Trying something new

For those of you bored to death by housework strategies, walk on by.

For the rest---

I've been trying something new. In the past several days I've had a realization that I have not been completing household tasks. My guess is that this started (and continued from) many years ago when I was so busy with babies and little ones that I rarely could finish one thing before having to move on to some other part of the house.

I got very good at always looking around the room I was in to see if there was anything I could take and put away in the place where I was heading to. True to my"Bloom where you're planted" mindset, if I had kids that needed to be supervised downstairs, I would stop cleaning the kitchen and go find something to work on in the room where I was needed. I would save up mountains of laundry needing to be folded and take care of it while I watched a movie. I'd just hop from room to room, doing a little here and a little there to improve wherever I was.

And, that is, I think, a very good way to make progress on your house while taking care of several small children, because the babies and toddlers need and deserve your attention so much more than any room in your house.

But, I realized that I'm in a different season now. Yes, I still have some small children, but not so little that they need direct supervision from me every moment. Plus, I have some older children now that do a decent job of keeping watch on littler ones while they play in another room.

I was feeling kind of discouraged that every room looked a mess. Nothing was really done all the way. So I decided to try something out: completing things!

So for several days now I've been fighting my habits in favor of my goal:

When I rotate laundry and a load comes out of the dryer, I've been taking the 5-10 minutes to sort and fold and put it all away rather than leaving it for later. I've even got a nice little system for the socks, so they aren't piled up on me either.

For the basket of towels that comes to the laundry room, rather than just drop it off and figure I'll fold and unload later, I just take the few minutes to get it done and send the empty basket back downstairs.

When I see that the toilet is looking a little less than sanitary, I take the 1 minute to go ahead and pour in some cleaner and swoosh around the toilet brush. (it helps that I keep these things right in the bathroom where they are handy)

I'm trying to see the end of a meal as my time to completely put the kitchen back together, from the table being totally clear and wiped, chairs pushed in, dishwasher loaded and run, counters wiped, leftovers put away, large baking pans hand washed and put away. Too often I had been leaving various aspects of this "for later" and therefore the kitchen has not felt very nice.

When I'm in the laundry room I try to bring it back to nice-and-neat every time. We keep all of the children's clothes in there, plus it's a bathroom, so it can get messy to a great degree very quickly. I spent a long time nicely cleaning it the other day, but realized it needn't take so much effort, if only I'd take a few moments to spruce it up when I go in there through the day.

So, it's a small thing, but it's a big thing, because it's a shift in habit and thinking. It's rare that all the rooms in my house are all nice at the same time, but it's mighty nice to have the ones that *are* nice to be totally nice, rather than all of them in a mid-cleaning disarray.

Maybe this idea can help you. :)