Monday again?
Where the hell did the weekend go? (O_O)
I forgot to crosspost the Weekend Writer prompt Friday. Shame on me! It’s still up, and will be, and I’ll be tackling my own piece for it later on today. At some point I should just schedule the crosspost for that!
I have to admit that I’ve gotten sucked into Pinterest. I can’t really share my account with you, well, unless you know my secret identity….then go ahead and check my boards out! I succumbed to it after seeing my sister, my girlfriend, my aunt, and a few others killing time on it(read: losing time) and thought I’d see what they were pinning. It came in handy when I was brainstorming for my bedroom balcony and has proved surprisingly helpful in other aspects of day to day life as well.
I found a chart on there last night that, once I started following the links backwards, led me to this blog post. Now, I don’t have kids. In fact other than the cat and the pup I live alone. But I do struggle to keep my apartment clean. Part of this is because I am, frankly, a terrible housekeeper. My ex bitched about it constantly. I have always been honest about that and all I can do is try.
When I moved into my old apartment last summer I was determined to try harder. It was my place, all mine, and there was no reason that I couldn’t keep up with my own shit. Well, I succeeded for about three months. However, it was to the detriment of my writing. You see, it can be a bit challenging to manage time when you work from home. What would happen is this: I’d wake up and decide I would clean the kitchen. I would do that, but soon I would think, hey, I’m in the cleaning mood, let me do X as well. Three hours later I would be tired, sweaty, sore and not at all in the mood to write.
Fast forward 11 months. I’ve been in my new place about a month now. I pretty much have a clean slate. Generally speaking I’m doing a better job of all around keeping things neat and tidy, but I’m still falling back into that “cleaning frenzy” state that blows the rest of my day up. So when I saw this last night I went AHA!
Soooo, we’ll see how I do. I’ve printed it out and am going to tape it to the fridge. Some of it will change a little, being just me, but I’m really curious to see if it helps. One of the bloggers touting it made a good point about where it helped her.
I love this system because it takes the guilt out of not doing absolutely everything absolutely every day. If I notice on a Tuesday that a toilet could use a wipedown, I can do it if it’s really bugging me, or I can just think, Oh, no big deal. Tomorrow’s toilet day.
There’s something empowering about knowing when something’s going to happen, even if it’s not this very moment. (Clean freaks, this is for you, too. Follow this plan, and you can free up emotional space and find time in your day for other things.)
When I stick to my schedule, cleaning never feels like a chore, whereas it used to ALL the time. Now the house never has a chance to get out of control.
I’m off to make a (late) breakfast, pour myself a cup of coffee(don’t know how I haven’t done that already) then get to it. A little bit of cleaning, then a day of writing, editing, beta-ing, and so on.
Hope everyone has a great day!
Wow that chore chart is great. Think I might adapt that myself cause right now I’m not happy with the state of things. It doesn’t help I share my house with someone who just leaves things everywhere (I’m not referring to the child here).
Hopefully things might improve if I start following this chart.
Thanks for sharing Aisling xoxo