Give Yourself A Break!

The other day I realized that my overall attitude about my household work has been much better. My everyday tasks are less of a burden, and I haven't been complaining about them nearly as often as I have in the past. When I mentioned this to my husband, he said that he had been noticing the same thing! It wasn't all in my head!

I think that this is due to many factors, but I'm convinced that a HUGE reason is because I have been giving myself "days off." This is something that Sidetracked Home Executives (and the Bible) says is very important.

I've been giving myself Sundays and Thursdays off. This doesn't mean that I don't do the essentials like feed my family, but I don't have to do any extra jobs on those days. In the past, my husband encouraged me to do this, but I always whined and ranted that there was no possible way I could take a day off, because if I take a day off, then on Monday I have extra to do, because no one has washed the dishes, or picked up, and I start the day already behind.

I don't feel like this anymore. I'm pretty sure that since I've been taking days off, I am more productive on the other days. For instance, the other day was my daughter's birthday, so I made a bigger breakfast than normal, baked and decorated a birthday cake, wrapped presents,  AND cleaned my entire fridge, washed the inside of all of the windows, washed all my dishes, homeschooled my children and cleared everything that had accumulated on my countertops throughout the day, among other miscellaneous tasks. I felt like Superwoman!

Then yesterday, when my mom called to see if I could meet her and my sister for lunch, I felt free to say yes, because it was my day off and I knew that the jobs would get done the next day.

There's a reason God made the Sabbath for us. He knows that we need rest, and He supplies us with the strength we need to "catch up" on the other days of the week.

If you're feeling weary, give yourself a break!

Misguided Organization

One of my favorite words in the english language is "organized." I am always searching for new ways to get organized. My love of organization started early, but was a little misguided. Remember, I am not someone who was born organized, but I wish I was.

I am about to share a story that I'm sure will be passed down for generations to come in my family, as one of life's lessons. It's one that I'm not proud to share, but it illustrates the challenges with my desire to be organized.

When I was about 13, in an attempt to organize my dresser, I decided to sort my top drawer using paper bags. My underwear in one paper bag, labeled with a sharpie marker, my socks in another bag, labeled of course, and so on; with everything that might be in the top drawer of a teenaged girl's dresser.

One afternoon, my older sister walked into my bedroom, and like older sisters do, asked me with brutal honesty, "Melissa, why does your room smell so bad?" Apparently I had been in there so long that I couldn't smell it.

We searched for the source of the stench, and finally determined that it was coming from the top dresser drawer.

Who knows how many months prior, my mom had sent me upstairs to clean my room. There was a bunch of junk on the top of my dresser, and out of pure laziness, I opened my top drawer and dumped it in. Unbeknownst to me, one of the items that I swept into my top drawer was a sack lunch that I had apparently not eaten at school. If my memory serves me right, there was a ham sandwich on white bread (it wasn't white upon discovery) and a rock hard Little Debbie Oatmeal Sandwich (which I could not stomach many years later).

The theory is that since my top drawer was "organized" with brown paper bags, I didn't notice that there was an unmarked imposter lurking where it wasn't supposed to be.

The clothes that were in the entire dresser needed to be washed and the drawers themselved had to be aired out for days outside in order to free them of the smell, and I couldn't even sleep in my room that night because of the odor that had been unleashed. (I still can't figure out how a middle schooler could walk around school with clothes that most likely smelled rotten and not have at least one person comment.)

This, my friends, was my attempt at organization that completely backfired.

Moral of the story: Never organize your underwear drawer with paper bags.

Now you know. You're welcome.

I've Replaced My "To-Do" Lists

I gave up on lists a few years ago. Now, this was no small thing for me, because I love lists. They help me remember things. And I love to check something off....I used to even add something to the list that I had done just so I could check it off. It gave me a sense of accomplishment.

Then I realized something. I was being held captive by my lists. I would look at all the things I DIDN'T do at the end of the day and feel like a failure. Then, I would move all those undone things to the next day's list, just making that day's list of tasks insurmountable. And the cycle would start all over again.

So for several years now, I haven't had any accountability for things that needed to be done around the house, and it was (kind of) freeing, but I also know that I wasn't getting things done that needed to be done. I think I needed the break because I was obviously too tied down by my lists. At the same time though, my house has been a mess, and I was crabby about it.

If you read this post, you know that I needed something to help get me back on track. Not back to lists though.

This is the "notecard system" that has truly helped me. One main reason I like it better than lists is because it frees me from the overwhelming pile-up of lists. Here's how:

To set up your notecards, you put one job on one card. You then file it under the days of the month. You might have some jobs that you do daily, some weekly, monthly, seasonaly, etc. (as often as it needs to be done). When you do the job, you put it in the file box on the next day that it needs to be done. For example, if today is the 11th of the month, and I do a weekly job, I refile the card under the 18th. BUT if I didn't do the job, I write "skipped" on the bottom of the notecard, and file it on the 18th. I don't file it in tomorrow. I'm free. All I have to do tomorrow are the jobs that are filed under tomorrow's date. (The catch is that come the 18th of the month, I HAVE to do that skipped job.)

Believe it or not, I kind of have to give myself a little pep-talk to let myself file it a week later. I feel like it should go in the next day's pile, probably because my brain is so used to how I have always done lists.

In reality, before I was doing this system, the floors weren't being washed on a regular basis, so if I skip it now and do it one week later, I'm already ahead of what I was doing before. A win win. My house is cleaner, and I'm not held captive by my tasks.

I haven't perfected it. My house will probably never be perfect, but I am making great progress!

I Might be Domestically Challenged

When I was in high school, my mom used the words "domestically challenged" to describe me to my then boyfriend's mom. I was very insulted!. I was NOT domestically challenged!

Fast forward about 18 years.....

I was staying at my parents' house for the weekend with my 4 kids last month. My mom and I were reading through some conversation starter questions and one of the questions was, "What is one thing you'd like to change about yourself that will probably never change?"

My answer: "I'd like to not be so messy, but I've always been messy, so I don't think that will change." There. I said it. In that one sentence I admitted that I just MIGHT be domestically challenged.

Try as I might, I always have a mess. I can get it cleaned up, and then a few days later it mysteriously shows up again! I could blame it on the kids, but honestly, our house was messy before the kids came along. It is going to take a huge transformation and change of habits to get this out of me.

About a year ago, after we had added a toddler to the family, my house was messier and more disorganized than normal. It was Sunday morning, and my husband couldn't find his shoes when he was heading out the door for church, so he had to throw on some fake leather clog-type shoes. Then, he felt that it was necessary to point his shoes out to the congregation during his sermon, mentioning that our house was a little under par. This prompted a kind woman in the congregation to offer to come over and help me clean my house. Humbled, and grateful, I accepted her offer.

She told me the story of when she had young children and didn't even answer the door because her house was unpresentable. Thankfully, her experience helped her to understand the place that many mothers are in. So, when she walked into my home with messy counters, and floors that hadn't been washed for who knows how long, she didn't judge. She understood. (Mental note: Be like that in 20 years!)

She also asked me if she had ever shown me her notecard system of keeping house. I answered no, but wasn't quite at the place where I was ready to take on something new.

Fast forward a year, and I've asked, I have the book, I've asked her wisdom, and I'm implementing this system in my home. I havent perfected it yet, so if you stopped by right now as I type this, you'd still see a mess in my house, BUT.....

My dishes are clean, which by my standards makes my kitchen pretty presentable!
My bathroom floors were washed before 9:00 this morning. History in the making.
The iron stains have been scrubbed from the inside of the shower stall.
All the laundry is done.....not folded and put away, but done!
Every bed in house is made.
And I even took a shower this morning!

To some of you this might seem common-place, but for me this is progress!

Maybe I'll go from domestically challenged to domestically able after all!

(More on the system later. I might be able to write a few posts on this!)