I promise, this post does have a point. And it is about getting my house in order.

I’ve been doing a new Tae–bo video for the last two weeks. It’s a kicker. As in . . . behind-kicker. (My seven year old has been reading some of my posts lately and we don’t use the other “b” word.)

After my first child was born, I lost a lot of weight doing the original basic Tae–bo video. It was the best shape I’ve been in as an adult. I loved it and it felt soooo good. Now, after two more kids and several years, I’m determined to get back into that kind of shape. I’ve lost 30 lbs over the last year and a half on Weight Watchers, but I’m not in shape. Things just don’t look the way they did pre-kids, even at this same weight.

So I was doing this new video today, for the third time. There is one move that is at the beginning that I thought was pretty pointless the first two times I did it. But today, I got it. I had been going through the motions on that move, but today I did it right, and I felt it. I got the point, and felt that it is really working. This happened the last time I got into shape doing Tae–bo. The more times I did it, the better I got at it, and the more I got out of it.

This made me think about my cleaning. Many slobs are very creative people, we love projects (or the idea of them) and we have great big ideas. It’s the day-to-day tasks like making my bed or washing the dishes that make me wonder, “What’s the point?” And since I’ve let my house get to this point, one little task doesn’t seem like it would make enough of a difference to bother with it.

With the exercise videos, I go through the motions the first several times. I know I’m not getting as good of a workout as the people on the screen, but at least I’m going through the motions. And going through the motions is exercise. It may not be good enough for a real athlete, but it is movement, and this is a great start for someone like me. As I go through the movements several times, I start to get them down. I start to understand them, and I start to do them better. The better I become at them, the more I start to feel results. Before today, I thought we were doing the same kick at two different times in the video. But I realized this morning that they are actually two subtly different kicks, and one works the inner thigh and the other works the outer thigh. I was getting great leg exercise when I didn’t know the difference, but today I did more specific work on what are definitely problem areas for me.

I started going through the motions on keeping my sink free of dirty dishes. But the more I do it, the more I see the point, and the better at it I become. Since I don’t have huge piles of dishes to do, I’m able to take a few seconds to scrape the edge of the sink that gets nasty. Today when I wiped the bathroom counters, I also took a few seconds to wipe the toothpaste splatters off of the soap dispenser. I never even noticed those splatters before because the whole counter looked so bad.

Here’s the point. With this blog, I’m starting some daily tasks that I knew needed to be done, but I had no idea what kind of impact they would have. The more I do them, the more confidence I gain, and the better I am getting at them.

I don’t pretend that I have this all figured out, but I have hope that someday I will. The more “breakthroughs” I have, the more I’m changed.

And as I know from working out, you only stay in shape as long as you keep working out. There is never a point when you are done.