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.

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?