If there were such a thing, I could be a professional procrastinator. I could write a book on the Art of Putting Off Until Later the things that I don't enjoy doing. (Later, noun: a mysterious and elusive capsule of time that never seems to appear.) But, I've recently had an epiphany about how to get nagging household chores off of my to do list.
I'm famous for writing a chore on my to do list, then subsequently avoiding it all day because I find it unpleasant. Then I'll write it on the next day's list, and the next day's list, and so on and so forth until it's six months later and now this measly little chore has become a Humongous Unwieldy Beast of a Nagging Household Chore — a task so mighty and great that I am now completely overwhelmed at the thought of even beginning to tackle it.
Then, I'll write it on yet another list, knowing that I'll never do it because what if one of those coyotes that has been eating small dogs in the Presidio eats me and then who cares if my almost-four year old son's changing table is still in the garage?
I learned from It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys by Marilyn Paul that in order to manage time effectively, procrastinators like me need to estimate the time each task will take. In other words, each item on your to do list should be very specific, it should include an accurate estimate of the time it will take to complete, and you should set a specific time for completing it. (Also, be sure to include a handy box that you can satisfyingly fill in with a check mark upon completion.)
For example:
[ ] Clean up the kitchen: countertop and breakfast table / 20 minutes / 9:00-9:20
This technique works brilliantly for tasks that I enjoy, but is absolutely ineffective for tasks that I loathe. Or for tasks that have become humongous and unwieldy as a result of my procrastination. If you wrote the actual time it would take you to complete the HUBOANHC with which you are faced, it would be so depressing that you'd just give up.
For example:
[ ] Clean out my closet / 9,462 minutes / 9:00am Friday to 12:00am the following Thursday
It's so not happening, right?
Let me offer a mashup of this technique: Pick a small window of time (teeny-tiny if you are a lifelong procrastinator like me) to work on your HUBOANHC. For example, if you are cleaning out your humongous, unwieldy beast of a closet (whose contents — most of them useless, outdated or obsolete — have multiplied like Gremlins), give yourself 10 minutes today. Your to do list will look like this:
[ ] Take the extra hangers out of my closet / 10 minutes / 9:00-9:10
Yes, I can do it! Yesicandoityesicandoityesicandoit! Yes, I can absofreakinglutely do it. I can do anything for 10 minutes. And here's the best part: once you have taken the hangers out, you will be so pleased with yourself (Can I get a hell yeah for a 1:1 ratio of clothing to hangers?) that you will continue to clean the closet. I pretty much guarantee it. You'll feel so good (so productive! so happy!) that you finally took an ice pick to your HUBOANHC and made some actual progress, that you will keep chipping away at it.
You don't have to (and most likely cannot) finish the HUBOANHC today. Anything you do in addition to your 10 minutes of tossing out those ridiculous extra hangers is a bonus and you should eat a cupcake in celebration (with copious amounts of fist-pumps and hell yeahs). The next day, pick another very specific and manageable sub-task that takes 10 minutes, and write it down.
What already-successful-to-do-list-crosser-offers-and-HUBOANHC-tacklers already know is that "later" never happens. (And those coyotes are probably not going to eat me either, although I am still not setting foot in the Presidio after dark.)
Gretchen Rubin's best-selling book The Happiness Project has many pearls of wisdom about happiness and daily life at home; my copy is earmarked and note-filled, with many of its great quotes underlined. One of my favorites reads:
"What you do every day matters more than what you do every once in awhile."
So every day, take an ice pick and chip away at your HUBOANHC.
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You have extra hangers? Can I have them? I can NEVER seem to get enough.
ODL C.Richelle come on over to my house if you want some wire ones. My brotherinlaw gets them with his drycleaning, and for some reason never thinks to give them back for recycling. My dear sweet packrat of a husband brings them home to use "for projects" and they wind up stuffing our closets. I have finally gotten him to move empty hangers to the laundry basket so I "keep all of them" in the basement -- and can cycle them out of the house as they build up.
Unwieldy
task...I can't get started until it's spelled right!
Great story and FUNNY! I second you on the great books to read. In progress.
K
I could also be a professional procrastinator. If only there were such a job. I would kick ass at it! What have you got for someone who loves to buy "how to" books, but never reads them?
@ C.Richelle
Not sure if you have a TJ Maxx or Marshall's in your area, but they always have big packs of the flocked skinny hangers in all sorts of colors. They're awesome because clothes never slip off and they're really inexpensive.
Having finally finished a HUBOANHC I'd put off for two years, I feel this. Chipping away little by little is good, but sometimes it takes a marathon to actually complete. (Of course if you don't chip away little by little it will be a longer marathon). For me this was because by the end of the day I was so tired out that I just didn't have energy to keep stuff and so threw it all away, which I should have done 4 or 5 years ago.
Over the past four years I have had a crazy commute (140 miles a day) and/or been in school (MFA), and my house reflects this. The period started with my house in pretty decent shape at leas,t and I have done some good things to cut down the clutter, like not bringing as much stuff in and stopping several magazine subscriptions. The things listed in this article are not my issues really. Right now I feel like I could suffocate under the paper in my house. I had cleared clutter before but papers been given something of a reprieve. Unfortunately the situation continues to get a little worse, and this fall I am taking a break from classes before my final semester...the break is in part to work on some projects and to prepare for the rest of my academic program, but it is also in part to deal with papers, old and new. I suspect my recycle bin will be overloaded and the shred box in my office will be more full than normal. I cannot begin really until October, but I have a plan worked out and am ready to get going then. Part of my plan requires me to be brutal in my attack, to get rid of papers I have hauled around for years but never needed to look at...such as old, old, old tax returns beyond the legal requirement and IRS how-to-complete-your-return books, some of which are quite thick. I actually look forward to this and knowing October will be here soon is the only thing keeping me from crying about the stacks of papers that have taken over certain rooms.
http://unf*ckyourhabitat.tumblr.com/
Pardon the language but this blog is a great motivator for getting things done in small chunks and even has an app on itunes.
It does use the F word a lot. use a "U" in place of the asterisk in the link.
Great post. Maybe I'll get some motivation to clean out my closet!
I actually laughed out loud a few times while reading this. Great article!
Totally agree with this idea! My day so far has been put away a load of laundry, watch some olympics, put away another load of laundry, watch more olympics... I'm down from about six clean-but-not-away loads to two, yay!
I laughed when I read this because last week there was a post about living alone. Many commented that the up side to living with a partner was someone to share the chores so where are those partners now? :o) CHUCKLE.
Totally unrelated to this post...
@ Diana in BGKY: I guess misery loves company 'cause reading about your horrible commute made me feel better about mine!LOL! I returned to school and both school and the internship have me doing a 110-130 rt daily commute...it sucks and my house reflects it too!
We just did this with our kids clothes, toys & books this weekend. What. A. Chore. We did get inspired by the filming of an episode of Hoarders that took place last week in our neighborhood though. Sometimes that's what it takes to motivate us into the room/ closet clearing out.
Now I'm off to donate 5 bags to goodwill!
Oh, yeah, I have one of those. I moved at the end of April, and my "guest bedroom" have about 5 boxes of things that I don't use often and haven't thought about a place for yet (camping equipment, etc.) and the result is that the guest room looks more like a storage closet. And I so don't want to work on it. Maybe today I will open one box and unpack for 20 minutes. That sounds reasonable.
I have found that if I complain about one of these overwhelming clean-up chores often enough, my husband will often just dig in and do it. He's a "get it done" person, while I'm the sort who doesn't know where to start.
And yes, I do join in and help when he does this.
This reminds me of a scene in the great Mike Leigh film "Life is Sweet". The wife has asked her longtime husband to clear out a shed in the garden. She is standing n in the kitchen with a friend and notices that hubby -- balding, a bit plump, not at his best -- has stopped the clear out and is sitting on a piece of junk for the shed, staring into space. The wife watches him and says, "Look at him. Just look at him". It's said with deep affection and tolerance. Great movie, btw.
When we moved here we had a lot of stuff. We had not been able to purge because our house sold so quickly we were taken by surprise (one week!). Luckily - or unluckily - this place has a barn, so we had the movers put a lot of boxes in the barn, thinking we would go through them when we finished arranging furniture, etc., in the house. Eight years later, those boxes are still out there. However, now those boxes are home to many, many creepy crawlers, everything from beetles and spiders to nursing mice -- I know, I saw that poor mousey mother run from me with baby mice still attached! Ugh!!!! I'd say just drag the stuff out and take it to the county dump, but we don't have a truck and I don't want those critters in our SUV. And, there are some rather important papers out there somewhere -- I'm in Tennessee, anyone want to drive here and go through those boxes and remove the critters, alive or dead, for me? I'd even pay someone, but so far haven't found any takers...
(Laughing)...I try so hard, but I get distracted in the middle of all these chores and forget what I started out to do!
I've got a streamlined version of tackling the big sorting/cleaning jobs that involves cherry-picking and putting away the stuff that has a definite home or purpose first, dumping actual trash second, then containerizing the "mysteries" for later. It's fast, gets your useful stuff back in circulation, gets the clutter under a bit more control. In the evenings I can just grab a mystery box and sort it while watching TV. One at a time isn't as intimidating as a pile but in the meantime the mystery boxes can be neatly stowed. Every now and then I find a really old forgotten mystery box and get some fun surprises.
I don't believe in HUBOANHCs. Break it down into 5-20 minute tasks and you'll constantly feel like you're accomplishing something. Also, I don't believe the chore list is ever complete -- each item is either better or worse than it was the day before. Forget about finishing anything and just try to make the improvements outweigh the messes you made. Over time, you'll end up with a more-or-less tidy home.
Check out flylady.net.
Okay, it's campy and a bit wierd -- you have to get past the graphics -- but her advice is 15 minutes at a time, with a timer. Great coacing, and it's free.
Number one way I get my chores done? Have another massive project to procrastinate working on. Right now I'm studying for the last of 7 licensing exams, and my house has never been cleaner :)
Another approach worked for me this past weekend. I call it the domino effect cleanup.
I bought a box of empty boxes for the jewelry I make and sell. (It was a case about a cubic yard in size -- LOTS of little boxes.) I needed to put them away where they stay clean and dry -- my guest room, which (since we usually have guests maybe 3-5 nights per year) is really my crafting storeroom. I dedicated 4 dresser drawers to the boxes and dumped their other contents on the floor. Then I needed a place for that stuff. I concluded the closet was the spot, and that I needed additional shelves to implement that plan -- so I went to Home Depot and bought some, brought them home, assembled them... Then I decided to rearrange the whole storage closet (I collect vintage and ethnic fabrics, including garments and table linens, for sewing. I don't actually SEW, though, so the piles are large! My intention to sew never materializes...) So I hauled all the fabric already in the closet to my bedroom, moved the existing shelves, positioned the new shelves, and tried to sort and re-stack the things on the shelves. In the end it took all Sunday, probably at least 7 hours, but the guest room is presentable and I can find everything again... (I had to clear my bedroom to sleep in it, and I was determined that the guest room be ready for that, too, so that was my motivation once I got started.)
I do not recommend this system, though -- it only works if you have the time and are stubbornly determined to reach the end. (My original plans for Sunday did NOT include this project!)
I can apply myself to any task except the floors. No matter what the temp or tool, I end up not only sweat-drenched & exhausted, but only a small portion gets done, and knowing how unpleasant resumption will be makes me put it off even more.
I found habithacker.com really helpful. The cleaning chunks are really, really small and unambitious and there is none of that perverse ocd worshiping on cleaning. It is also really funny and well written.
It's like magic - when I finally get my teeth into one of these big unweildy projects, they almost always take two hours. On the money. Within ten minutes either side. Clean out the storeroom? Two hours. Till the garden? Two hours. Take everything out of the pantry, clean the shelves, reorganize, and put everything back? Yep.
I finally figured out that my "procrastination zone" is 90 minutes to 3 hours - anything less than that I'm able to motivate myself to just DO in a timely fashion, and anything more sort of naturally breaks itself into multiple projects! It's the stuff in the middle that just seems daunting. I'm trying to discipline myself to set aside one or two 2-hour blocks during each week to tackle these big jobs.
In January my tax preparer pointed out that the name of my investment beneficiary was misspelled and I needed to have it changed. I made the (five minute) phone call yesterday.
I have to take that "fifteen" minute advice - and yes, I routinely find that minute fifteen finds me so focused I don't stop working.
I had to laugh with the posters who procrastinate by doing other chores. In college our apartment was always cleanest at the end of term :-P
@nikklou That website is genious. Thanks for sharing
Since going paperless with billing and canceling most junk mail I'm much better at managing paper and mail, and I'm no longer buried in an untidy mess. But I still sometimes end up with little piles that accumulate each time I clean up. (I have a box packed from years ago when I renovated.) It's making decisions about where to put things if they're unique and "might be useful" one day. That sounds like hoarding, doesn't it? Ugh.
I love the idea of 10 minutes to do a task. One thing I've tried (but have to continually remember to do) is plan to do specific things (like the dishes or laundry-folding) during commercials or while the popcorn is popping, or when I'm chatting on the phone.
Sometimes I get myself to do things by listening to a podcast so that I can focus on the fun part of the task -- the podcast.
The book Unstuff Your Life is pretty awesome.
http://andrewmellen.com/the_book.php
I have a too-big house (was all I could afford 9 years ago because it needed LOTS of work), and decided to move the crafts room from the tiny bedroom to the larger empty room, where I'd been tossing many things I bought but never found a home for. In the process, I had to deal with the presence of all this STUFF: old paintings, old TV, sewing machine I bought at a yard sale but never used.... yeesh. What was meant to be a 30-minute task has already consumed 8 hours over two mornings and afternoons. Moved into the little attic room. Made me buy and install new shelves in the large closet. Produced a 4-hour-long Craigslist giveaway on my curb, during which period my dog barked continuously at the strangers 'stealing' our stuff. (That prompted the night-working neighbor across the street to call the dog officer on the neighbor 2 doors down, whose dogs do bark a LOT, but were not he culprits on that particular morning!)
Luckily, I'm a teacher on summer break, and can devote all the mornings of this week to this task. During a normal schedule, I can see why big jobs never get done. I like the idea of breaking them into 10-minute installments.... but that would have made this job stretch out over MONTHS of disarray and chaos. Not sure about that.
I totally relate to MUFFINGIRL, err, actually I think I relate to everyone else as well. It's just that paperwork brings with it a certain buried anxiety, wheras junk sorting is easily ignored and mildly annoying.
This post came at a good time and today, yes TODAY, I am going to tackle my really not so enormous paperwork job and I'm going to feel really good by the end of the day. Ye Ha!
In the midst of a HUBOANHC involving 50 years of paperwork and a million tech cords. Totally stalling by reading and commenting on this blog.
My HUBOANHC item is called IRONING."Iron 10 items" is on my daily list. I have switched to cardigans - no iron. My mother took sympathy and took over the ironing for my 3 kids (LOVE HER!) When my husband went back to teaching, I paid have his dress shirts done. I took in 4 dozen the first time. I haven't added the "organize pictures" to my list yet - waiting for that ironing to be done!
@NIKKLOU - I definitely just (finally) registered so I could thank you for suggesting that app. I've been looking for an anti-procrastination tool for months and couldn't find anything as awesome as unf*ckyourhabitat! Thanks!
This post inspired me mid-way through the comments to just get up and do it - sort camping gear, river running gear, tarps (my husband adores tarps and woe betide me to throw one away on him!) and moving blankets. Not 10 minutes but 1 hour, painless, and two cupboards are organized, like with like and looking tidy. Hurrah! and thank you!
@Liz_Phiz and @TheModernGal - Hope you find unf*ckyourhabitat as helpful as I do. Thanks for letting me know that was helpful.
About 10-15 minutes at a time is all I can currently manage since I have a baby :( We moved into our current house 2 weeks before he was born and teh basement looks not quite like a bomb went off, but more like, hey, now we have 15 piles of random stuff and random stuff in boxes on shelving units. Working in 10 minute clips, we should have the basement sorted out in time for my son to go to college :D *sigh* But, the other 2 floors of the house are organized...yeah!
@MUFFINGIRL I must be your sister from another mother. :) That is something I would do, for sure! It feels great to know there are other procrastinators out there like me. Glad you got it taken care of!
Unless they've changed things, be prepared to be swamped with emails if you signup for flylady. I tried them a couple of years ago and would get 5-6 emails a day from them, with only 1-2 being at all useful (to me). The rest either didn't apply to my household situation, were "testimonials" from people who used the system, and advertisements selling flylady branded stuff.
@madampince, Yes! Floors!
It's so hard to get motivated to wash them knowing full well there will be a parade of sippy cup shaking toddlers walking on them within minutes.
Sigh.
Someone, please invent the the job Procrastinator. I would be an instant success. I'm currently trying to cut something out of my budget so I can afford a cleaning lady at least 2x a month. Despite my best intentions, I can't seem to keep a 473 sq ft studio apt tidy. From mail to shoes and handbags accumulating everywhere, I cant seem to get the clutter under control. I've tried the 10 minute per task rule. It works great for a day or so, then I stop. HELP!!!!!
My best motivation for cleaning up has been Apartment Therapy House Tours. I've only recently started browsing this website and similar, and just looking at those lovely houses makes me want to clean mine and make it look pretty. I've been horrible at procrastination, but I finally got off my butt and organised my closet, cleaned and waxed my floors, and am pumped to do even more now.
Procrastination. It's just one more thing I can never seem to get around to doing.
I live by that old Spanish proverb: Mañana es el día más ocupado de la semana. (Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week.)