Stream of Conscience

There are 3 main tenets to the Flylady method of keeping a home:  the morning routine, the evening routine, and 15 minutes of decluttering.  She used to ask that you start the program with all 3.  However, there are so many extras to the program, and people were getting overwhelmed and quitting, that she broke the initial actions into 31 steps, calling them “Beginner Baby Steps.”  On Friday, I went through each one and noted them.

Of course, since I am adapting the program to me specifically, I’m not following these steps.  Rather, in these first tenuous weeks, I’m concentrating on the 15 minutes of decluttering.  However, I’ve further refined these to 15 minutes of picking up & decluttering.   In the past few days I’ve done the 15 minutes, it has included some decluttering, but much of it has also been attending to the dirty dishes in the kitchen and putting laundry away.

I’ve just finished the dishes and (the most recent round of) laundry.  The final 5 minutes will be tonight when I pack up my trash and put it out.

In keeping with my weekend routine, I spent much more than 15 minutes on my finanaces this morning.  Yesterday I’d started categorizing my Visa purchases, but you may recall I had difficulties with  QVC.  I’m still having those problems, but I was able to identify all of them by alternate means.  I’ve been one month behind on paying the bill, which means interest charges, so I took the extra time to pay off both last month’s and this month’s bill.  Just in time to load it up again for the holidays. 

Now I’m going to take a little time and see if I can’t get the Pack Brat site back in good operating order.

Ever have one of those days where nothing seems to go right?  Ever have it on the exact day when you want to really make a change in your life?  Yep, that’s today.

I had mentioned my desire to start my Pack Brat chronicles, but the website is not cooperating.  I think it’s going to require some drastic measures (like deleting it all and starting over again), so until I get it fixed, I’ll post my chronicles here.  I tried block-quoting some of the Pack Brat entries yesterday, but you can see from the picture on the right how crappy that turned out with the current theme.  So now I need to go in search of a new theme.  But that will have to come later.

One of the routines I want to get back into the habit of is handling financial paperwork for 15 minutes on Saturday morning.  So this morning I went to pay bills.  That wasn’t too much of a problem until I wanted to look up my purchases from QVC.  Now, for some reason, I can’t log into my account.  And yes, my sign-in and PIN are accurate.  I checked.  Several times.

I wanted to take my iPod with me on my way to my first appointment, out near Dulles Airport.  But my iPod has been acting strangely since I connected it to my new computer.  Consequently, I wasn’t able to recharge or resynch it prior to departure.  (But earlier this afternoon I was able to reset it, and it has synched and charged, so I’m hoping the worst is over.)

I had 2 hours between the end of my first appointment and the start of my second.  I’d spotted a Silver Diner on the way to appt. #1, so I stopped there for lunch.  I kind of had my heart on a burger & chocolate milkshake, but they were serving brunch.  So I had eggs Benedict, which turned out to be quite good.

Since my second appointment was not too far from home, I had to head back to a different part of Alexandria.  I used my GPS, but it doesn’t always give me what I would consider the best route.  Plus, it was raining buckets.  When I left the Silver Diner, I was scheduled to arrive about 10 minutes prior to my appointment.  But the GPS took me through town, meaning long stoplights and waiting for people to make left-hand turns.  I ended up getting there 10 minutes past my appointment.  And you know what else really frustrates me with the GPS?  The month after I bought it they came out with a better version (text-to-speech) for a lower price.

And finally, when I was ready to come home, someone was having their car towed and was blocking the way out of the parking lot.  Fortunately, I had my book The Lovely Bones with me, so I sat in the car reading, until another customer came out and beeped at the tow truck to move.  (Gosh, why hadn’t I thought of that?)

The moral of this story is that it’s never an ideal time to turn over a new leaf.  There’s always going to be something that goes wrong, if not the 1st or 2nd day, then sometime thereafter.  I’m glad I didn’t just throw in the towel and say “Screw it.”  I did get my 15 minutes of picking up around the house done, and now I’m debating on whether to have spaghetti with clam sauce or spaghetti-cheese-almondine for dinner.  It’ll probably be whichever is easier.

I have another blog called Pack Brat.  Over there, I’m trying to chronicle my attempts to get my home in order.  I’m about as consistent with it as I am with this blog.  But that’s all about to change. I was supposed to let people into my place this week to videotape the condition of my ceilings. Here’s what I wrote about yesterday:

Next week my condo building is having its roof replaced.   The roofers and the condo association wanted to do a walk-through of all top level units, documenting the state of the ceilings by videotaping them.  That way, if any damage occurred, unit owners wouldn’t be held liable.  Since I live in a top level unit, that included me.

I was very uneasy about having the contractor come in.  But I bit the bullet and scheduled a walk-through.   Then I found out it wouldn’t be just the contractor; the party would include the condo’s maintenance man and someone from the board of directors.  The more I thought about it, the more worried I became.  So early this morning, I called to cancel the walk-through.  Now, if I do incur damage, I’ll have to pay for it myself.

How ridiculous is that?  So, I decided it’s time to get serious (again) and really, honestly start taking the state of my home seriously.  My game plan fell by the wayside after I got the dining room decluttered.  (More on why I stalled in another post.)  My way of starting, I decided, is to do the daily 15 minutes of decluttering prescribed by Flylady.

I usually have a hard time motivating myself to do any housework on a Friday night, what with the weekend looming.  But I did spend 10 minutes in the bedroom, folding laundry and putting things away, and 5 minutes in the kitchen, filling the dishwasher and making a dent in clearing off the table.

Its a good feeling.  Now I just need to keep it up.