Keeping on track

I'm going to stay accountable on my very tiny daily to do list:

shower - done (and lotions, hair, minimal makeup and dressed)

unload dishwasher - done and also the pile of plastic that I leave to dry

bed - hubby was sick last night and just got up a little bit ago - he probably made it but I haven't checked yet

cat food, litterbox, mice (ick) - done (except I just now remembered one of the traps was missing and I'm not sure what that means but since my husband is home today, I think he will need to be the one to do a search.  I do NOT want to find it if there's a mouse in it!)

5 minute pickup - done

Skip the end of this one. It's kinda gross.

Just as I thought yesterday.  I went upstairs and there was trash from command hooks and I remembered that as we were unloading groceries, my son unpacked screws he bought to fix the mailbox that he broke six months ago (SIX MONTHS AGO – he takes after his mama) so I went to the garage to see if we had some that fit to save money and I found the command hooks I wasn’t able to find earlier (out of my entire house, the workshop in the garage is the one place that has never been decluttered or organized – argh!).  So I took them upstairs to put in the hall bathtub to hang the bath caddy one kid made for the other for Christmas (holy cow – I just realized I actually thought of a project and did it all the way through in only a few weeks!).  So the extra hooks and trash from the packaging was on my bed.  I also forgot I had bought a little basket at dollar tree to see if corralling my everyday toiletries would make a difference in my already-neat-but-not-as-good-as-it-could-be cabinet.  So when I put that in the cabinet, I decluttered and reorganized a few things – right onto the sink (to put away “later”). 

Part of me realizes this way I have of doing multiple things at once is what makes it hard for me to be ready for company at the drop of a hat.  But another part has accepted that this is also who I am.  And in reality, I DID get several small things done yesterday.  If I had done the groceries all the way through from start to finish without doing a few random things while I was at it, I’m not sure I would have gotten to those other things.  I know that my brain realizes that I will NOT leave the groceries out long-term but it IS possible I will never hang that bath caddy or organize the bath cabinet or do any of the other small things I did along the way yesterday.  It’s like, I am at a point in my journey where I do attempt to keep the regular things (i.e., grocery-putting-awaying) done so I can kinda mostly trust  myself to eventually get that done on a somewhat timely basis. I use that knowledge and trust to go ahead and do other things that I don’t trust myself to finish anytime soon BEFORE I do the regular stuff.  Like sometimes I will get up in the morning and do totally random things because I know that eventually I will get the dishwasher unloaded (or loaded, if I procrastinated on dishes the night before) because that’s not something I leave for days anymore (there was a time though…).  If I do dishes first, I may decide I’m done.  Does that ring a bell for anyone?  It’s all fine and dandy if the day goes as planned (and nobody stops by) if I get up and don’t shower and go do some big random project like painting or pulling all the books off shelves to do a big dusting. But how many times does our days as moms go as “planned?”  9 times out of 10, the call from the nurse at school or the neighbor stopping by or the toilet overflowing all happen at the worst times. 

Plus like I said yesterday, if I stop for 30 second tasks and let myself get distracted and more distracted and more distracted, sometimes I forget to go back to what I’m doing ‘til it’s too late.  I guess it’s a balance.  What I’m trying to accomplish now is just remember to go back and pick up here and there.  The 5-minute pickup is awesome for that!  Making myself do it will be tricky.  I tend to rebel against set “to dos.”  I know, what’s my problem, right?  I also can get distracted within one minute of the 5-minute timer.  I noticed the first day that I had to reset the timer 4 times before I did an actual full, focused 5 minute pickup.  So instead I do a little focusing trick that I’ve done many times before and I count to 300.  The act of counting keeps my brain from straying and reminds me I’m in the middle of something, even if that something is somewhat random-seeming to my brain. 

I’m thinking these blogs are too long and rambly.  I may change that.  I kind of like writing stream of consciousness but it might be a good idea to try to be clearer and more to the point.  I personally wouldn’t want to read these kinds of ramblings from someone else.  Dana’s blogs are short and to the point.  Not that I want to copy but I’m not sure I would have read several months’ worth of her musings if they were as flaky as mine.  Or maybe I’ll have a short version and a long version lol.  Summarize myself at the end of each flake-o writing session.  Whatever, at least I’m writing. 

So my summary for today.  I make more messes than I realize by going off on tangents.  Sometimes tangents aren’t good, like getting distracted from what I need to be doing by odds and ends things that can easily be accomplished later if I make them routine (in other words, picking stuff up and putting it away doesn’t work for me if I’m in the middle of a bigger project like putting away groceries because I get distracted and then bad things happen like melted frozen food all over the carpet).  But sometimes tangents are good, like getting several miscellaneous mini-projects done before finishing a bigger project, since I know the bigger project will get done eventually.  As long as I put the frozen stuff away first! Also, I’m loving the 5-minute pickups and the forced shower.  I rarely go an entire day without showering so it’s nice to get it out of the way and feel good instead of gross all day.  And on the days when I don’t, at least getting washed up before my day starts is much better than working in PJs all smelly.  I know some of you can bathe before bed and wake up fresh as a daisy but not this girl.  I feel nasty and stinky until I take care of the necessities.  And because I’m trying to be honest, I will even admit that I forget to brush my teeth until I’m taking time out to groom.  It’s not automatic.  Sometimes I forget until I’m going somewhere and then I’m like, ew, yuck, I forgot my teeth.  It ain’t easy to say that when “it’s automatic like brushing your teeth” is a saying but yeah, maybe not so automatic for me.  I do brush them and don’t go all day without, but it’s just not automatic to do it first thing. 

Tune in tomorrow when I publish other personal things about myself to gross you out.  Here I was hoping for eventual readers but part of me now is like, um, I hope nobody reads this!

30 second rule? Uh, no. Not quite

Day 2 of this blog and I almost forgot about it. I’ve actually been productive today.  Youngest son surprised me with a big math project last night (GRRRRR) and while working with him on it, I got a grocery list done.  My weekly grocery list is one of those things that, in an effort to streamline it, make it easier and more efficient, I’ve probably made it more cumbersome.   It’s a huge master list I choose things from.  I mean, in the long run it’s still more efficient because I have a horrible memory and usually don’t think of things I need until I’ve already shopped.  My family’s gotten really good at putting things we run out of on the grocery list, but I still need a big list of regular things to look at while making my big list.  And in an effort to save money, I get a set amount out of the bank every two weeks and when it’s gone, it’s gone.  So that adds pressure to the list because if I don’t know the priorities (i.e., you need chicken to make fried chicken – yes, I’ve done that – planned an entrée and made sure I had all the seasonings etc only to realize I forgot to check for the main ingredient), then I spend money on lesser priorities and then when I go to make dinner, I better find something else to fry because no money, no chicken.  Anyway, so I’ve made my grocery shopping prep time-consuming on the back end to save time on the front end, but it also makes me dread making the list.  It really doesn’t take THAT long but it involves looking at a long, boring list and boredom is not a friend of mine.

So I made the list and told my almost-19-yo that I was going grocery shopping this morning and he was going along.  Tired of him vegging in front of Skyrim (he goes back to college Sunday).   I haven’t shopped for real since the week before Christmas – just been piddling money away on quick trips for necessities (which turned into splurge trips on not-necessities – as evidenced by the two chips ahoy bags in the trash this week).  Thrilled we got that done but it’s 2:24 and I still have groceries all over.  Plus I decided to strip the beds before we left – one of those tasks that I don’t think about without a reminder and I have no routine right now since I’m totally off my to do lists (still haven’t looked at them – really hoping there’s not some dire thing that I threw onto the list and out of my mind before Christmas that I assumed I would take care of in January.  I know myself better now than I used to, though, so I probably didn’t do something stupid like trust in myself).   My son said “my bedding could really use a wash, Mom” which made me feel like mom of the year.  True he could do it himself (and would) but they are all used to me controlling the laundry like a Nazi and don’t typically just wash something without at least running it by me first.  I realized it had probably been about 3 weeks since I did bedding.  Certainly not my longest run of not washing sheets (by a long shot) but this particular kid is smell-sensitive and has gotten used to me having a pretty good routine and not having to sleep on rotten smelly sheets.  He does his own laundry at college and I think he keeps it up pretty well.  The other kid still at home, his sheets could probably rot completely under him and he wouldn’t notice.  He’s the kid that will sleep on a bare mattress for a week to avoid making up his bed with fresh sheets. 

Anyway, as I always do, I have several things going at once and the house would look bad to anyone walking in.  It doesn’t bother me because it’s pretty straight underneath (wow, “straight underneath” – I can really justify a mess!  That’s like talking about my awesome 6-pick under 30 pounds of flabby belly) and I know I can swoop around and get stuff away but I’d love to learn to always have a visitor-ready house.  I’ve accomplished it a few times in my journey but never easily, never for more than a few months, and never without becoming cranky Mom.  So I have groceries all over, and I unload the mousetraps I bought from Lowe’s and decide to set them up in the pantry.  Which leads to me tripping over a folded cardboard box next to the pantry.  My brain says “hey, you can box up some of that there decluttering you started the other day, you know, the crap all over the ping pong table that you were too lazy to get a box for, with this very handy box that would require more effort to put away with the other boxes than to use it.” 

So instead of putting the box with decluttering and going back to my original task, I not only box up what’s there but when the box is still half empty, I pull down two tubs of skinny clothes and decide that I need to get rid of some to fill the box.  I finish that and come back upstairs (only because the stove timer is going off from when I put a new soda in the freezer – we HAVE to use timers for that or we end up with solid sodas which are hard to drink without breaking your teeth).  I turn off the timer and get out the partially frozen soda (I must have let the timer go off longer than I thought – sometimes time has no relevance to me) and see it’s after 2.  And I remember, blog!  I go to start the blog (after setting a timer for 30 minutes to limit myself – go me!!) and realize I didn’t do the litterbox (one of my new must-dos) and thought about skipping it but, um, really do I want to do that my second freaking day???  After the litterbox, I realize the washer has stopped washing and our washer’s drum is rusty so if clothes sit too long, they get rust spots (hubby wants a new washer but 1 - I’m afraid to buy one, all new appliances are crap, 2 - who has that kind of money?? Have you seen the price of washers these days??, and 3 - it’s a major incentive for me to keep up with what’s in the washer, which I consider to be a good thing – so I’m fighting him on that one).  I move the washer load over, pulling the bedding that’s  in the dryer out onto the floor.

All of that is to say that the house I left neat to shop 5 hours ago, proud of myself, and NOBODY WAS HOME THOSE 5 HOURS, is now trashed.  Clean bedding on laundry room floor, grocery bags on laundry room floor and dining room floor, some pulled aside because they go to my son’s dorm Sunday, both of our coats on the backs of chairs, Walmart receipts on table from me stopping to photograph them and also put them in savings catcher, wallet on table, clothes for my son’s girlfriend on island that I rescued from the skinny clothes donation pile, half-frozen soda on counter, mouse trap packaging on counter and ipad that I used to look up how to set the mousetrap (I am not mechanically included), toilet paper roll on counter that I took from bathroom when I ran in to pee right when we got home and didn’t throw away because I want to use it to store lights, more groceries in and out of bags on the island and steps to go upstairs, and I’m not sure if I made a mess up there.  I know I went up there when we got home and I probably left a trail.  I will admit that when I say trashed, it’s really not trashed.  If you are reading this blog, you know what “trashed” really means.  But you also know that messes like these breed rampantly if you don’t throw some figurative cold water on them to stop it.

Even on my productive days, or maybe especially on my productive days, it’s just hard to function like a “normal” person.  But the 5-minute walk-through will help.  I did one this morning and will do another right after this blog.

Okay, this is something I want to say and maybe you will identify with this.  You know how they say “the key to keeping up with clutter is that if you see something that takes 30 seconds or less, just do it?”  Uh, no.  That is what gets me into these messes.  Distraction.  Sure, if I see trash on the floor, I should pick it up (I don’t, I’m just saying I should).  But moving my wallet from the washer to the basket where it belongs just makes me notice the empty pillbox in the basket that needs to be filled and then if I fill that (30 seconds or less) it would probably just make me notice that my son’s meds are getting low so that leads to a phone call to the pharmacy (30 seconds or less on the automated line) which means I pick up my phone and GOD FORBID I PICK UP MY PHONE.  I am soo anti-phone – I hate the addiction of everyone around me and that’s partially why I held out so long (that and my fat texting thumbs versus the touch screen and the fact that my s7 is too big to stick in my bra not to mention the cost of a data plan) but I am the first one to get sucked in.  See how those 30 second tasks can just kill my day?  It’s much much better for me to try to do a routine pickup than put stuff away as I see it.  I just have to totally remember to do the pickups. 

The writing of this blog isn’t going as planned.  I didn’t mean to come off as rambling psycho right away.  I was going to introduce you to the psycho me a little later, after you fall in love with me (that’s how I got my husband anyway).  But the main reason I’m starting it is to keep myself accountable for my new routines so at least that part seems to be working.  A whole two days’ worth anyway lol.  My timer says 2 minutes left of writing time so I’m gonna do a quick read through to make sure this is at least readable. Then off to do a 5-minute pickup that may turn into a 10 or 15 minute pickup but that can only be a good thing.  Assuming it doesn’t make me forget about something else (thank goodness for timers and alarms, my ultimate crutches). 

Keeping on track

I'm going to stay accountable on my very tiny daily to do list:

shower - done (and lotions, hair, minimal makeup and dressed all the way to shoes)

unload dishwasher - done and reloaded

bed - done (forgot to put this on the list but the good thing is that it's already a habit and I only forget when someone else stays in it longer than I do)

cat food, litterbox, mice (ick) - done

5 minute pickup - not done yet.  going to do that now.  Back - got a little carried away.  Did about 20 minutes.  Picked up miscellaneous stuff lying around and then got sidetracked by a bunch of stuff I recently decluttered that needs to be picked up by Purple Heart.  Got it photographed, bagged, and boxed so it's ready to go. - done

Heart Palpitations

Why am I having heart palpitations right now?  This is just a blog.  Who doesn't have a blog nowadays, am I right?  But this is a first for me.  I'm what's known in the marketing world (I had one marketing class and now I'm an expert on the jargon) as a slow adopter.  It's January 2017 and I've had a smartphone for about 6 months.  So yeah, blog = heart palpitations.  I've been wanting to do this for years though.  Here goes!

I've been reading ASlobComesClean recently and she inspired me to finally just do this.  Like her, I'm organizationally (although I prefer to think that I've become somewhat organized, it just doesn't come naturally) impaired.  I'm great at starting projects but maintaining, not so much.  Unlike her, I'm starting my blog well into my journey of getting my act together.  My youngest will be 16 next week and he was 3 months old when I started.  That's how I date everything.  What was happening in my life.  Wow, has it really been almost 16 years?  Part of me thinks I should have more to show for it, but then I remember being near suicide over this, so I've actually come a long, long way.  Sorry if that's too much for you to hear.  You as in, um, nobody? lol  I doubt anyone will ever read this blog.  I have a habit of dropping projects, either because of boredom, forgetfulness or, as I suspect the case may be for this one, it interests me TOO much and takes too much of me that I need to reserve for other things.

If you are a naturally neat person or even a messy person who is okay with it, then that may sound like the stupidest, most ridiculous thing you've ever heard.  Really?  Kill myself over the state of my house??  You're kidding, right?  But I suspect that somewhere out there, there are more of us than we'd like to admit.  Because messiness doesn't just mean you can't find your keys or you're embarrassed by a dirty bathroom.  Messiness can affect everything if we let it.  I'm reading Dana White's blog as I mentioned, and I so very much relate to her.  She has so many of the same problems.  What I don't totally relate to, and maybe she just left it all out because as a fellow ADHDer I know how hard it is to narrow my focus and leave out extraneous information so maybe she is forcing herself to keep her blog ONLY on the messy house, is that she seemed to have it together elsewhere in her life, even at her messiest.  For me, not so much.  Messiness meant being late everywhere I went, not showing up for appointments, late fees, and forgetting things that were important to other people.  Even forgetting things that were important to me.  In addition to the extreme embarrassment over my house and car and yard, etc.

My very sweet and good friend and neighbor, who is ultra-neat and systematic beyond belief, once told me, long ago when my kids were little, that she envied people like me who could relax.  And people, she wasn't being passive-aggressive or snarky.  Trust me, I'm both passive-aggressive/snarky AND ultra-sensitive to others being passive-aggressive/snarky so I know.  That is not her nature.  1) I think she was probably trying to make me feel better in her own way and 2) I think she was serious.  She has since confided that she started medication in order to let up on control.  Well, I too am a control freak.  And a perfectionist.  You just can't tell (well, maybe the control freak part!).  I explained to her that there was no relaxation to be had when your toddler is demanding juice (I remember those times that seem a little crazy now when juice was a freakin' priority) and the baby is crying and there are no clean juice cups, so you go to wash one, and there are no clean dishrags, so you go to try to find another clean rag in the rag bin that might suffice for a dishrag, and you can't get into the laundry room because of the tubs you stacked there while working on a cleanup project that you got distracted from and then if you add in one more thing while toddler is starting to howl and baby is turning red, say maybe a toilet overflowing or a doorbell ringing, and it's enough to make you want to just crawl into a closet and cry.  Which I've actually done.  We'll save that for another post.  So no, not relaxing.  By the way, I think I may have given her a little TOO much insight into the life of a messy person.  She looked horrified.

This blog will not just be a journal for me and help me stay on track (even after almost 16 years and sooo much improvement, I get off track and start to react to my life instead of keeping it smooth), but it may give me a chance to help someone else eventually with ideas and tips and systems that helped me all these years.  Assuming anyone ever reads this.  But to start, it's the second week of January and this time of year for me is always just a huge loss.  I just lose it after Christmas.  I stop doing routines and everyday things that should have been taken care of crop up while other deadlines that I forgot about show up unexpectedly, and I feel anxious.  Which I deal with by...eating.  And hiding.  And not doing anything.  So thanks to Dana, I'm just gonna go with a simple routine until I get myself back together and moving along.

Each morning, I will:
--Shower or do "ablutions" which is a fancy word for, as they say on Orange Is the New Black, wash my pits, t*ts and naughty bits (gross, huh?)  That's my way of weeding out the faint of heart.  This is my blog and I can either pretend I'm someone I'm not for fear of offending anyone, or I can use this as the catharsis I need and just be myself.  Not that "myself" would ever say anything like that to someone I don't know well, so maybe I'm not being myself?  However, I'm currently the only reader and I'd say that to myself all day long, even though I hate the word "t*ts."  Yuck.  How did I get here from just talking about showering?
--Unload the dishwasher (hate this - soooo boring.  Boring tasks are not my friends!)
--Feed the cats, change their water, check for mice (so nasty, we have this small problem in our pantry that is not affecting our food but we keep catching these guys (or, I suspect, one guy over and over who sneaks back in) in our humane traps.  The only thing he's gotten into so far is peanut butter packets but it makes me ill to think about it), and clean the litterbox.  The litterbox involves walking ALL THE WAY DOWNSTAIRS (two flights of maybe 6 steps each, yeah, I have a problem) so we end up not doing it for way too long.  Like Dana, I have a problem remembering or noticing unless I make something routine.
--5 minute pickup (love that idea)

That's it for now.  I'll obviously be doing other things, especially since I've got to stop eating junk food and start menu planning again, but these will keep me accountable to the basics.

Okay, I set a timer to do this. 30 minutes and out. Otherwise I'd ramble all day long...