Day 7

Today I rocked it! I got dressed: although I changed into lazy clothes after work and put on fuzzy socks instead of shoes... lol. Read me some of the emails, look at post-its, and positive thoughts towards myself: check, check and check.

I needed to put out a hot spot for two minutes: back to the table I went. I cheated again and did more like 10 minutes... but now I'm pretty much totally ready to put the village on it (I might put it on the piano tho... I'm still deciding).

Shiny sink: I get lots of gold stars today: I finally caught up my dishes! It did take a minute since I had all of last nights dishes as well as the pots and such from the rest of the week. It took about 1/2 hour, then cleaning the counter took another 10. Still, that's not too shabby. And the plan is that it doesn't get like that again! I even did all of my breast pump parts that I hate to do (It takes forever since I hand wash everything, but I want to know it's clean!).

I also did my dining room 'shiny sink', the dining table. I washed and dried the dishes as soon as we were done eating and reset the table to look pretty. I also finished decorating the table today. I put up an ornament display on the light fixture. I'm pretty proud of myself. :)

The new baby step for today is to lay out my clothes for tomorrow. Haven't done it, but I will on my way to bed! Here is a picture of my cute baby that I took the other day for his 3 month shoot:

Day 6

Today I learned about 'hot spots': from flylady's website: . 

A Hot Spot is an area, when left unattended will gradually take over. My favorite analogy is of a hot spot in a forest fire, if left alone it will eventually get out of hand and burn up the whole forest. This is what happens in our homes. If left unattended, the hot spot will grow and take over the whole room as well as making the house look awful. When you walk into a room, the hot spot is the first thing you see. Your eyes are locked on it. Over the years my hot spot has migrated. As a child it was a chair in my bedroom. I would pile it to the ceiling. Right now I have two hot spots in my home: the dining room table and the bed in the extra bedroom. The dining room table is a staging area. We put the unopened mail there, as well as any thing that needs to go to the basement. Some times you cannot see the top of the table. This is the first thing I see when I walk into the kitchen. Granted, the pile has only been there since last night, but if I don’t deal with it first thing in the morning, it will collect many more items by evening. CLUTTER ATTRACTS CLUTTER. The Bed in the extra bed room is just the same. I use it as a place to put things that don’t have a home. Do you have areas like this that continue to grow if left alone? Does the rest of the family see this as a place to put things when they do not want to put them where they belong? It is our job to NIP this in the bud. Get rid of that pile, find the surface underneath, and stop the Hot Spot from becoming a raging Clutter inferno! – FlyLady

The challenge for today was to take care of a hot spot for two minutes. Guess what? 2 minutes is like no time at all. I started my timer and attacked the table that we don't eat on (therefore everything, and I mean everything! ends up there...) I barely put away three things and it dinged. So I was in the zone and spent maybe ten more minutes on it. And it's almost done! What seemed pretty daunting really wasn't a big deal. I'll be able to finish it tomorrow and then use the table for my Christmas village.

I got dressed to my shoes, and I shined my sink again. I had guests until really late so the dinner dishes aren't done. But having a shiny sink makes me feel like it won't be so bad tomorrow. Hopefully I can just catch up the dishes tomorrow (did I say that yesterday? lol) and have an empty dishwasher so I can throw things in there as I use them. I didn't really read any of the emails today (I was gone most of the day and then had a dinner at our house). I saw my post-it reminders. I'm working on being more positive to myself.

I did do a frantic cleanup today. I hate those. I really want to get to the point where I'm not embarrassed by my house if someone is coming without much notice (happens a lot when your husband is a composer and has to record musicians...). But the house does feel nicer, even if I had to stash some things in the baby's room. Oh and my holiday table? It's like the shiny sink of my dining room now. I did clear it off and set it back up nice after our guests left. It makes me happy. And then I don't want to put stuff on that table. Which is why the other table was is so bad, but I'm going to eliminate that hot spot too so I actually have to put stuff away or find a home for it! :D

Day 5

Definitely feeling empowered. Shink is shiny, clothes got on to my shoes and I makeup-ed my face. I looked at my reminders.

The new thing for today was to turn the negative voices into positive ones. That's going to take some work. I think my problem isn't necessarily "negative" voices, just lazy ones. I think for some reason that tasks will take me a super long time, so I don't do them. The reality is it probably would take 2 minutes. I did load up my dishwasher, so now I only really have pots left to wash before I'm caught up on my dishes. It sounds like I had piles and piles of dishes, I really don't, it's just taken me 5 days to realize that it's not that bad and doesn't take that long if I just do it.

Ah well. That's why I'm doing this. Any change worth making means taking steps towards it.

Day 4

Getting dressed to my shoes and doing my makeup today helped a lot. I had a lot of errands to run and once I was dressed I actually wanted to do them rather than crawl back into bed. We had a way hard night last night. Liam woke up just before 2 am and didn't really go back to sleep until 6. Yeah, I'm tired. But we got our errands done. Liam likes to look around in the stores, I think he loves all the colors and sounds and lights... it was really cute. He did really well until our last store, so I took him out of his car seat and held him on my hip while I pushed the cart with my other hand. I don't know how people go shopping with more than one kid! lol.

I shined my sink again, all of my dishes still aren't done since we were gone a good chunk of the day, but my table is still beautiful from yesterday. It was really fun to eat on the 'nice' dishes all day. And we just washed and dried them after we ate and put them right back on the table... it took maybe 2 minutes. Probably less. It was awesome. I hope to keep it up! :) I guess I could've caught up my dishes, but I worked on Liam's room instead. It feels a lot better in there! I changed the crib sheets and folded his laundry and found homes for a few things. I'm going to try to keep him in his crib the whole night tonight. I really like to cuddle with him, but we both need to get real sleep, and it's just not working anymore.

Anyway, I do think the sink thing is helping with my perfectionism. I've been more able to see what I am accomplishing instead of stressing about all the stuff I still need to do. And it's okay to just do a little bit of something instead of trying to do it all! Like the laundry: I did just one load today instead of trying to catch it all up and getting overwhelmed and stopping halfway through.

The other baby steps for today were to read some of the emails flylady sends to me and to put up post-it notes to remind myself to get dressed and shine my sink. Done, done, and done. The emails are so motivating. And I can always use a reminder.

Here's a pic of my table from yesterday. Today I bought some more holiday-esque plates, bowls and goblets to go on the table. I still want to hang ornaments from the light fixture.... I'm having way too much fun with it! But it's helping me start to want to decorate for Christmas.

Day 3

Today is just to keep shining my sink and getting dressed when I get up.

I did get dressed, not exactly when I woke up, but better than yesterday. I didn't put on makeup because I got a facial today! It felt great. And I cheated on my shoes and wore flip-flops... my boots that I had out didn't match and I didn't want to wear heels and my lace up shoes (which is what I'm supposed to be wearing, lol) are pink and did NOT match my red pants. And all of my other shoes are in a massive mountain in the coat closet and guess who didn't want to even try to search through that mess. Ah well, a problem for another day. I'm trying not to be a perfectionist about this process. :p

I shined my sink! I even did most of my dishes today, and it wasn't even as bad as I thought it would be. And the sink really is easy to keep clean when I don't obsess about the dirty dishes. We are getting somewhere! And I was so excited about my clean sink that I started to decorate our "holiday table". I went to a Relief Society meeting about a month ago on traditions. One of the ladies in the ward sets her table up really nice for the whole month of December. They use all the nice Christmas dishes for the whole month to make it special. I really liked that idea and cleared off our table and started decorating! I think it's helped me to start catching the Christmas bug finally. I even pulled out our actual silver silverware that we've had since before we got married and have never used. I think my husband thinks I've gone nuts, but I'm very happy with the table. And I think it will help me not stick stuff on there when I walk in the door as I tend to do. I'll be forced to actually find a home for my stuff... imagine that!

Day 2

Today the baby step is to: Get dressed to lace up shoes, and fix your hair and face.

We didn't really get going for awhile (that happens when you have a newborn). Nevertheless, I still did it and it did feel good. There is something about having a little mascara and lipstick on... and actually getting dressed (which doesn't happen more often than it does since having Liam, lol). It did make the errands I had to run much more pleasant when I didn't feel like a total slob.

Part 2 was to shine my sink again before bed. Which I did. And it was easy since I did it yesterday. Did I do any of the dishes on the sink? Nope. I had a lot going on today. But at least having that shining sink there makes me feel like I accomplished something...

Challenge Accepted: Day 1

I realize I am terrible at keeping up this blog. I have a huge draft that I worked on my entire pregnancy with week by week pics and all, but I never published any of it. I still want to, but life has been busy with a newborn! I still want to catch you up on how we finally got pregnant and all of the wonderful things that have happened since, but not today.

If you know me personally, you know that I am the definition of a procrastinator... I'm late to everything, and I am amazing at waiting to do anything until the last possible minute. This little quirk of mine affects every aspect of my life. Especially housework. If we plan on having anyone over you can bet that we are frantically picking up, shoving things random places and vacuuming the minute before we expect them to arrive. It's totally crazy! I think I thrive on the stress of it all. It's my 'drama' that I create. I watch 'Hoarders' to motivate me to get rid of some of the stuff I have pack-ratted away. I never clean up after myself. You can literally follow my trail from the day. I don't mean to be a messy person, I just get sidetracked, lol.

I want to do better. I want to live in a peaceful, uncluttered home so I can enjoy my life and my time with my family and do things I want to do instead of constantly living under the pressure of chaos. So, I am giving myself a challenge and putting it on my blog so I have some accountability. I found flylady.net a few years ago, it has really helped me realize there is hope for people like me. :) I've done the things she suggests off and on, but never really got into a habit. She has 31 beginner baby steps and I decided I'm going to do them starting today and track my progress on this blog. If I can do it everyday I will have done all 31 ending on Christmas Day... I can't imagine a better gift for myself than to be in some good habits that will simplify my life so I can focus on what matters most.

Day 1 is for me to shine my sink. I did it! In the past I have done this the 'perfectionistic' way by doing ALL of the dishes, thoroughly scrubbing not just the sink but the counters... in other words it took me at least a couple hours. I would burn out and then not care enough within a few days to continue. Flylady suggests that you just take the dirty dishes out of the sink and clean the sink. The idea is that having a clean sink will make you so happy that in the next while you'll want to clean your dishes and counters to match, and it will slowly spread to the rest of the kitchen, house, etc. So that is what I did. And it does feel good.