Focus Check Friday – Finally a Little Progress

Last week I declared that I was going to enjoy the final weeks of summer . . . and I am.

We had errands/fun-things-to-do on the three days designated for specific cleaning tasks, and the one morning we were home was spent catching up.

But I did make some progress. Little projects like my shoe-pile-clean-up and the dining room table decluttering made a huge difference, both visually and mentally.

When I put the vase and flowers on the dining table, my desired result was continued inspiration. I hoped that clutter-dumping would be more difficult on a decorated table.

Turns out, I was right! This morning, my husband brought me the mail. This may not seem like a big deal, but let me put it another way.

He didn’t dump the mail on the table as soon as he brought it in.

Last year, as I worked to develop habits, I did quite well at sort-walking. Meaning, as I brought in the mail (typically after picking up kids from school), I walked straight to the trash can and threw away anything that wasn’t needed, and then filed the rest in the file-box that is near the trash can. It made a huge difference in our paper clutter, which made a huge difference in our just-inside-the-front-door dining room table, which made a huge difference in my level of door-opening-willingness.

But in the summer, hubby comes home for lunch and often gets the mail and leaves it on the all-too-convenient table.

See? This morning’s event was significant!

I asked him if the fact that the table looked not just clean, but nice, made any difference in his decision to not dump junkmail on it.

His answer, “Yeah, I think it did.”

Woo hoo!

My goal for next week, while continuing to enjoy the last weeks of summer, is to build on this “clean inspires clean” theme. I want to do a few more small projects and see if they can produce similar results.

And just so you know, my husband is totally fine with me telling this story. In fact, when I published my Thursday post, I immediately got an email asking why I hadn’t told it yet.

That man cracks me up.

How’s your focus? Did you have any struggles or successes this week? What’s coming up for you next week? You can read about the concept behind Focus Check Friday here.

This is your reminder to take a moment to stop and think about your own focus. You can leave a comment, or link up a blog post below. If you do link up, please link directly to your Focus Check Friday post, and say something like “I’m linking up to Focus Check Friday over at A Slob Comes Clean” and then link back here.