Consistency - Why it's important

I can think of a million things that I would rather do than clean house. It's not difficult. It's just painfully monotonous and never ending. I can do all the dishes and laundry in the house and there will be piles of both within a few hours. So what's the point of doing it every day when you will just have it to do every day in the future?

The secret is consistency. There is a difference between washing one load of dishes and having to do 3 loads before you find the bottom of the sink. There's a difference in quickly folding a load of laundry and taking half the day to fold a week's worth. There's a difference in being able to take 15 minutes to pick up the house and it taking 2-3 days to even be able to vacuum.

Consistently doing the house cleaning builds slow momentum. Let's say, your living room is just trashed from kids being home from school and the Christmas festivities. You may think you have to wait for a huge chunk of time to make a dent, but start with what you can do today. Pick up all the trash. Tomorrow, pick up the trash and the dishes. The next day, pick up trash, dishes, and any dirty clothes. The next day, pick up the trash, dishes, dirty clothes, and misplaced books. The next day, pick up the trash, dishes, dirty clothes, books and toys. In just 5 days, your living room is infinitely better with no more than 15 minutes of work each day. The key is not the 15 minutes. The key is doing it EVERY day. Because let it go for 2-3 days and especially if you have a lot of kids like me, you will have to start all over again. It makes you fill like a hamster in a wheel. A never ending cycle that doesn't get better.

So if you are making a schedule, make it work for you in a way that builds daily consistency. My minimum effort in each room is to pick up 8 things that are out of place. My minimum for dishes is one dishwasher load loaded and unloaded. My minimum for laundry is one load of laundry a day. Some days require more than that but by continuing with the minimum even on the busy days, I'm keeping the momentum going.

Some days, you may have to reduce an activity to make it work into your daily schedule. I try to get 15 minutes of exercise on the Wii Fit every day. I haven't been consistent with it. I had thought I was being mostly consistent one week and realized that I had only done it twice out of seven days. So, my minimum is now 5 minutes of step aerobics. Once, I am consistent with that amount, I will try to raise it to 10 then to 15 and up to 30. I was waiting around for time to do 15 minutes and wasting those 5 minute blocks of time.

Gonna start tomorrow with some activities that I have listed in Remember the Milk app.

2013 Resolutions

This is the time of year when we begin thinking of what areas we would like to improve on in our lives. For me like many, organization is at the top of my list. I've learned that consistency is like compound interest. Every day gets a little bit better. I would like to expand my list of consistent tasks.

I've used many methods of scheduling. To do lists, Cozi, home management binder, control journal, day planner and more. I've discovered this year that none of them have the flexibility, consistency, inclusiveness and ease of use that I needed. All the methods have helped and have benefits but I needed something more suited to me. 

I had tried Remember The Milk some time ago and fizzled out on it. I found the Ipad app later and it has been really amazing. It is so much easier to use with the touch screen. I can divide out the tasks among family members, cleaning, cooking, craft projects, etc. There are three levels of priority. I use High for morning chores, Medium for afternoon chores and Low for evening chores. I use no priority for things that can be done at any time of the day. 

I can plan out how to use my leftovers. Remind myself to cut up the leftover ham to use in quiche or beans later on. I can remind myself with a morning task to start beans soaking for Cuban black beans. I can remind myself to put the sourdough starter in the fridge the next morning. 

I can put in a reminder to take movies back to the library or mail a bill payment. I can put in reminders for church and school activities. I can take a project from pinterest and make a list of tasks under a special list to no due date. This way, the great idea isn't forgotten. 

Every time I do a task, I add it to Remember the Milk. Last week, I had to clean the filter in our washer. It had not been completed in well over two months as suggested. So I added the task, marked it complete and set it to repeat every 2 months. Viola! I put away our advent wreath so I made a task to repeat in a year. I read the story of St Stephen, the first martyr and I put a reminder for that to repeat in a year. 

It is extremely flexible. If I want to cook tomorrow's menu, I mark it complete and postpone today's menu. If I have more time today, I can complete some of tomorrow's tasks. If the mopping just can't wait til tomorrow, it is done today. If I don't get everything completed on the list, I postpone it til tomorrow. 

So I am going to attempt to make a list of at least 5 tasks each week for each week of 2013. Let's get organized in 2013. 

Autism - Concerns for a second time around

When my third child was a little over a year, I had to stop her from banging her head on the headboard or wall. Scared me to death! She had some language. But that was clearly an autistic behavior and I knew all it would take is one trigger to cause a regression where she could lose the language. I refused all vaccines between 18 mo and 3 yrs in MS since they don't have religious or philosophical exemptions. I had only gotten some of them before but I wasn't taking any chances now. I'm thankful that they understood my concerns.

Do I believe vaccines cause autism? I believe there are way too many. I know Davy got some when he had ear infections but no high fever. I was a new mom and let them give them to him. There were also lots of antibiotics and steroids with his asthma treatment so I can't say for sure what Davy's trigger was. I do know that the amount of vaccines and cases of autism are rising steadily. I feel to ignore the possibility would be irresponsible. Flu shots still contain mercury. Vaccines have aluminum and all other manner of strange ingredients. So when we moved to AL, I got religious exemptions (because of the aborted fetus tissue used in vaccine manufacturing) for all the kids. Not taking any chances!

I asked the doctor for a referral to have my daughter tested. She needed some help with processing things around her but I wasn't sure what to do. She was having lots of meltdowns. She was having symptoms of pica (eating foam craft pieces and plants). She was stripping her clothes off every chance she got. My first child had language delay and poor eye contact. Easy to see where we needed to focus for him. I wasn't sure what I needed to do for her.

A couple of weeks ago, we got some very soft, comfortable clothes from a clothing swap. I had struggled to keep clothes on her with the weather change. She had spent the summer in dresses and the jeans irritated her. Since switching her to these Garanimal style clothes with soft pants and shirts, she has been like a new kid. She's no longer stripping off her clothes several times a day. Her language has exploded. She is using more complete sentences and saying things like, "I'm coming, Mom" or "Thank you, Dad."

Now it could be also just getting used to our new place but the clothes were the only real change that has been made. I told the pediatrician of the change and she still wants her to be evaluated. After looking over the criteria for diagnosis again, she won't qualify for autism or asperger's because of her social ability and speech. I really think it's Sensory Processing Disorder. Different textures like jeans after a summer of cotton dresses are simply overwhelming. So glad that seems to be all it was.

Blueberry cream cheese sourdough rolls

Blueberry + cream cheese + sourdough, you really can't go wrong here, right?

I am sure I am not the first to try this but here is how I created some totally scrumptious rolls.

I used a basic sourdough bread recipe and let it rise overnight. I divided it and rolled out a big rectangle about 1/2 inch thick. Originally, I was thinking of just spreading plain cream cheese but the recipe evolved in the process. I decided to mix 3 oz cream cheese with 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar, 2 T milk and 2 t vanilla. I really didn't measure so these are my guesstimations but you get the idea. It is basically a cream cheese frosting. Spread this over the sourdough rectangle.

I took about a cup of frozen blueberries. I washed them and then gave them a rough chop on the cutting board. I put them in a bowl and coated with about 1/3 cup granulated sugar. I sprinkled these all over the cream cheese frosted, sourdough rectangle.

Roll up the dough. Slice into 1 1/2 inch rolls. Place in greased baking pan. Let rise for twenty minutes. Would like to let it rise longer but unsure about how safe that is. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 -60minutes. While they are still hot, drizzle with a confectioner's sugar glaze which is just confectioner's sugar and a splash of vanilla with enough milk to make it creamy but thin enough to drizzle.

Our family loves pomegranates during the Christmas season. I am going to try this same recipe with pomegranate to see if it will become our Christmas breakfast tradition.