Can you tell I’m behind getting back into the groove of blogging after the craziness of the holidays?
No? Oh. Never mind, then.
I took this picture on New Year’s Eve:
We had some friends come over. We had actually planned to be out of town, but my husband unexpectedly had his gall bladder removed the week before Christmas and we decided to stay home and let him rest.
The week after Christmas, I shared Non-Overwhelming Decluttering Tasks that are focused on producing visible results and actual progress each and every day. I’m a big fan of NOT making a bigger mess when I declutter.
And it worked. I wasn’t done decluttering (har-dee-har-har-har!!!! like I’ll ever be done!!!) on the day of our gathering, but all the work I’d done was visible. Each day’s effort had made an impact.
Here’s the beauty of that: in the middle of my week of decluttering, I could stop and clean.
Just stop. And clean.
I dusted ceiling fans (phooey on the cold weather that wouldn’t let me keep them running so the dust would be invisible!), cleaned bathrooms and moved furniture to vacuum underneath.
It felt good.
Waking up and starting to clean (instead of first having to shove and shift clutter) is a huge perk of focusing on visible progress above all else every time I declutter.
Did you go through the five days of non-overwhelming decluttering tasks (or are you going through them now)? Have you seen the benefit?
--Nony
Here is an excuse to run your fans in cold weather: https://www.sparkenergy.com/en/blog/archive/set-ceiling-fans-for-winter/
I’m divinding my time between more visible decluttering projects, which make an impact now and help keep my motivation high, and less visible projects that have been lurking in corners for a long time. They are helping too, just not as visibly.
Oh thanks!!!! I forget about that! (Though changing the direction might send the dust flying?)
I wrote about you on my blog today.
https://purpleslobinrecovery.wordpress.com/2016/01/28/reminiscing-rememberances/
You are seriously why people can now come to my door pretty much any time, and be able to find a place to sit! And use the facilities without me screaming: NO! Don’t go in there!
Finding you saved my life, homemaking wise.
I can never thank you enough.
Oh Melinda! Thank you so much for sharing this. You have been through so much and come so far!
I thought of you yesterday. My project was “one shelf in the hall closet”. In the middle of the “small” project it was looking worse, not better and I was getting discouraged. Then I remembered, “progress, not perfection.” So, I stopped, and took care of everything that had been pulled out to the floor, took trash to the trash, put other items on the floor back where I would look for them and got everything put back away. When I was done the closet was NOT perfect, but I could easily remove some oft used items that were jammed in there before, and I could get out what I need from that closet without causing an avalanche. Thanks for the “intervention” and helping me leave it better and not worse.
In my tendency to overthink things, I couldn’t decide if I should post this comment on your most recent blog post or one that actually mentions dusting the ceiling fans, Obviously, I decided to go with ceiling fans since this post is only 3 weeks old.
Anyway, I was watching the Today Show on February 10, 2017 and Jeff Rossen was interviewing a home efficiency expert about saving money on your utility bills. One thing she recommended was running your ceiling fans clockwise in the winter and counterclockwise in the summer to more efficiently circulate the air and save on heating and AC. So, of course, I immediately went around and checked all my ceiling fans to make sure they were rotating clockwise.
Guess what is a really efficient way of dusting your ceiling fans, particularly if your TPAD prevents you from rarely dusting your ceiling fans? Changing the directions they spin, that’s what! The dust bunnies rain down like big fluffy snowflakes!
Pretty sure I’ve had this EXACT thing happen in my home!!