Sunday, April 22, 2012

Spring Cleaning (my whole life)

I have sort of a "trial run" for my new life this week as I'll be home with The Cupcake every day. It comes at a good time as I just wrapped up a lot of obligations with my part time job, and I can actually "relax" a little and not worry about getting a million other things done...in theory...

My house is out of sorts and has been for some time. We've never really been daily cleaners, more a "panic the hour before people are coming over" variety of housekeeping. And then of course post-TC life has been all about survival. I've come to accept a lot of it, which shows a good amount of growth on my part, since despite being a terrible cleaner I was also really paranoid about people seeing such things, and would fret and freak out and generally make everyone miserable as I tried to get it done.

So now my house is messy, and I can accept that, but still hope to change it. And soon, with my house being my primary surroundings 24/7, I think I will attempt to take some action. I want to get into a routine of covering the basic household chores so things don't pile up and feel so overwhelming to tackle at their boiling point. I want to organize and find procedures and short cuts that work for our lives.

In furtherance of this quest I'm currently reading a book I found via NotMartha called Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff. It's pretty good so far, nothing real ground breaking but a few helpful tips and a lot of reaffirming stuff I already do, which makes me feel smart and important. Yeah, I just admitted that. It's both about streamlining your life and making room/energy/priority to find and do the things that make you happy.

This comes at a very opportune time for me.

If I had an iPhone I'd definitely get one of those apps that gives you gold stars (or points or whatever) for doing household chores and checking off to-do lists, because I thrive on those tiny victories, but until then I'll just have to post my accomplishments here (sorry!). Per Discardia I'm doing small things to build up good habits, the important thing being to do "something," even if it is the wrong decision at least it is momentum and it is easier to correct the route of something in motion than to get it started in the first place.

Today I went through the refrigerator and dumped all the outdated food (we suck at leftovers). I didn't worry about scrubbing down all the surfaces, because if I had to do all that too I probably wouldn't have done any of it. Starting small, with  accomplishable mini goals that eventually lead to good habits. And I also love the idea of not punishing yourself for all the stuff you don't get to or don't choose to do - I'll work on that. I also ran 2 loads of dishes, took a 3 hour nap (YAY!) and picked up a bunch of plastic storage tubs at Target for further organizational fun. Yipee!

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