Today I:
Made bed.
Cleaned kitchen (including emptying dishwasher)
Swept kitchen.
Checked bathrooms for clutter.
Wiped down bathroom counters and toilets.
Did 5 minute walk-through.
Made huge progress in office.
Daily Checklist
Today I:
Made bed.
Cleaned kitchen (including emptying dishwasher)
Swept kitchen.
Checked bathrooms for clutter.
Wiped down bathroom counters and toilets.
Did 5 minute walk-through.
Made huge progress in office.
After a few days of watching videos on your YouTube channel, and then a few more days reading various posts from your blog (including starting over from the beginning to read about your own deslobification journey), I was very inspired this morning. I kept doing “one more little job, oh, and one more little job…” instead of going back to bed! I almost went back to bed to nurse the baby, but my husband had just gotten out of the shower, so instead I brought the baby down and chatted with him while nursing! That was a big one!
Afterwards, I had my FIRST cup of coffee for the day and kept busy with more and more little tasks! I decided to keep a notebook of my own detailing all the things I am accomplishing, because reading through your “daily checklists” is being truly inspiring to me! I have QUITE a lengthy list of things I actually did this morning, because they are all small things but things I would normally put off, and they really do make a difference!
And I accomplished all this stuff simply by beginning… I told myself “Do a five-minute pickup in the living room, and sweep the kitchen floor, and then you can go back to bed for a while.” And I would have been fine to do that, but it really got me moving with such momentum and excitement! However, I think I do need to remind myself that when all the excitement wears off, I need to just keep to a couple non-negotiable tasks and gradually add the other things so I don’t burn out.
One tiny thing I almost procrastinated on, but feel especially proud of myself for stopping myself and doing it was: we have a porch bench that the kids had pushed over slightly in front of the sliding glass door making it to where there was a slightly tighter space to walk through when going in and out. (There are storage barrels on the other side of the doorway that HAVE to be kept on the porch, and that is the most out-of-the-way spot for them.) I got annoyed when I walked through the door, just as I have been for a couple of days, and thought “I am going to need to move that soon or someone is going to hit the edge of it and get a bruise. I can’t do it right now though, because the kittens’ water bowl that we keep underneath is too close to the legs and will get dumped if I scoot the bench over right now.” Then I realized (DUH!!!) that all I needed to do was scoot the water bowl over a few inches, then scoot the bench over a few inches, and problem solved! So proud of myself for that!
I know I started out by doing a LOT this morning, but I think, like you have done, that I can keep going because only a couple of the tasks am I considering non-negotiable. The other things I did purely because I felt like it.
It helps that I had to clean a couple days ago to prepare for company, and then I did some upkeep the next day because I thought we were going to have more company (we didn’t), and then we were gone half the day yesterday and amazingly the kids didn’t trash everything in the half we were home. I think that’s a lot of what kept me going this morning: doing a five-minute pickup in the living room, for example, actually made it completely clean, instead of just making a slight dent. Under my normal circumstances, it would have taken me from half an hour to forty-five minutes to make the living room look this good.
Okay, sorry that my comment is so much longer than your post….
I’m just SO excited!
Thank you for all your inspiring words!
*It didn’t make the living room completely clean, but it DID make it completely decluttered. It looks good, but I didn’t dust or wipe windows, or anything, and they DO need done eventually.
*I had meant to clarify that I did quite a few tasks before having coffee, and normally I would have had at least two and probably three cups of coffee while trying to muster up the willpower to do ANYTHING. I had my second cup while checking email, reading this post, and writing my comment.