It’s Sunday night and that means that it’s time to add a new non-negotiable task for the week. These are the things that I can’t make excuses about. Although I did. Last night.

Last night I didn’t do the bathroom counter and toilet wipe-down. The guilt is bad. I didn’t want to do it. I was exhausted and also knew that since we would be having people over today, I would re-do it in the afternoon anyway.

I really do believe that my clean-up-before-people-come-over took a lot more time than if I had done the wipe-down last night. It may be a mental thing.

But I have to keep going. One day off track doesn’t mean it’s all over. This is the rest of my life, and I can’t let a small failure undo the progress I’ve made.

I do need to say that I’m so glad that I made the decision last week to spend another week on the wipe-down habit. The first week felt so unnatural, but by the end of the second week (except for last night), it was much easier and I was “getting” it.

I’ve been dreading this next one. If I could think of anything else, I’d do that instead, but I know it’s time to tackle this.

I’m going to do one load of laundry, from start to finish, every day.

This is a Flylady thing. I’ve gone in spurts of doing this, and it makes a huge difference when I do, but I always fall off the wagon. I’m scared to death of this one because I can see all of the ways in which it can go wrong. It’s not a 5 minute task that I can do quickly when I sit down to type up a post and realize I haven’t done it yet. It’s something that I have to come back to, to put in the dryer, and then to get out of the dryer. With my forgetfulness, this is a disaster waiting to happen.

At one point when I only had little bitty pre-activity kids, I had a year when I was able to be home every Wednesday. At that point, I made it my laundry day, and this worked really well. I’ve tried this since, but if I leave it all for one day, I get totally thrown off when something like a school activity comes up on that day. Then it piles up for the next week, and maybe the next.

So I’m going to try the one load a day thing and figure out if I can make it work. I’ve always thought that if I could put a load in every night before I go to bed, I could just turn on the washer as soon as I get up. Then I could put it in the dryer after I take the kids to school. Getting it out of the dryer, folded and put away is the part that scares me. I don’t mind washing and drying clothes, but I end up with huge piles of unfolded clean clothes on the love seat.

I’m giving myself permission to figure out how this can work for me. It may take more than a week, but I’m excited to get this one down. Yes, I feel destined for failure on it, but I used to feel that way about all things in the home organization realm.