365 days to an organized life - Day 4

It's amazing what can be accomplished just by being purposeful about it. Yesterday, I had a relatively clean house. We got schoolwork done including preschool activities with the 2 yr old. They practiced piano. We baked sugar cookies for the boys to decorate. I baked the sourdough bread I had started yesterday. I cooked italian for supper. I cut hair for all five, even the youngest needed a small trim. They all got baths. I almost finished crocheting a second cozy/coaster like the one I did yesterday. And I'm still going to bed with a clean house. Nothing is slipping through the cracks because I got on a wild hair or something.

Today's featured task is Pick up/Put away.

This needs to be done all over the house. Combine smaller areas into one task if there's not enough in one area to call for daily attention. I added hall to my list of areas to pick up and put away because the children's toys have a tendency to spill out of their room. But after a few days, there really wasn't much to do besides pick up carpet fuzz. So I combined it with the entry way. The entry way has all the shoes and winter gear so that can always be straightened a bit.

Pick up and put away is not major deep cleaning. If you have a desk or shelf or corner that is particularly troublesome, divide that project into small tasks in your scheduler until it's clean. Pick up and put away is just for the daily things that get left where they don't belong. The toys on the floor, the socks/shoes by the chair, the cup on the table and the trash on the desk are some examples. You can use a time limit or a number limit. Eight items is my minimum but on days like after Christmas when wrapping, gifts, and more had been strewn all over, 15 minutes of everyone pitching in got things back to normal.

Just start with something even if it feels quite unnecessary or even grossly inadequate. Whatever you do every day will build up and become big things before you know it. And I guess that goes for good and bad habits alike.