Peace of Mind Organizing

Snatching pockets of time

14 March 2011

The past couple of weeks have been very busy for me and I haven’t been home a whole lot. I did take one glorious day off at home day a week ago Saturday, where I caught up on my TV and did some knitting. I did nothing but relax, which I sorely needed.

Because I’ve been away so much helping people create order in their homes, my own home has gone into disarray. In a big way. I have a very high tolerance for mess, but I find myself looking around thinking, “I can’t wait to get some time to get this house in shape.”

I realize that’s my big mistake. I tend to think I need to wait until I have a large chunk of a day available for cleaning before I lift a finger (beyond the basics). But today when I look at my calendar, I see that free day is almost a week away.

The truth is that I don’t need a large chunk of time to get started. I can start with a single minute. (Or perhaps five minutes.) Because before I clean I need to tidy. Tidying I can do in very small chunks of time.

I don’t want to spend my first day off in a couple of weeks tidying and cleaning my house. I’m going to make that day easier by snatching little pockets of time between now and the weekend. I’m going to pick up and tidy a little at a time (rather than just ignoring the disarray). After that, I’ll dust and clean a room at a time. Come Sunday morning, I hope, all I’ll have to do is vacuum—that’s one task I tend to do in one fell swoop.

And, of course, once I get this backlog of out-of-place stuff taken care of, the key to keeping things under control is to be mindful of putting items away as I use them. I know this. I teach my clients this. Sometimes life just gets in the way. And when that happens, I just try to get right back into the routines that help me stay sane (and my house tidy).

Tagged with: disorder, habits, order, pockets of time, routines

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