FORMING A HABIT

They say it takes 21 days to form a habit. MY 3 weeks of working 2 hours Mo-Sa are up. And guess what. I really did form a new habit. I wish it was working 2 hours a day, but I am far from it. So far I only made starting my timer and checking for jobs I am willing to do a habit. Better than nothing I would say. The 2 hours are still a big struggle. SO many jobs out there I really don't want to do. So many things to take care of that feel useless. So many challenges that I am not ready to face.

For the moment I will be happy with the fact that I am getting 2 hours of work in every day, even if it is a struggle. I have spent some time thinking on how to go about it best (I spent hours waiting at doctors offices this week I had plenty of time to think) and decided that a 1 hour base plan of daily chores and 6 10 minute units that are flexible and vary from day to day will give me the best chance of accomplishing my goal. This is the first week to try my new and improved 12 x 10. I'll let you know how things went next weekend!

MY DAILY 2

Starting on the 26th of Dec. 2016 I have put in 2 hours of work Mo-Sa. As long as the kids where out of school and we had no extra curricular activities it was pretty easy. Once school started back up it got a little harder. I was debating whether or not I should allow myself to work ahead or transfer missing time to the next day. I felt I shouldn't do any of that, as the object is to get me to work daily.

This weeks was absolutely CRAZY with appointments. Add some snow and icy roads which added to my commute time and added taxi rides to my schedule I found myself out of the house on Wednesday for a total of 7,5 hours in 2 blocks. Believe it or not, I was able to get 1 h and 40 min in that day. I decided to allow myself to transfer the missing block to Thursday. Thursday I was on the road for a mere 4,5 hours but I was emotionally exhausted and I ended up having 1 hour and 20 min left. It felt like to much to transfer but I really, really wanted to keep this going

Here is what I came up with:

•  It is okay to work ahead for busy days. 
• you can transfer missing time to the next day
• you can not accumulate more than 2 hours of missing time 
• you need to catch up by Saturday, the clock will be reset on Monday

I can live with that. I think I need a little flexibility for crazy days and to stay motivated, but I know what happens ponce you are "in the hole" and how frustrating it is when you can't dig yourself back out.

I am so close to finishing week 3 of this project. I CAN DO THIS!

RESOLUTIONS TO HELP ME KEEP MY HOUSE CLEAN

So. There we go. Let's split this up. What is keeping me from keeping my house clean. Well, besides my husband and 6 kids?

• I am often unfocused when doing things
•  I leave things for "later"
• Some days it is impossible to get in 2 hours of work during the day and after dinner I am too tired.
• Too many things don't have a home

this is how I will fix it:

• invest 1.5 hours during the day, leave 30 min for after dinner (TIMER!)
• take care of things immediately 
• daily clean up call before bed for the kids (max. 5 min)
• declutter, declutter, declutter 
• have a "room of the month" "extra time" will go into this room

I have seen good results with all of geh above so doing these things again is guaranteed to show results!

BEING REALISITC

Lets face it. Dreaming big is one thing. Feeling like you failed on a daily basis is another. I know myself well enought to know that this is what it will boil down to. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not even by the end of the week. Although very likely before the year is up.

So lets be nice to myself and reduce that daily list. At least for the next couple week. Oh wait. Lets make this months, there is a tiny person in the house who needs loads of attention.

So here is the revised list.

• 2 loads of laundry (not negotiable as that is simply what needs to be done around here)
• 10 min in 1 bedroom
• kitchen at night while James gets to send the kids to bed. 
• go for a walk, work out or play the piano
• 10 min in a bathroom
• work on a blog (not necessarily posting, working on something is enough)
• cook 3 x a week and make sure portions are big enough to last 2 days

Trust me, that is plenty ambitious. 

DREAMING BIG

Here is the list of things I want to add one by one to do daily. 

• 2 loads of laundry 30 min each (or 10 laundry tasks)
• 2 bathrooms 10 min each
• 4 bedrooms 10 min each
• kitchen 3x 10 min
• 10 min each in living room, front room  and hall
• 15 min of piano practise
• 15 min work out
• go on walk with little kids in the morning
• blog here and on the family blog
• cook every day

A girl can dream. Right? I put them together in blocks, so the list wouldn't be quite as intimidating, but besides the laundry the 10 min segments are each considered an individual task. So is each blog. If we do the math, we will see that that will add up to at least 5 hours. That is without taking care of the needs of 2 kids under 3.  

Today I managed the laundry, 10 min in the hall, cooking and blogging. On both blogs. Oh, and lets not forget the 10 min in my bedroom and my making the boys clean up their rooms. To achieve great things one has to dream big!

SURRENDER? ME? NEVER!

Nothing like a comparatively relaxed weekend to regain the courage to go on. Not like I did much. But I kept going. I made tiny progress in the guestroom. So it was almost nothing, but it is still more than nothing. Giving up is not going to get me anywhere. So I might as well keep going. Focus is on maintenance, You and I know that 10 min a day CAN and WILL make a difference. So I will stick with my daily survival routines and add 10 min in one room to improve things. Ther is no way I will be done before the summer as I had planned to, but plans change and goals can be adjusted. So bear with me. I can do it...

MAKE IT MAGIC

9:34 am

No, I am not talking about Christmas already. It is just that today is one of those days when I lack the motivation to get started. It just simply sounds like too much. I haven't done my my 10 min in a long time and it feels like it is time to revive it. It worked well when I did it. I can do it. 10 min of work 10 of play. Lets gt started! 

10:27 am

The first 30 min are done. The baby is back in bed, I talked to a friend on the phone, I had breakfast. That sounds okay for an hour, doesn't it. Let's see what I can do in the next hour!

11:27 

40 min taken care of. Washer and dishwasher are running. Kitchen is almost done,I am trying to talk myself into going up to the attic. Well. Maybe once the kitchen is taken care of. 

16:57

I got a total of 2,5 hours done. I cooked, I got Halloween costumes out. I did some yard work. I sorted out a costume that is too small for any of my kids. 

16:58

Picked 8 things off the patio to throw away. My inner "Monk" kicked in and made me find 2 more to make it 10. I will declare myself a hero and put dinner in the oven that I pre-made yesterday.

7 a day, 1 costume, 1 shoe, 8 pieces of trash of the patio, 2 more from the living room, 5 piees of clothing out of my husband's wardrobe

surface of the day: girls' room floor

SLOW MOTION CLEAN UP

Today the 10 min sounded way too long. Even putting away 10 things felt like too much. I finally got myself to do 5 things. I am not sure how many times I did it, but I ended up doing it often enough to see a difference. And I cooked twice. And best of all I got a few things done that I really needed to take care of that I had been procrastinating for weeks. I am learning to be okay with days like today. When all I did was to keep going. 

surface of the day: kitchen counter top

5 a day: out of date school stuff

MONDAYS ARE OVERRATED

All of last weekend I told myself that on Monday I will make a new start. That everything will be better. That I will be more efficient, that the house will be cleaner, that it will be easier to part with things. Because Monday was the day to start over. But hey. The house is still a mess, I accomplished less then I planed to, I started yelling at the kids around 5 pm. So yes, Mondays are overrated. Maybe everything can be new tomorrow. Uhm. No. Taxi Tuesday. Not really the day to work miracles at home.

I did take care of a few things that I have been avoiding over the last couple of weeks. My 10 magic minutes still work for me, but I think I will have to add a little twist to make them more efficient. Of course I will let you know what it is once I implement it. Now I am thinking of just dividing up the rooms over certain days and to have a weekly focus room for decluttering. We will see. That's the problem with being a perfectionist. Things can always be better!

surface of the day: kitchen counter (twice!)

5 a day: truck loads of paper with kid'S art, a bagpack, a single sock with a hole in it.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

There is this hoarder forum where I hang out and get my spirits lifted when I am low. Today a new member joined. Very dispirited, asking for advice on how to get started. One of our experienced members among other things said that everything takes practice. And when you sit on the couch doing nothing you get better at doing nothing.

OUCH!!!!

That hit home. Really. I mean, how true is that!? I never looked at it this way. I am practicing AVOIDANCE! I am practicing the very thing that I know has kept me from being successful all those years. I got all fidgety, jumped up from the couch, ran around in circles and finally allowed myself to calm down. Time to practice something else. Our coat room, my very personal nemesis, as all the things that come into the house kind of find a "final resting place" there,was my training turf. I decided to just go and deal with one item after the other. Kind of a slow motion clean up I guess. So I cheated a little. A few things simply got transferred to the third dresser but all in all I did a good job. 

I found Christmas cards, a 7 month old birthday card, I found things the kids had told me they wanted to keep in June or July and they were still lying there. I decided if it has been lying here for 2 full months now and nobody cared to retrieve it, I can just as well get rid of it. Nobody will ever miss it. I went through 4 of the drawers. Cleaned them out. The only things allowed back in are things that actually belong in there. I also realized that I have an EMPTY DRAWER in that chest. Can you imagine? And empty drawer in a hoarder's house?

I am not done yet. But getting done was not the point of the "exercise". The point was to DO something. To be active. All in all it went well. I'll have another "work out" tomorrow!

surface of the day: 4 drawers, top of 2 dressers

7 a day: kid's art, paper, admission tickets for all kinds of places, 2 rings,

I'M STILL HAPPY

It's a challenge when you step into a pile of sand in a room that you vacuumed 2 hours earlier, or when your clean bathtub is covered in mud. Gets me back to feeling that none of this makes sense. But hey. The kids have done well doing little jobs. And I am getting better at throwing things away. Left over food, usable paper and other little things.

Doing my 10 min routine, I can tell that I am making good progress. I have returned to the original version of it. Start with morning routine (sort laundry, air out house) 10 min of laundry (washing, folding, what ever is necessary) then start at the bedroom right of the stairs and work counter clockwise.  The reason this works so well for me is because I keep my clean areas clean. And I can easily see if I make progress. Today I made it all the way through 2 bedrooms and the bathroom and was 15 min ahead of schedule, even though I only worked a little more than 1 hour for the last 3 days instead of 2. Once more we can see that persistence is key.

I have identified and gathered a few things to leave the house, and also packed them up. I will now happily go to bed. Stayed up way to late again!

RUNNING AWAY

Today I feel like running away. Like it is al useless anyway. That no matter what I do it's never enough and it doesn't get me anywhere. Oh, and no matter where I go free stuff is calling my name. Today I caved. I took it. Man, who can say no to a practically new trailer for the bike to haul the kids around in. Especially when I have been telling myself that the old one has to go and I need to just bite the bullet and BUY one. Now, as long as the old one really goes I am fine. But back to never getting anywhere.

A few moments, when I walked into the girls' room I stopped dead in my tracks. What a shock. The room was clean! Right! We cleaned it! And it was still clean. So much for never getting anything accomplished! I CAN and DO make a difference. It doesn't need to be done all at once and in one day. I still feel to tired to believe that the silly playroom will EVER be clean again. But guess what. I am going to clip onmy timer and go at it. 10 minutes at a time. And then I will goon break for 10 min. Iwill not use 10 min per room today, but instead will allow myself to use all 12 of my 10 min blocks to go into the playroom. The 2 kids that are home at the moment and are able to help get to tag along. We can handle 10 min. Let's se if we even need the full 2 hours! I don't think so!

surface of the day: playroom floor (no, we didn't get around to shelves and surfaces)

7 a day: paper, more paper, still more paper

REGAINING CONTROL

Not having to do it all at in one day is a great relief. One thing I really like about my 10 magic minute is that once my 2 hours are up I am done. No matter how bad the rest of the house looks. I am just simply awesome. Today, I was awesome. Very awesome. And I feel so good about myself, that I feel ready to tackle the mountain of clothes that need ironing that has grown in a corner of my living room over the last couple of weeks. Shifting it to the bedroom did not help to reduce it. Big surprise, I know. Well. The TV is on, my movie has 80 min left. Let's DO THIS!

7 a day: handful of expired coupons, 1 toy, 3 books, kid's art

surface of the day: girls' room, yup, the whole room

I'M FEELING BETTER

I know, you are absolutely thrilled. I was just so tired the last 2% weeks. I slept at least 9 hours every night and took 3 hour naps during the day just to survive. Today is my 4th day without a nap, but I did lie down during the day. Needless to say, no decluttering took place. Nothing happened. I am just glad the laundry is under control and the kids love cereal. Today was the first day I felt kind of back to normal at least. I was able to make an organized effort with household chores and the kitchen and downstairs bathroom are back under control. So is the master bedroom and Mt laundry shrunk to a rolling hill. Okay, so half of it was easy stuff, but trust me, it was hard enough picking easy chores. Looks like I will be first one asleep yet another night.

WHERE IS THE WITTY HEADLINE?

I am too tired to even come up with a witty headline. I am not tired. I am TIRED! I got a doctor's appointment, a cake, a kid's play (Alex participated and the whole affair took 4,5 hours out of my day) and 5 loads of laundry out of the way. I kicked into superhero mode at 10 pm and cleaned up the kitchen. My 10 magic minutes saved the day. Again.  

I might not have decluttered actively but while I was waiting in the dentist' chair, I mentally went through a box of old school books. I envisioned myself keeping one or 2, and recycling the rest. Maybe I will just take a picture of them. That would be even smarter, and easier to file. 

I will now put my tired head on my soft pillow and refuse to dream about decluttering.  

11 MAGIC MINUTES

I did it. I bumped up daily working time to 2 hours and 12 min. It being Monday, the extra time was definitely needed. I simply added 1 min to every 10 min block. I figured this way I won't even notice. I really didn't. It's not much but if I do it on all 6 days it will get me 1 hour and 12 min more every week. If that doesn't do it I will either have to add another block (of 11 min) or bump it up to 12. Or go all out and do 15 blocks of 10 min each. Woah! That sounds horrible!
 Although on the other hand. Today I got 16 11 min blocks taken care of, so I guess I can handle it. As I did so well today I figured with it being Taxi Tuesday again tomorrow (no morning appointment can you believe it?) I might want to get some work out of the way. 

James has been at the office a lot lately . They are finishing up a project, and the deadline is looming over them. Actually, the deadline is past but now they have a little more time to fix things. It's getting kind of old that he is gone 12 hours or more a day. 

I think I need to get back to the surface of the day project. And really make it a SURFACE, not count random rooms I cleaned up. I will go clear the dresser top in the living room. That will also help with getting the living room off the left over room list at last!

surface of the day: fridge

5 a day: various forms of expired medication

CLEAN UP FOR THE PARTY

I am a very social person and having people over is a delight for me. It can be a source of stress as I want the house to be clean, but it is also a great motivation to clean up. I used to do emergency clean ups for occasions like that (grab a laundry basket stuff everything in it and hide the basket, fill up as many as necessary to clear the area in question) but I have learned that even though they look like a great fix all they do is create another emergency. 

In the aftermath of such an emergency clean up I would find myself asking the following questions

• Where on earth is x? 
• If x isn't in this basket which basket could it be in?
• Who will clear out all those baskets.
• How am I to do the laundry? All the baskets are full!
• Will the 3 laundry baskets I hid in here fall out if I open this wardrobe?

You get the idea. I think I told you that when last time I was really tempted to do an emergency clean up I decided to be brave and face the situation. Well. Today I was brave again. The hardest part for me is getting started. It feels like I have so much today. In order not to feel overwhelmed I wrote down the rooms that will be used by the guests and an estimated amount of time necessary to cleanup each of them. That already made me feel better. My estimate was 2,5 hours of work, which is only 30 min than my daily routine. So I decided which order I would tackle them in and got started in the kitchen. 

I promptly faced my first obstacle. I should have just started the dishwasher the night before. So once the dishwasher was started I decided to move to the next room, the hall. AsI went to get water to mop the floors I quickly got sidetracked by laundry. Realizing that all my floor rags are dirty did not improve my mood. By this time I was officially behind and ready to just get lost in the big maze that is called the worldwideweb. I lucked out big time. The internet was on my side for once and not working.

By this time I had worked only 40 min and lunch was approaching quickly. I grabbed my timer and set out again. As I was behind I decided to forget about my order of things and do the fast rooms first. It payed of. 2 rooms later I was back on track! Hooray!

It was time to face my nemesis. The "coat room". I have very mixed emotions about this room, but let me tell you, it is the hardest room of the house to keep organized! 20 min later I was close, but behind schedule again. And I had cheated a little. I had stuffed the little knick knacks that are at home all over the house into a clear box but as I left the box there and in plain sight I figured I can get away with it. The kitchen went faster than expected.

Eventually life got in the way. Once life was out of the picture again, I tossed my timer and simply kept working until the living room was clean. Things might not have gone as planned, but the downstairs is clean. I am very happy with what I achieved today.

If you have made it to the end of this post in one long swoop it proves that you have what it takes! So get your rear end up and go WORK FOR 10 MIN!

surface of the day: living room

5 a day: I am afraid, I didn't get rid of anything today

LET'S DO THIS!

I managed to put 2 hours of maintenance work in today. Thank you sweet little 10 magic minutes! I barely put a dent into the chaos, but what do you expect with 14 people in a home. After 2 weeks of partying it is hard to get back in to work mode. MY goal for tomorrow is to crawl up into the attic so I can fill the nearly empty recycling trash that will be picked up on Wednesday. I'll let you know how it goes. For  now I will be smart an go to bed to catch some sleep! 

surface of the day: 2 suitcases and one bag unpacked

5 a day: husband's wallet (silly story), 4 pieces of kids clothing (ruined),

I TOOK ACTION

I am a great planer. I come up with the best plans ever. Detailed. With a time schedule of what to do when and how long it will take. I am just terrible at execution.

But as professional organizer Rachel from Green and tidy likes to point out, it is important to make time for action. 

Over the last couple of weeks I made time to fix 3 pairs of pants, a skirt and a humongous stuffed animal. None of the tasks took more than 20 min. 2 of the projects I finished while chatting with friends, once face to face, once on the phone and I FELL SO GOOD about finally having them done. I have wasted so much energy keeping those things on my to do list, dreading them more and more every time I actively pushed them further down the list.

I once read an article about being more efficient at the office. And the person, I don't even remember if it was a man or woman, said that since they did every task that would take less than 3 min (like answering an email) immediately things went so much smoother. He/she planned half of their time during a workday for "immediate action". And it worked out really well he/she said.

I wonder what my time limit should be. Any job I encounter that takes less than 5 min? Or things that take less then 10? Hm. I wonder how a distracted soul who needs to have a 10 min plan for cleaning up a room can handle doing things immediately. On the other hand if I finish them. Well. They would be finished. Maybe I will try it one of these days.

NEW INSIGHTS

I have been watching myself a little closer lately. It seems that I am fine with certain tasks, that are a routine. Like laundry. Like cleaning the downstairs bathroom. But I am afraid it already stops there. Little things already throw me off track. Like throwing away the kitchen sink sponge and realizing I don't have a new one. Or my morning routine. Ever since we switched bedrooms with the girls I can't just start in the bedroom and then work around counter clockwise. Why would it feel wrong to start with their room now?

Today I have planned to whiz through the first 4 rooms in  10 min (it would have been possible) so I would have 40 min to clear the landing. I went over the things that were there in my mind the night before and I think 40 min should have done it. Worst case I would have gotten 10 more from the stairs and 10 more by skipping the playroom. What did I do? I climbed up into the attic and used up 30 min that were mentally so draining that I had to run off to the backyard to plant my tomatoes. 

Well. There is always tomorrow.

surface of the day: a basket full of stuff in the attic (unfortunately I churned quite a bit)

5 a day: at least 20 if not more random bits and pieces (a lot less that should have gone)