So, today I came home from meetings and errands to a house that would make my grandmother
purse her lips.
Between sending a husband to live in Las Vegas, starting a small business, taking care of 1 cute daughter and 2 cute doggies, impending holidays and now being the only adult in the house, well…let’s just say my housekeeping standards have reached…
…a nadir!!
I’m not complaining. I’m not a neat-freak. I love our lived-in house because it’s proof that a lot of exciting, nurturing, interesting things happen here. But everyone has a limit.
Looking around my kitchen with its corners filling up with piles, I felt a creepy anxiety. I seemed unable to start. All messes seemed equal in importance.
What to do??
A friend of mine always starts cleaning with her sink. I looked at mine, full of dishes. I remembered a trick I used to use on myself. I set the microwave timer for four minutes and challenged myself to empty the dishwasher.
I whirled into action. I stacked up everything that went in the same cupboard and staggered across my microscopic kitchen to unload. I easily threw out details like putting the silverware handles the same direction and I just slammed the silver spoons into their compartment. I scoffed at nesting the cereal bowls large-to-small as is my habit.
Guess what? In 2 minutes 45 seconds I was done. I used the remaining time to stash the dishes from the sink into the dishwasher—foregoing my usual practice of arranging and rearranging until I use every last centimeter of space.
I didn’t quite get the counter wiped down, but in four minutes, I had an empty sink.
how cool is that?
Sometimes the smallest task can seem overwhelming. That’s especially so when there are so many small tasks that they really do add up to one whopping mess.
Here’s a very short list of other messes that frighten me:
The mishmash of dog collars, hair tie thingies, Chapsticks, stamps, paper clips, pennies, batteries, and pen caps swimming around in a big white ceramic dish by my blender.
The National Geographics on the shelf that someone at a school or Girl Scout group could use for a craft and are too good to recycle.
The mismatched-sock drawer.
The bag of papers left from SSR’s last school year.
The four-foot papier-mache dragon left from SSR’s last school year.
The styrofoam salt atom model left from SSR’s last school year.
What about you? Do you have any really scary messes in your house? How do you keep your quarters livable in a busy season?
Do tell!
Love, sallymandy