Ready, set…

Tomorrow is the big day! The day I (re)start my New Year’s Resolution to declutter the home room by room. I’ve managed to get my motivation up from what it was in my last post; so much so that I actually did a little tidying up yesterday. The time was mainly spent loading the dishwasher. What really surprised was that when I’d finished my 5 minutes, the counters were cleared off and clean!

What I’ve learned in the past 2 months is that the kitchen needs attention every day. I’m going to have to change my plan just a bit. Since such things as cleaning up and putting dishes away require additional time, I’ll spend 5 minutes with standard kitchen maintenance (unless it actually takes less time) and 5 minutes decluttering.

The good news is that the kitchen table has remained relatively clutter free since I first cleared it off in early January, before I broke my foot. What I like about having the table cleared off is that I can sit down at it, plan meals, make grocery lists and the like. It functions very nicely as a kitchen “desk.” And also as a breakfast nook.

Time to get crackin’

Well, my “amnesty” period is almost up. This past Saturday was my first day not using the boot for my broken foot at all. But I’ve been on my feet a lot the past two days, and it’s quite sore this evening. When I got home from work, I put the boot back on for the evening. And I need to take some more motrin.

March 1 is fast approaching. The problem is, I don’t have that “New Year’s drive” I had in January. And right now I’m exhausted. The other “roadblock” is that I don’t have my Christmas presents mailed. I have them wrapped and in some cases packed, but I haven’t gotten them off to the post office or UPS yet.

I can’t let the lack of progress in one area interfere with my plans to move ahead in another. That kind of thinking is “all or nothing” or even “perfectionism,” which can be a terrible detriment to progress. I don’t want to fall into that trap again. It does me absolutely no good.

I guess I better use the next few days to psyche myself up for the big challenge. I might even hire a professional organizer to help push me through my inertia. I’ll see how the first week or so goes. Or, maybe I’ll call someone tomorrow. After all, I don’t want to have everything charted out. While having a plan is good, sometimes you just need to fly by the seat of your pants.

The “official” progress report for Jan 08

In order to get rid of old habits, you have to get rid of old thinking.

I was doing quite well with my revised January schedule. However, after the progress reported in my last post, I took Wednesday off. And that led to taking Thursday off. So I didn’t get all my packages wrapped and none of them mailed.

Last weekend I was on the verge of getting my bills paid up to date. I’d even tallied up all the credit card expenses. But I guess because I time to spare, I didn’t finish. And now I’m behind the due date for the credit card bill—not by much, but probably enough to warrant an interest fee.

And I’d made great progress with the laundry. Except that I didn’t get the get the last load out to dry. And now I have to do them all over again because they stink.

What held me back? I was out of my comfort zone. I’m not used to making progress, or being on time, or being successful. So I stopped because it didn’t feel “right.”

So now, instead of moving on to the next big task at hand, I have to play catch-up. Hopefully at some point making progress won’t feel so foreign to me and I won’t “feel the need” to backslide.