So it’s been a long time since I posted here. A LONG time. :P I could blame Gabriel, but I wasn’t ever really good at blogging so I’ll refrain from using him as a scape-goat and just be honest: I’m a lazy writer. I’m working on changing that though with encouragement from Josh to ‘Just write something; anything.’ because it’s good for me. I know he’s right. Every time I get into the habit of writing on a regular basis I notice it beginning to get easier to do. He also pointed out that no matter what I’m writing it will help me practice getting my thoughts on paper, which is a really good skill to have (especially if your husband is interested in going into politics. I once asked him: “If you ever became governor would I have to write speeches?” To which he responded something along the lines of “Well yes, you would probably need to speak sometimes.” and I said, “Yes, but would I have to WRITE the speeches?” :P).
I’ve decided to try to post to this blog about every three weeks, for multiple reasons, but I plan to be writing something every day. The problem comes when I try to remember to write. Because I usually don’t. I’ve tried schedules of various kinds to make my days run smoother, so that I could find time to do things like write. Occasionally one works, but it doesn’t ever seem to last. I’m trying two different strategies right now that are currently working (however, I’ve only used one of them for a few days, and the other for about a week, so there’s still plenty of time for me to discover these don’t work either) and I thought I’d post about them, and maybe update on how they work long-term.
Strategy one is for cleaning. The short version (which is still sort of long), is this: pick a room to clean up on day one. Don’t dust or vacuum or anything; you’re just decluttering, picking up anything that isn’t supposed to be in that room. Next day pick up a different room, and check the first one at the end of the day. Put away anything in room one that isn’t supposed to be there. Repeat day three, only this time check both room one and two at the end of the day. Do that until every room in your house is clutter free. Keep checking and picking up at the end of the day.
This actually worked really well for me! The only hitch was that we had two weeks of absolute crazy during which I was unable to thoroughly keep up with the end-of-the-day pick up. So now I’m trying to get back in the rhythm, but since I have a game plan it’s much easier. Theres multiple parts to this cleaning method, but i haven’t made it to part two yet (see ‘two weeks of absolute crazy’), so I’ll try to remember to post about that when I get to it. Here’s the list of steps in case you’re curious what’s coming up:
Declutter
Deep clean
Detox
Organize (I can’t think of any word that works here that starts with a D. Any ideas?)
Decorate
Strategy two is for day to day life organization. So my cleaning strategy is included in it as an item of my day. This strategy came about after Josh decided our Sundays needed a make-over (and he was right). We sat down together and created a Sunday ’script’ that consisted of everything I needed to do and the order I wanted to do it in on one side, and his list on the other. I also added a Saturday list to it for me so I’d be sure to have all my prep work done. It worked like a dream! We got everything done smoothly and walked out the door. WALKED. As opposed to me running around last minute like a chicken with my head cut off just knowing I’d forgotten something important. So one day last week I had a lot of stuff I wanted to be sure to get done the next day. We were on the way home from prayer meeting (about a 40 minute drive for us), and I decided to use the time to write a script for myself for the next day. It worked! I’ve done this about three times now, and even on days when the order wasn’t exactly as I’d written it I still got nearly everything done.
What’s different about this for me is that there isn’t any time block. Even when I used to write schedules with time blocks they were always flexible in my head. Not having the time at all though seems to work even better; the main reason being that it’s enormously easier to write the script in the first place. It takes me maybe 5 minutes to write, and last night I did it during my second to last nursing for the evening. I plan to do that every night (it’s in my script). The list is on my iPhone in the notes app, and what I did last night is go through and delete everything I wasn’t doing today then filled the gaps with todays projects. I block it out by nursing times, listing as many things as I think I can accomplish between. I also think up and include specific nursing projects. Stuff I can do other than browsing Pinterest or watching YouTube videos with my nursing time. That may be the best part of this list. Instead of siting down to nurse then realizing I’ve got nothing to do, and that I really don’t want to get up to get anything, I know exactly what I’m doing and prepare accordingly. This way I may actually finish The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate!
Well, there you go. My two newest strategies for organization. I hope to keep this blog updated about them, but it may be sporadic. Eventually I’d like to post more than once every three weeks, and then I may be able to focus more on something like this. But so much happens in three weeks that I may have something way more interesting to post next time, like pictures of Gabe! ;)
