As I’ve said before, I don’t like to waste time. And yet I have problems with keeping my home in the right place on my priority list. These two things combine to create a problem.

This week has been a maintenance week. I cleaned like crazy last week, but this week has been crazy with things going on outside the house. This is normally when my house slides back into messiness. One of the things I’ve been learning is that I need to “just do it.” I know that this is cliche. But it’s what I don’t do.

I’m always looking for a better time. I just walked through the living room and thought to myself, “Hmmm, I’ll need to pick that pillow up off the floor when I do my five-minute pick-up.” WHAT? Yes, I actually took the time to think that. In the amount of time for that thought to occur, the pillow could have gone back onto the couch and the room would look great. I did catch myself and picked it up.

This has always been my problem in the kitchen. A napkin on the floor makes me think that I need to sweep. It should make me bend down and pick up that one napkin. A dirty dish makes me dread doing all of the dishes that will soon be piled on top of it. I’m learning that if I just wash the one dish, it hardly feels like work. And if I wash the one dish everytime it appears, the pile never happens. Hmmm. This really shouldn’t be a difficult concept, but somehow it is for me.

I’m learning by my pick-up habits for the last two weeks that if I go ahead and pick up the one thing when I see it, there’s really not much to pick up when I do the non-negotiable check. Is this how other people live? Is this how their homes always look fine, even when they haven’t “cleaned” it lately?

I have to replace the automatic question that pops in my head when I see something out of place or in the floor. I need to stop thinking, “When can I get that done?” Instead, I need to think “Let me take one second to pick that up.”

Here’s the mathematicalish equation: 60 items picked up individually at one second each takes 60 seconds of my week. 60 items left to be picked up at a “better” time takes at least an hour of my week. Hmmm.