Do You Use Your Time Wisely?

Lots of us say we don’t have enough hours in a day. But we all have the same 24 hours to deal with. So why is it that some of us can accomplish so much more than others? Partly it’s in our attitude. If we are always thinking “There aren’t enough hours in a day to do all this stuff” then that becomes our reality and we really don’t have enough time for everything we want or need to  do.

It is also partly that we don’t structure our time very well. We don’t pick up after ourselves or clean as we go when working on a project or cooking dinner. Then there is a big mess to clean up at the end which takes longer than necessary.

Some of us are terrible procrastinators. Here is an article I wrote about that:    http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1056250/are_you_a_chronic_procrastinator.html?cat=4

Here’s hoping you have a wonderful day.

Peace disrupted

Well, my peaceful little journey to self sufficiency and an organized life has been terribly disrupted in the form of animal attacks. Somebody around here lets their big dogs run loose and they had twice now attached my chickens. The first time they also tore open a rabbit cage and killed one of my rabbits. I had 20 chickens, 5 laying hens and 15 young chicks. I now have one of each left. Though one chick was killed by a skunk. I have shot two skunks this past week. And I’m lying in wait for the dogs to come back. So don’t let your dogs loose; they might not come home again.  I am tired, sad, mad, disgusted and depressed. I didn’t even do my dishes last night.

A New Routine

There are two things I haven’t been doing that I really need to squeeze into my mornings. One is eating breakfast so my blood sugar doesn’t get too low. The other is Swish & Swipe, or S&S for short.

Swish & Swipe is simply wiping up in the bathroom each morning after you are done in there. Wipe off the mirror, wipe the faucet and sink. Keep some water with a little cheap soap (Flay Lady even uses old shampoo!) in your toilet brush container, then just take a quick swish around the bowl. If you do it every day it really will keep your bathroom sparkly. Another trick is while you are in the shower, just before getting out, take your soapy rag and wash one wall. That will keep the soap scum from building up. You will never have to spend hours scrubbing the bathroom again, if you do these little things.

So yesterday I actually managed to do both of these before I left for work.  Now I just need to keep doing them.

I can attest from previous experience that even if the toilet isn’t sparkly clean when you start, if you will do it every day, then it won’t be long before it is sparkly. Just remember baby steps and don’t burn yourself out trying to do everything at once.

Routine Re-cap

Since I’ve re-started Fly Lady way I haven’t actually gone back and done the baby steps as she outlines them here:

http://www.flylady.com/pages/begin_babysteps.asp

But I have made a concious effort to get back to doing things when they need done. So far my mornings are pretty routine:

Get up,make the bed,  make the coffee, feed the chickens, check the rabbits (especially now that we’re having babies), some computer time with my coffee, get dressed, make my lunch, off to work.

The afternoon varies depending on how late I work and what else is going on, the minimum is:

Feed & water the animals, water/check the garden, cook dinner, clean up after.

Ideally I should be doing a load of laundry a day, a swish & swipe in the bathroom and 15 minutes of decluttering.

What’s really happening in the afternoon and evening is that I manage to clean up the kitchen 4 or 5 nights running, then seem to skip or only do part of it one night. I manage a load of laundry about once or twice during the week and then play catch up on Sunday. The bathroom hasn’t been clean in some time. Wait, I’ll take that back, I cleaned off the shelves in there back about the first of the month. But forget the rest of it. And my goal of 15 minutes a day, well, I think I’ve managed 2 or 3 sessions a week.  There are all sorts of reasons these things aren’t happening. Some of it’s work, grandkids, too much computer time, unexpected company……some of it I can control and some I can’t.

But I have to say that there are some areas that are looking a bit better than they were, even if it seems like I’m moving at a snail’s pace.

I’m not sure at the moment exactly how to step things up. Though since my daughter has dropped her Thur night class, I don’t have kids that night and perhaps I can use some of that time to work on these things.

 

Weekly Home Blessing Hour

The Weekly Home Blessing takes just about one hour and it will make your house look a lot better.  You set your timer for 10 minutes for each task. This is not a whole house deep cleaning, but rather a surface skim and tidy up.

1. cull and toss old magazines, catalogues and newspapers

2.Change the sheets on your bed

3.Dump all the trash cans.

4.Vacumm, this is not move the furniture and vacuum every where. This is just the middles, the middle of the room and where you walk all the time.

5. Mop the kitchen and bathroom. Again, this is just th middles, you are just getting the worst of the grime and don’t worry about the edges and corners.

6. Wash the mirrors and the door knobs; I like to wipe off the light switches now too.

7. Use a nice big feather duster on your furniture. I don’t have a lot of furniture, other than my book cases, so I mostly dust pictures and cob webs.

Now you might only need 40 minutes at your house or you might need 90 if you have a big house. You can do it all at once or  you can break it up by task and do a little each day. If you have a large or multi-storey house you could bless one level one day and do the second level the next. It’s up to you how you fit it into your routine and your life. I don’t have magazine subscriptions and keep very few catalogues and we usually use newspaper for fire starting, so I can skip that step.

Now you are going to say your house is soooo messy you can’t even get to some of these things. That is ok. Just do what you can do. I can’t get to all my book cases to dust them right now either, so I just dust the ones I can reach. Every little bit helps.

Progress

I make a long list of things to do every Sunday, which is the only day of the week I don’t work away from home. Of course I rarely get everything crossed off the list by the end of the day. Not because I don’t try, but either some of it takes much longer than I thought it was going to or something comes up, like unexpected company, which is what happened today.

However there is small progress being made here and there. I finished making a little house for the chicks so they are no longer spending their nights stinking up the living room. And I scored big on 2 large metal drums to store my animal feed in, so now all the feed is out of the entry way.

I’ve managed to keep up with the dishes this past week, though I did get a little behind on the laundry.

I’ve kept up with my finances too and while there is never going to be enough money to consider myself rich, I can at least pay all the bills and if I mind my pennies I can keep a little money in the bank too.

You Need A Budget

I recently bought a software program called You Need A Budget. Very simple and easy to use, it has already more than paid for itself. Mostly because it is open on my computer every day for me to see when I sit down. Looking at all the numbers and seeing how my long term goals can become reality is very motivating. Already it has kept me from frivolously wasting about $200.00 this month.

My new checks came in and I was able to sit down and pay all my bills. {I just need to drop off or mail them now} I need to make a quick run to Walmart, either tonight, or tomorrow, for the rest of the things I need there. Then I will be done shopping for two weeks {went to the feed store today}  I’m hoping at some point maybe I can get to where I can shop once a month. That would be really nice.

the nice thing is that while there is money in the bank, I can look at the YNAB budget page and see where that money is supposed to go. This is helping me keep my impulse buying under control.

You can test drive YNAB yourself at www.ynab.com

new steps

building a routine is adding one step at a time until they become habits. I’ve been doing fairly well with keeping my dishes washed, my sink clean and making my bed each morning. So now I’m adding a new step, to bring my lunch box inside from the car every day. Hopefully that will motivate me to make my lunch at night, so I won’t have to do it in the morning.

I already make the main part of my lunch while cleaning up from dinner. I put some leftovers in a container for my lunch and put it in the fridge. I’m hoping that by bringing in my lunch box and water bottle at night I’ll take it a step further. Fill up the water bottle and add in the non perishable items while I’m cleaning the kitchen in the evening. That way all I have to do in the morning is grab my container out of the refrigerator and get going.

Another thing I need to do is tame the paper tiger on my desk. So far in October I have been keeping up with new paper coming in. I just need to finish dealing with old paper still lying around. I’d really like to have all the paper organized before Jan 1 so that I can begin working on my taxes and be ready to send the off before Feb 15. That will mean any refund coming will come in some time in March. (I e=file and do direct deposit, much faster!)

Fly lady has put out the link to her Holiday Control Journal http://www.flylady.net/images/HCJ2003.pdf

This is a great guide to help keep you from overspending and keep you organized for your winter holidays.

15 minutes

I spent about 15 minutes getting rid of paper clutter on my desk and working FACE, which just means that I updated my budget and made a couple of online payments.

I also went over the sale papers and my grocery list for Friday. There really isn’t that much we need. The usual perishables, like milk, meat, fruit, yogurt. But the list isn’t too long. So that is all set and ready to go to the store Fri afternoon.

pictures

Ok yeah, this is embarrising, but maybe it will help keep me focused on what I need to do. so here goes.

this is one half of my living room, before I did anything. The light is shining on the box for the little day old chicks, to keep them warm.

this is after one 15 minute session.

And this is after another 15 minute session. I have even made a little more progress than this, but at least you can see that even 15 minutes can make a difference.