ON MY OWN

Once again I am on my own. James is on a 12 day business trip to China. I can't believe I said it would be just fine if he went. Truth be said "Oh sure. Go ahead," was meant to have a sarcastic twinge, but that doesn't carry too well via email. Things started of well. 20 of the 272 hours are over already. It might not be obvious to outsiders, but I can tell my stress levels are up.

Living up to my word to take the clothes to the donation box only happened, because I put them in the hall and they took up so much room that I could not get by with the stroller. Otherwise I would have forgotten about them again, even though they were in plain sight. 

I manged to take 3 bags with me. On the way there I passed the glass collection boxes. And wouldn't you know it. One contained drinking glasses. Just on Sunday I talked to a friend of mine who is a student, that she needed more drinking glasses. I resisted the urge to pick them out. The fact that they were bulky and ugly made it easier, but it was a conscious effort. 

I heard the collection truck on the way back (falling glass makes an awful lot of noise especially when it lands on top of more glass) and thought I was safe. Once I realized they had not been to that street yet, I crossed over to the other side to stay as far away from those glasses as possible. I must admit that I did longingly stare at the box. I didn't see the glasses, but I knew they were there. 

A clip in my head started rolling, me, saving the glasses from the box, getting them out of the dishwasher. all sparkly to present to the new owner, AAAAAHHHHH! I picked up speed to get away from there. 

Fortunately a few steps further down the road a bag of clothes with a flyer attached to it caught my attention. Curb side collection! Yeah! I checked the flyer. TODAY! Sure enough I had one in my mailbox, too, that I had never bothered to get out. 

5 min later the clothes from the car and the ones still in the house were out on the curb with the flyer attached. 

ALL the clothes gone AND I RESISTED the urge to acquire! I am AWESOME!

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.