A pivotal weekend (and a blog posting preview)

Okay, this weekend I think was a pretty pivotal weekend for me.

I finished Dick Staub's book The Culturally Savvy Christian and I'm renewed and energized about what it means to be a Christian in our culture. More about this later.

I read a book review on Trish Berg's website about a book called Organizing for Life by Sandra Felton. I followed a link to her website and among other good things, I found this rule:

Change habits one at a time. Let’s start with The 30-Second Rule. “If it takes thirty seconds or less to do a job, do it immediately.” This applies to putting up packages when you come in, putting the scissors (or whatever) back where you got them, hanging up the clothes you take off and other things like that.

I loved it and implemented it immediately. It's amazing the number of little things that get completed, quickly, and don't end up piling up (usually somewhere in my house!).

Lastly, I'm reading a book called Created to be His Help Meet by Debi Pearl. Now to be honest, I have a love hate relationship with this book. Sometimes the cheesy formatting of the book drives me crazy, sometimes I'm not exactly sure I agree with her approach, and then she offers me some amazing nugget and I keep reading (that and it's for my book club, so I have to finish). This weekend I read her description about the three kinds of men in the world, and what she wrote described my husband to a tee. It also helped me understand why I get so frustrated with him sometime. I'm going to share more about it in a separate post, but I'm way excited to try to change my approach and my thinking about my marriage and my husband! (Not that anything was abnormally bad, but definitely there's always room for improvement)

Anyway, be checking back this week. I've got lots of thoughts going on in my head and I'm determined to get them down.

Supermomitis

The past couple weeks I’ve really struggled with a case of supermomitis. You know what I mean, right? The feeling like I have to be an amazing mom who does arts and crafts with my daughter, doesn’t let her watch too much tv, teaches her the alphabet and her numbers, cooks all our meals, does laundry, doesn’t leave clean laundry on the couch for more than a day waiting to be folded, ensures everything in the house is in its rightful place, ensures everything in the house even has a rightful place, does the dishes, plays with the dog, arranges play dates, keeps up with the grocery shopping, takes a shower, spends quality time with her husband, gets birthday cards and mother’s day cards in the mail on time, speaks to her friends and maybe, just maybe has a spare minute or two to read a book or write a blog. And I just can’t do it all. If I stay on top of keeping up with the house, then I do that at the expense of my daughter (either giving her my undivided attention or letting her watch TV). The advice or comments I have recently received have come from people who do not have kids or do not have toddlers. I mean, really, when their kids were little could they keep an immaculate house?

The truth is, I want my house to be a little more orderly. I’m already on a rampage to clean stuff out (whenever I can find some spare time…) and make better use of our space. But I’m trying to figure out how much of my stress is due to this mythological supermom and how much of it I can actually do something about.

So I’m looking for comments here. What are your thoughts or advice? How do you maintain an orderly house? How do you combat the idea of the supermom (or do you even ever struggle with it?)?

Household Tips

As I was folding laundry today, I thought it might be helpful to share a couple of the household tips that I’ve learned, and see what others have to share.

1) Laundry - a) When folding clothes, separate them by type before you fold. I typically start with undergarments (not including socks), and begin folding them as I go. As I pull out clothes that are not unders, I place them into piles: socks, pants, shirts, ironing. I keep plugging along folding skivvies and sorting the rest until I am done with the pile. Then, I go back and fold shirts, then pants and last I match and fold socks. It just helps me go faster to fold the same type of thing each time. Today I folded about five loads of laundry (I know, I was behind) in 45 minutes. b) I have a friend who has a laundry basket for each person’s room. When she is pulling clothes out of the dryer, she immediately puts them into the appropriate room’s basket. She delivers each basket to the proper door to await folding. When her kids are old enough, they can fold their own clothes. For now, she folds one basket at a time when she has time.

2) Picking up - For me, I can pick up faster if I stay focused. So I pick up one room at a time. Anything that does not belong in that room, is put - rather, tossed, plunked down, dropped off, or piled up - into the next room I’m going to pick up. You just leave it and go back to the room you are currently working in. Typically, I do not go put it into the room it belongs, unless that room is on the way to my next working room. I know that means I move some things a couple times, but it still goes faster. Working this way, I do not get distracted by other things (like deciding I need to dust a piece of furniture or clean out the clothes in my closet) and I systematically get every room clean.

3) Meal planning - You don’t have to be super detailed in your meal planning, but I find that creating some type of plan helps me budget, cook and eat right. I actually have a template for my breakfast, lunch, dinners and snacks (for me and my daughter) that I fill out once a week. I then make my grocery list based upon my meal plan. I don’t always stick exactly to the plan, but it helps to have a guideline. Plus, I find that I eat better throughout the day. I have another friend who come up with all of the dinners for the week, but doesn’t specify the day. She shops according to her plan, and then each night (or a couple nights in advance), she looks at the list and chooses dinner, knowing she already has all the ingredients. However you do it, meal planning can really help.

What other tips do you have?

A Fresh Start

I'm a list maker. I make a new list every week, carrying over old tasks and adding new ones. I even have a task template to help me schedule my week. I love being able to cross things off my list; it gives me a great sense of accomplishment. I also love knowing everything that I intend to do; it makes me feel organized and busy. In fact, if I don't write something down on my list, you can bet it won't get done. My lists tend to be a brain dump of everything I'm thinking about, and it's like once I release it, it's gone. I lay in bed at night with thoughts swirling around in my head, and if I don't get up and write them down I will never get to sleep.

I can't find my current list, which must be hiding under the piles of Christmas decorations that need to be packed away and the new gifts and toys that haven't found a place yet in my home. So I decided that it's a new year, I'll just start a brand new list. That may sound simple to you, but it's a big deal to me. Surpsingly, I feel pretty good about my decision. Normally I agonize over the things I wrote on the missing list that I will never remember to do. Today, I consider those things tasks of last year. If I can't remember them now, they must not be critical to my survival.

Phew! It feels good to start fresh. Well, I'm off to make my new list! Happy New Year to all.