I'm starting to fondly think of a diary system. I'm even considering giving all 3 children their own diary as my eldest's previous school did this from Prep and to be honest I think it teaches some excellent skills. You've got to remember what you're doing somehow.

2. Making cleaning fun - not only did I enjoy making cleaning fun, but it is an excellent way to rope in the children. We now have weekend competitions to go up cleaning 'levels' and I still occasionally use apps like "Unfuck my Habitat" and "Chore Wars". I constantly make a game out of small tasks that I ask the children to do and I have recently become very reliant on "27 Fling Boogie" by the Fly Lady.

3. Housework induced insomnia - still a real threat to my sanity. I rarely do any housework after 9pm, despite the need.

4. Focussing on one area and doing the cha cha at the same time - nope, that isn't happening. What is happening is that I do try to balance between de-junking or a deeper cleaning project and keeping on top of the laundry and dishwashing mountains. I don't take the concept of such balance very seriously.

5. Regular visitors - irregularly this is happening. In fact this is one area where it would be entirely sensible for me to make an effort. Life has happened. It is true that regardless of how I want my house clean and tidy for me, it is always easier when there are visitors coming to move more quickly. This is especially true for hubby who will do amazing things like mop the floor if he knows a baby is coming to visit. 

6. Pick up as I go along or 'leave it brighter' - this is incredibly powerful in my opinion. It is something that can be done a little, or a lot. I do it a little :P

7. looking back at this, I see number 7 as "Do ALL THE THINGS!", reminding me of the hilarious blog post about why the writer will never be an adult.  Breaking 7 down into its considerable parts....

• cleanout fridge before bin day - this is a great concept that is often implemented, yahoo!
• pay bills as soon as they arrive - *choke* what was I thinking? OK it is good in theory....
• upload pictures monthly - oh wow, what utopia was this I was dreaming of? In good news, what I have achieved is filing them according to the year and month they were taken. That is something.
• send greetings - obviously once this was written I immediately took to the idea that it was the thought that counted. I'd be lucky to have sent greetings at all in the last 2 years, let alone quarterly. 

8&9. From the same concept as number 4 I am simply not that kind of person who sticks to set chunks of anything. I don't even stick to blogging very well. While a very nice idea, right now I'd be happy to have a weekend alone in the house to tear through some things.

10.  Teeth and hair care - we have charts in this house. This is what they are for. 

11. Emergency supplies and preparation. Actually I'm doing well at this. It makes the whole household run more smoothly.   

And now I'm out of time for blogging and reflection. It was an amusing look back.  

There is no big routine, only many many small ones!

Two weeks of grand cleaning!

Over the past few days I decided to try a new way to attack the organisation and restoration of order in my home.  I realised that I was embodying the definition of insanity - to repeat the same activity over and over and expect different results!

What I intend to do instead is to be guided by what seems like a reasonable 'guide' to Spring cleaning and follow that guide through for the 2 weeks of the school holidays.  I've modified it to fit in with my time frame, but I'm also committed to repeating the whole process over the following 14 weeks to achieve a decent level of household loveliness.  Here is the guide I'm following.

That's the plan and this is where you'll see my updates. At the moment I'm on day 3 of the clean. Today I will finish the laundry and kitchen - this involves taking some shelving that was always meant to go into the kitchen and finally put it up, which will leave me more room in the laundry.

My first day was a successful cleanup of the entry - I've done that about 6 months ago and this time an armchair had drifted into the room next to the door, where it collected clutter. The armchair is now gone and so is the clutter.

My arthritis is playing up so behind the business of tidying will also be the restoration of my salad based diet, frequent walks and removing bread and milk from my diet again in the hope to restore some functionality to my poor arthritic hand!

My hubby and I are still almost full time caring for my father, as the nursing home staff do not supply him with enough fluids during each day and it is critical he gets what he needs.

These next few weeks will be challenging, as the last few have been, but the rewards will be worthwhile.

For those who are Springsteen fans, here is the youtube link to tonight's Rock in Rio concert!

I can't wait!

A daily routine

What a novel idea!

I'm going to make an attempt at this in the coming weeks of the school holidays. So that I can be a 'real Mum', something I apparently have been slack at recently.

My idea of what goes into a daily routine would be:

Morning routine, consisting of breakfast, brushing teeth, getting dressed and putting on laundry & dishwasher.
Early morning cleaning focus - getting stuck into the often ignored projects, like cleaning out cupboards, sorting toys.
Mid-morning snack, followed by craft / food time with children - so while they're eating, I'm setting up for a late morning of entertaining cooking or construction
playtime for them, washing up / laundry folding / daily routine task time for me OR this is when we do errands / shopping needed for the evening's meal.
Lunch
post-lunch cleaning focus - tidy up and 'make nice' whatever room the morning was in
afternoon learning time with children - reading or playing, maybe toy sorting every afternoon (there are lots of toys)
Then afternoon tea, me cooking dinner, more general 'daily' tidying, including clean clothes put away from laundry to bedrooms.

Then tea time, showers, night-time routine. Read a book and tidy up all clothes and toys.

Little people to bed, wash up, adult night-time routine including taking out bin, cleaning the sink.

On days when I am left alone in the house I need another routine, more like:

1. Tackle major project
2. eat and relax
3. all 'daily' cleaning
4. either another major project or a significant 'regular cleaning' job, like scrubbing floors / vacuuming.
5. relax!


Thats what I'm going to go with for now, hopefully something like this will come to pass.

Pulling together and Being Prepared!

One of the most significant concepts for me since I began blogging is that of being prepared.  It was the subject of one of my very early posts as I reflected on my mother in law's incredible pre-preparation for just about anything.

Particularly now, as I am feeling more positive, happy, upbeat and capable than I have in years, I find myself reflecting on this concept of preparation.

Recently (during that quiet time when no blog posts appeared) my husband travelled away for work.  He was driving to a major regional town, about five hours away.   When he'd been gone 4 hours already, and I was mid-breakfast, mid-getting children to school, the whole trip hit a terrible snag in the form of my coming down with a very severe case of gastro. I couldn't move, and he was 4 hours away.  I am so grateful for his boss, who immediately drove him home again to look after the children, as I was so incapable.  I spent the next several days feeling quite off, but the worst passed that first day, and along with the sickness came some pretty significant realisations for me.

The first one was that there was no way that hubby could travel for work again, at least not until our youngest is a little more independent. We simply don't have a 'backup' network to call on, other than each other. This didn't take much contemplation, after the horrible hours waiting for him to arrive home, I'm not doing that again with such small children.

The other realisations however came hot on each others heels and do require a bit more contemplation and change.  After a very upset week, I realised that not only have I established a solid family routine since returning to working, but that this routine was hanging on by a thread. We simply aren't that used to it, haven't settled into it, or gotten comfortable enough with it that it tolerates much battering. The week I was at home sick threw the entire concept of 'calm', 'organised', and 'routine' out the proverbial window, it seemed at the time as though never to be seen again!  (luckily I'm more resilient than that and this week is going OK)

Hand in hand with how precariously our little family is balancing its 'routine' is the entire concept of being prepared! After all, if we are more 'prepared' then by extension our balancing act is more stable, and less likely to topple at the slightest adjustment required.

Which leads me to my focus for the moment. I am still determined to lose weight, keep exercising with the same intensity as in the last month or so, and still quite keen to keep my positive attitude, however I feel a little like the tough work of beginning those changes has been accomplished and I need to consider how being prepared will accentuate the positive attitude and exercise transformations. 

Firstly, simply being more prepared in the meals department will provide me with an even better daily diet to get the best nourishment without any excess sugary carbohydrates!

Being a step ahead of where I am now would mean having an idea of tomorrow's food, and it being in the fridge (its been a lean food prep week this week!); not running out of cat food; having photos uploaded every week; having activities ready for the children when they get home (OK that one is only if I turn into super-Mum!). It would also mean being on top of the mountains of paperwork for myself and my Dad. I feel like I'm drowning under papers at the moment, but will leave that conundrum for another day! I like the sound of being a step ahead, however for now, the tiniest fraction of being prepared that I see now is a bit less dramatic, but might give me a few hints about how to operate in a prepared way.  I've already noticed that the better my communication, the more we are able to negotiate through things as they crop up. Put another way, two grumpy snappy adults don't make great decisions!

Since the returning to all hands on deck working, we've established some routines that sort of work. Hubby does early mornings (when my arthritis still makes me a slow turtle) and drops big children at school before work; I take our little one to her various morning activities; we come home and she naps while I get housework done; the almost 2 hour pickup of big children happens at the end of nap-time; we have a very early tea when we get home; then homework after Daddy gets home and a bit of chaotic energy, then bedtime. This is what is working for us.  

Two times I am focusing on improving is the activities I get done while little miss takes her nap, and what I get done after hubby is home at night.

At the moment, I am happy that at nap time daily I seem to be managing to completely clean the floor off in the entry and kitchen as well as downstairs toys.  This is a bit of an extension of what I've achieved in the past, and this week I'm trying to work out how to extend past that point into uncharted cleaning territory.  I'm still not sure, but some experimenting is on the horizon to find the balance that will fit in my 2 hour time frame. 

In the evenings I am juggling between walking (its not practical at 9pm any longer due to the cold!); school homework; and cleaning!  I am using the early evening time to get into extra projects or washing up, whichever is needing doing more.  This is how I managed to get the floor scrubbed on Monday night, determination!

I need to refresh and revisit the concepts of this post about Working Smart. That's the essence of what is going on here, an attempt to make the obvious easier!

There is something else I'm realising as I go over all this while listening to Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town album.  It's that I need to find a way to really ENJOY getting more prepared!  I remember when I was in Girl Guides, that my Guide Leader instilled in me, for the shortest moment, a flame of inspiration of REALLY wanting to 'Be Prepared" and obtain my Baden-Powell emblem, the highest achievement for a Girl Guide.  Years later, I feel I'm finally getting the point of all those badges and things. A sense of purpose about how I am going about this domestic life, to relish and delight in what is necessary.

I think I'd much rather relish and delight in more Bruce Springsteen concerts, but in order to do that I need my house to be respectable and presentable for house-sitters, so it's delighting in house cleaning for me in the interim.

Hang in there Bruce, I'm coming to a concert soon!

Household madness and other cleaning conundrums

Has three months of blogging helped me to keep the house cleaner? If I look at the question critically, then the answer would be not a great deal.  The state of the house is still very chaotic, my 'hot spots' where junk collects appear to have grown in size and number.  However overall there are a few positive differences that would not have happened without blogging.  These make the optimist in me say YES, blogging has made a difference!

The most obvious change is my entry. Having followed "Inspirational Thursday"  and taken the advice of my friend, I 'made over' the entry over a month ago.  And it is still looking pretty spiffy compared to the mess of bags and shoes on the floor that I had previously.

I am happy with that result!   The second change is more subtle, but possibly has a much greater affect on our household. Since blogging, and my Bruce Springsteen experience, I have been much calmer and happier. My husband has  therefore been calmer and happier, we have better routines and it has become unusual for the chaos to get as out of hand as it used to when we were under pressure.  Now that I think about it, I think I've achieved a little glimmer of 'being prepared', something I so admired in my mother in law during my first week of blogging.

The more time I take to contemplate my household management and cleaning, the more I realise that the progress I'm making has everything to do with my positive attitude.  It is amazing what can get done when you stop finding excuses and simply begin doing!  This is particularly inspirational to me today, as yesterday I was feeling a bit unwell, I felt my positive attitude and energy had left me, yet I managed to cook 3 meals for a weekly cook-up with my hubby, and still went for a 20 minute walk for exercise.  Pre-Bruce, pre-blog, neither of those things would have been achieved on a 'bad day'.  I would highly recommend blogging, or journaling to anyone who is struggling with progressing in any aspect of life. Writing things down and practising self reflection are incredibly powerful tools for positive change!

The Big Routine - What do I need?

Vegetable gardening week has thus far been an abyssmal flop.  I did have one day of planting, and managed to acquire some cuttings of Nasturtium, that are excellent for keeping away pests.  So instead of updating on the nonexistent veggie progress, I’m taking sometime out to review my month’s blogging to see what kind of routines that have been on my mind.  Hopefully it will give me some idea of a daily cleaning routine that I can then experiment with next week.

A personalised summary of routine cleaning and organising from previous blogs shows the features my cleaning routine needs to have:

1.       Using the electronic diary in the phone for all family commitments works

2.       I like to make cleaning fun, with games, aps and fun sounding things like 27 fling boogie.

3.       I can’t clean ‘all the things’ at night late, it leads to insomnia!

4.       Focussing on one area a week works well to remind me to prioritise cleaning

5.       It would be beneficial to have regular visitors to keep a level of cleaning frenzy going

6.       Whenever possible, always leave every room brighter (eg pickup rubbish/junk) throughout every day

7.       Regularly cleanout the fridge before bin day, pay bills as soon as they arrive (I’ve had some disappear into the paper piles!), upload pictures at least monthly, send greetings quarterly.

8.       Spend at least 2 hours everyday on cleaning until the chaos is controlled.

9.       Have 2 days in a row alone in the house to clean every fortnight at least, again until it is controlled.

10.   Keep on top of my teeth and hair care to keep me feeling presentable to the world

11.   Make effort to have some ‘emergency’ supplies to be prepared for changes.

 How to apply these criteria is coming up in part 2 of the big routine!

Keeping it all together

In theory I have a system for keeping it all together. My life that is. And my husband's, our childrens' and my father's lives.  Its the calendar function on the iphone and I am still shocked at how well it works - I put EVERYTHING into that little machine now. All appointments, school functions, TV Shows I want to watch, and all the other little and big things. 

Today it feels like all I am acomplishing with it is keeping track of the things I can't keep up with! The doctor's appointments I've had to cancel, the day out with my father that isn't going to happen because I can't access all the equipment I need for him, and what feels like a million other things at the moment.

I simply do not know how to keep up with the commitments in my life. Perhaps today I went off the rails a bit sideways with some upsetting phone calls, or maybe I was exhausted after hauling a toddler around a dairy farm yesterday in the Ergo Carrier while keeping track of a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds!  I'm not sure.

What I do know is that I need to work harder on routines, especially a morning and evening list, similar to flylady, but one that suits me.  I need this quickly, so that the next time my husband decides to use a blade to cut out cardboard squares and slice a tendon, I'm less thrown by the three days of chaos that ensues.  He's fine by the way, tendon is healed really well.  I'm still unimpressed he was playing around with the crafty stuff for himself instead of playing the 'clean floor game' like I asked him to when I was dragged off to rescue my father who phoned because he was in so much pain and the staff wouldn't / hadn't given him painkillers all day.  One thing that I did learn, thanks to a random tune on my phone whilst upset prior to the dairy farm trek is to:

I need to play every morning in the car, as I'm not a fan of school drop-off.

The Clean Floor Game

One of the jobs for the weekend was to do a cleanup of the floors all around  the house. On a whim this morning, I decided to turn that into a game, to keep things interesting. I'm a big fan of UFYH (Unfuck Your Habitat) and enjoy their phone ap - I find the randomness of the suggestions really suits me.

So I found a container to use as a 'jar' and wrote the names of all the rooms /areas of my house on scraps of paper and tossed them in.  The idea being that I would draw out a room, clean the floor in that room, and then take a break doing some jigsaw puzzle in between rooms.  I get tired quickly from bending over jigsaws, so the break would be self-limiting automatically.  This is the jigsaw:

It worked beautifully. The first room I drew was the kitchen, so the whole floor had toys and random stuff picked up and was swept.  Then my break was a little bit of jigsaw and some X-box games with my son. My daughter got caught up in the enthusiasm, and did her own little bit of cleaning of a junk room upstairs (she lucked out and drew a hard spot to clean).  Here's the extremely simple 'pot luck' container:

Many interuptions later, the front verandah got thoroughly cleaned up, cat litter changed and swept. Then the stairs which in my house tend to collect things at the bottom that need to go up, plus other random flotsam were cleared off all the clutter.

Sadly my cleaning spree was not to be however, and I spent most of the day visiting and caring for my Dad.  I finished this special something for a friend while with him.

In the end, I am tempted to keep up this game as a way of getting through the tidying up more often.  I can see me using it on floors, but it might work for other things, like '27 fling boogie'. In such a big, cluttered house with a husband who tends to leave things on the floor, I find it difficult to be in 10 places at once to pick up after him and the children. This little game will make it easier, particularly if I'm lucky enough to have a day at home when we are both able to play it, in 2 different rooms at once.

I hope that your weekend has been as productive as mine. (and that you are more prepared for Monday than me - thats my job before bedtime - getting lunchboxes ready and uniforms ironed)!

Cleaning habits, Challenge week works!

I've come to a realisation about the creation of good habits. Small good habits, or small efforts made repeatedly, lead to a self-regulating habit. Just like this post on "Habit V's Guilt" I am discovering that baby steps do indeed make cleaning progress. Not only do baby steps eventually lead to real changes, but the slow creation of habits over time creep in.

There is something about confidence that makes a contribution here too. The entire theme for this post started out when I happily noticed that the laundry has managed to stay in a state of what I'd call controlled chaos since the great laundry challenge week (updates found here, here and here).

The state of the laundry looks pretty awful at the moment, but the reality is that I'm getting through my 1-2 loads a day from beginning to end and for the most part, everything is where it should be. The same kind of thing is happening in the kitchen. Sure the hard-to-wash-up stuff sometime lingers, and there always seems to be leftover washing up, but its not the same dirty pot sitting here on Thursday that was there last weekend. Its a new pot, replacing the cake tin.  I think when I am more confident, and my habits are even better, I can raise the expectation that no dirty dishes will be there from one day to the next.

I think I'm getting all my concepts mushed up in a mess here, but what I'm figuring out is that by giving myself permission not to be perfect in my habits, while simultaneously keeping up some confidence that I'll get these things done, I'm managing to keep on top of some routines.

All I need to do now is keep up with the decluttering and slowly add in more routine cleaning.  Seems so simple but I suspect it will be a slow road.

Something also seems to be brewing in the wider family as this evening my husband has swept the floor without any prompting. 

Cleanup Challenge - the Final Review

Last week I was busy doing my 30 minutes a day cleanup. It taught me a lot about motivation, and about the limitations of my illness (cleanup at night is bad for sleeping). It also did get me out of a few bad habits and into some good ones.

Bad habits that bit the dust last week during cleanup challenge were:
1. Resentment at jobs not done by my husband. This week past, I just got on with doing them myself.

2. Avoiding the rooms that are cluttered or messed up. This has been a big one for me, as the longer I avoid a room, the more opportunity that my clutterbug husband has been in it making a disaster area! So getting myself throughout the whole house daily has been important.

And the positive habits I am beginning have been:
1. Leaving each room a little brighter. This goes hand in hand with the whole concept of a daily clean-up and some days this is the way I spent my whole 30 minutes of the cleanup challenge, just going back and forth brightening up by de-messing. I have even started contemplating indoor plants again!



2. Continuing good habits in the laundry - I've made an effort to keep up the good progress from the laundry challenge and continue to complete a load of washing, not just keep putting more and more in the machine until the clean laundry ends up all over the laundry floor!

3. Keeping busy. Its kind of like leaving the room brighter, but more about the energy. I've just made sure that I have kept moving, kept cleaning and tidying as I go, rather than stopping to let myself get bogged down thinking about it all, I'm just getting stuck into the cleaning.

Today's keeping busy has rather shocked me - I seem to have blitzed a few things. I've been maintaining the newly cleared off windowsills free of my husband's attempts with several stray items over the past week or so to re-clutter the sill area with random things including: an electrical plug, random spices outside of my spice basket, washing up that needed doing (yes he put this on the windowsill!) and at one stage the random knives that USED to live up there were returned by him instead of thrown out! Never a dull moment living with a clutterer.

Motivation to Clean - its out there!

The list is here! My top 7 motivators to get up and get cleaning! For me personally the overall motivation is to live in a clean, tidy environment. However finding the daily motivation to make sure that happens is another matter entirely.

Here are some of the best tips I've found so far:

1. Invite someone over! Now I've spent some time adjusting my attitude that I want my house clean for ME, not for visitors. That still doesn't stop me from cleaning more when I know someone is coming. And while that in grained habit exists, keeping a regular stream of visitors through your house can be a terrific motivator.

2. I also found this article about dust mites disturbing enough to prompt the motivation up a gear.

3. Visit someone with a clean house! I will admit that jealousy of someone else's clean domain really gets me going in terms of motivation to do the best with what I have!

4. Get some alone time with your mess. I find that one of the biggest motivators for me is having the time when I'm not going to be interrupted by a toddler to really get into the swing of cleaning up.

5. Finish something. Anything. It could be the washing up, or it could be something like posting a letter that you just haven't gotten around to doing. Whatever it is doesn't matter, as long as you finish one thing. It is inspiration to keep going.

6. Set a timer and just start with a de-junking / rubbish collection / 27-fling Boogie and throw out as much rubbish and recycling as you can. If that doesn't motivate you to keep going, well at least you've done 15 minutes of cleaning already! Fill up your bin!




7. Get dressed up - Right now, when you're attempting to get motivated, start out by getting dressed up - whatever that means to you, whether it is Flylady's lace up shoes or your own personal 'ready' look. Mine is hair and teeth, I discovered here.

And if you are so stuck, that you can't face any of these tips, feeling overwhelmed, then try my magic 4 - have a glass of water, do some exercise, take a long view (how much does it matter right now?) and get started, anywhere. Do not panic.

Leave each room a little brighter

Thats my motto for today. The idea comes from the wonderful wisdom of "Organise and Decorate Everything" found here on Facebook and here on the www.

Day 3 of her 28 ways to stay organised is a cracker - with "Always leave a room looking better than when you entered it." You can follow the rest of the 28 days on facebook. For now, I'm focussing on Day 3, and how much difference that can make.

This morning before school, I must have done laps between the living room, front door, back door, laundry and kitchen at least half a dozen times. The fun of having 2 schoolkids and a toddler! Keeping in mind the mantra to leave the room a little better, the living room soon had dirty dishes removed, a bit of plastic wrap binned, and some clothes put into the laundry dirty sorting pile. My kitchen table got cleaned off over several trips past it to the bin and the few things that had fallen out of (or never quite made it to) the sorted dirty laundry were quickly put in their proper place. It created a lovely vortex of positive energy whereever I went, because I was on the lookout for the sort of debris in the house that I normally try not to look at!!! Funnily enough, those little things made a difference to how the house felt when I returned after the school drop-off, I had taken a load of rubbish to the bin!

On that note, its bin day again today and the fridge got another clean-out - anything potentially suspicious all tossed out to make room for fresh food and straight into the rubbish truck!!!

Another bonus today was the impromptu window wipe - I went to open my son's juice bottle and it had turned rancid in the heat - and exploded all over the window above the sink! So the window cleaner, paper towel and I had a little pre-breakfast date to clean up. :) The room is now a lot brighter, literally!

Cleanup Challenge Day 3

After a couple of high-pain days I was ready to get back into the cleanup challenge. The front entry had been littered with various things, toys, a boxful of generic nonsense from the car, and 2 boxes of tools during the course of the previous week. So quite by accident, I spent over 40 minutes cleaning up just the entry, replacing childrens books in the bookcase, moving tools to the edge of the room neatly, re-tidying shoes and then sweeping the whole thing.

I also took the time to re-organise and stand up all my photo frames and make the room look a little more inviting. My 'end of day cleanup' swept the kitchen floor too, and swished the toilet, put on 2 loads of washing. So far, its a success, although I have had to be mindful of the concept of creating a habit, and not feeling guilty when I was too sick to get stuck into it the previous night. I've also had the opportunity to consider some information from "The Happiness Project" author in her blog, that you should not get more organised, and rather should just throw throw throw things out. It makes sense. There is too much stuff in my house, and I'm better off without most of it I'm sure. Her 'don't get organised' blog is a great read. What I'm going to spend the morning doing is following FlyLady's excellent plans for decluttering. 27 Fling Boogies and 5 minute Fire Drills here I come!

Challenge Week Update!

Today marks the end of my "Laundry Challenge" and I'm happy to say it has certainly been a success! Thinking about and focussing on one area of work for the 7 days has given me the boost to make progress in the laundry, to be inspired to tackle other areas, and get something 'finished' - although the 'finished' job at the end was far simpler than the 'finished' job I hoped for on day 1. My laundry has gone from cluttered and a dumping ground for all dirty clothes wet and dry on the floor, with a huge mountain of clean clothes growing from a washing basket in the corner, to an orderly looking room with nothing on the floor, sorted dirty clothes in this great Antonius system from Ikea.

Clean washing is also sorted in Ikea, so that everyone in the family can collect and put away their own clothes easily. What I've learnt from my weekly challenge is that it is a great way to accomplish something in a particular area; that it motivates me to move and meet my 20 minutes goal every day; that I need to continue the laundry challenge and add in another challenge next week, building on the foundation of my routines until I am a powerhouse of keeping things tidy and organised! I'm so pumped by this challenge that I'm going to start my new Challenge today - this one is going to be doing a nightly clean up, every night for 8 nights! What that means in this case will be spending 5 minutes in every room, making something neater, tidying, collecting all dirty dishes and rubbish and taking them out, and where possible, pick up everything off the floor. It will probably be a 30 minutes a day job, because our house is very large and I'll be doing the whole thing!

Habits v's Guilt

Today has me thinking about the way to make a new habit. All the experts say, do something for 30 consecutive days and its a habit. Great. In my experience about all I manage in 30 consecutive days is eating and sleeping (the blog hasn't made it that far even). However I do have some thoughts on the tricky balance between trying to create a new habit, and being swamped by guilt and despair at being unable to stick at anything for 30 days. This line of thought is triggered by circumstances today. Not only am I still up at the hospital with Dad trying to get him enough pain relief, but my elder daughter came down with flu-like symptoms and needed a close eye for a while there. So my plans to conquer the lawn went awry about 10am. Although the mower and the lawn had a pretty big get together before that and between us, my husband and I mowed about 1/3 of the block. Go us!

Then there was juggling the whole sick girl, pained father issue. It basically took over the day. Spending a bit of it reading "The Hobbit" aloud to my sick girl and both of us falling asleep took up a few hours! I'll write more about that another time. What I am realising however is that the past few days, allocating 'extra' time to cleaning the house is what I need to be doing every day. Not just sometimes. Because life will continue to happen, not every day is going to give me a free 3 hours to declutter. I can apply the pricipal I learnt when pregnant with my eldest child. In order to prevent gestational diabetes, I took up exercise. My husband and I walked every evening for 20 minutes around the neighbourhood. Those walks became a daily routine. But there were days they didn't happen. sometimes even multiple days in a row. Normally after a few days of missed walking I'd be so filled with guilt and it would serve only to hold me back and make getting out the door bigger than ben hur and too big a deal, too hard. What I learnt 9 years ago however (and seem to have forgotten) is that it doesn't matter if you miss a day, or how many days you miss. All you need to do is pick yourself up and keep going. Just don't 'stop' or even think that you've stopped. I need to apply this principle to my cleaning.

In my case its not just about swimming, but how much swimming! I need to remember to keep swimming at least 2 hours a day to get any progress! I find I've been unable to do this as yet, but from here on the idea is to just transfer that mindset from evening walks to devoting sufficient time to the cleanliness of the house. It just simply has to be done. Too many years and too much illness and neglect. The time to change all of it is now. I also had a scary thought I'll be saving for later. If I have too much stuff to look after, then I need less stuff to make life easier!!! OR, what I'm trying first, is spending more time every day on upkeep.

Crunching the numbers

I've decided I simply don't do enough housework. Sounds reasonable right? Simple enough to work out? Well its still a revelation in my world. The sheer volume of time (is that some sort of grammatical oopsie?) that I need to spend to get through this mess of my house must be over double, probably triple what I currently DO spend. Its a tall order to try to get through the normal daily grind AS WELL as decluttering and cleaning out from behind all the clutter in a minimal amount of hours a day. Today is Day 1 of a hopefully 3-day child and husband free declutter / cleaning frenzy. Things started off well, I wrote a quick list of my 'initial' things to do, and then realised during the day that I wasn't going to make my goal of 'catch up on normal cleaning plus one extra job' unless I really took time to finish this evening. In total I probably spent around 2-3 hours cleaning today. It was not enough! 4 hours and I'd see some real progress after a few days. So I'm sticking with laundry week (today was 3 loads washed and dried, sorting tomorrow), but I'm going to see how tired I am after a weekend cleaning frenzy and see if I can stick to the 3 hours a day at least until I make some inroads into the cluttered messy areas. Here are some before and after shots of my 'project' tonight, the kitchen windowsill.

Laundry Challenge Week

I decided to try out the idea of challenging myself to spend an extra 20 minutes every day on one aspect of cleaning. This week, the clean laundry has been piling up in a huge tower, the dirty laundry is constantly threatening to erupt into mould and I still haven't put the room itself back together since the great laundry transformation where we added a shower at Christmas time. So 7 days of laundry challenge it is! Today I set the oven timer for 20 minutes and went for it! I got all the towels folded, and discovered there wasn't much more to the clean clothes once they were cleared! The wash load in the machine got put in the dryer, and I tidied up the dirty pile of towels and clothes that built up, ready to put on more washing during the day. A second load is in the machine now. I feel so good having done this, and am beginning to see how its possible with time allocation to actually keep up. For some reason, I really *need* the time set, I felt good simply walking away, even though it wasn't completely finished, I could step away from the room, knowing I'd done more in the laundry today than any other day in the past week! I feel like its a bit of a breakthrough about how to make sure daily jobs get done. Allow the same amount of uninterupted time (or mosty uninterrupted) every day, for different tasks, regardless of what else is happening in life. I'll be checking back on this theory! In the meantime, today's challenge was to spend 20 minutes in the laundry. Tomorrow I am going to find some aspect of the laundry to focus on. In my case it will probably be clearing the contents of the laundry off my back verandah (which roughly translates to clean out the cupboards!)

Being Prepared

I've had almost no sleep, my husband was with my Dad until 3am this morning as he tranferred from the nursing home to hospital with pneumonia. I had 2 children waking up in turns most of the night. The hospital kindly phoned me at 5:24 in the morning, simply to tell me that Dad was being admitted, breaking what little sleep I'd had. And so todays blog is about preparation. I was a Girl Guide. Be Prepared was their motto. I don't think at the tender age of 15 I had a clue what they meant. Now I believe I know what they mean, however my execution is lacking. My mother in law is prepared. Her mother, incidentally was a Girl Guide Leader for many years! Or perhaps it is a generational thing. She has her house and life organised in such a way that unexpected visitors simply mean closing a couple of doors (like the always busy sewing room), and she's ready. Visitors on short notice? Quick mop and she's ready. Visitors for morning tea? Defrost biccies. Visitors for lunch? Defrost some quiche. Unexpected illness? More defrosting. A chest freezer is pretty central to her level of preparedness!

My point is that no matter what the occasion, she's ready. She'll be having some minor surgery soon. You can bet she's cooking extra meals now, in preparation for leaving my father in law to fend for himself. One of her most amazing acts of preparation is her amazing potting efforts. An avid gardener, in the drought a few years ago, she chose the important plants, transferred them to pots, and watered them from the dam. I just hope that I can begin to become somewhat prepared, even if it is not as spectacularly well done as my Mother in Law.