Here's an idea for fixing things around your home: schedule one day for pressing tasks and prepare all materials and plans in advance. We found this idea in a Washington Post email and like it, because whenever we're at home we only want to eat, sleep and watch LOST. A one-day event for better living sounds doable.
For an experiment, we decided to do one day of shopping for all the things we'd been needing in our house. We took some Christmas money and made a list: shredding scissors for the kitchen, clock for the bathroom, blender for morning smoothies, etc. Then we mapped out directions and a plan of action and took care of business. It felt good to only spend one day on these errands and not run around after work at night for a week straight.
For more tips, see The Washington Post's article
Image: Kevin Spencer licensed for use under Creative Commons
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Comments (6)
Eat, sleep, and watch LOST? Did I write this post??
But yes, in general in life, I do my best work when the preparation is done in advance.
I like to think of it in terms of painting: I was always taught to mix my palette before starting to paint for the day. Each raw pigment is ready and organized, and if I know I need a specific color -- let's say green -- then there are 5 - 10 shades of green already mixed before I pick up a brush.
I like to go into everything -- household projects, recipes, parties, trips, my work -- with a full palette. It leaves your mind free to enjoy the execution.
I love my shredding scissors!
We do this. Well, sort of. All we do on the weekends is work on the house, but during the week we totally veg. So we instituted a Tuesday-night project--which can range from painting a room to washing out bottles for recycling--a medium to small project that can be done in a couple of hours. It's been working pretty well, I must say. We've done several of those little projects that we otherwise just put off as long as possible. Now, we look around for appropriate sized projects for Tuesdays. So, we're knocking them out pretty fast. Pretty soon we're gonna be screwed, 'cause all that'll be left is big projects.
I kind of do the opposite, I actually scheduled one chore for each evening of the week. The apartment used to be a mess because it was so overwhelming to have to think about spending hours just cleaning, but 15-30 minutes a night didn't sound so bad. I've only been doing it about 2 weeks, but so far it's going well. If I know all I have to do it dust a little or wipe down the bathrooms before I go veg on the couch, it's much more likely to get done.
For things that are somewhat nice to do (mending, running errands for me, etc) I do tend to collect them up into one day. I wish we could do our food shopping like that, but my husband likes to go shopping for food every day or two (drives me nuts!).
This is a good idea. All the little things that get put off really add up and making it a routine day could really help keep things up to par.
~ Sarah @ http://www.queenofdiy.com
We call it home-improvement weekend. And we do about one or two a month. And yes, all the planning and trips to "The 'Po" happen midweek so that on Saturday morning we're ready to go and know just where to start.
Three weeks ago was "paint the family room and most of the doors in the family room weekend."
Last weekend was "chalkboard paint on the office wall latex dissolver on wood trim (previous owner's mess) start dining-table-repurposed-as-desk project."
This coming Saturday is "migrate the web server from co-location center finish painting the living room doors" weekend.
It feels so GREAT to look around and see progress. It's slow. But it's marvy.
I think tonight is going to be "troll craiglist and KSL online classifieds for pair of used chairs" night. *sigh* This is one of those tasks I loathe, though, because almost no one gets rid of anything cool in Utah. It kinda makes me mad to see all the great stuff in scavenger listings for SF, LA, DC, NY, etc etc.