Thursday, July 29, 2010

Back on Track

Okay, so we're back from Denmark and the month is drawing to a close. I was supposed to cook approximately 12 times, and only managed 6. But truthfully, that was still more than the whole rest of the year, so I'm going to go ahead and consider it a success. I also have to just acknowledge that in past months, I was so stuck on fulfilling my goal that I kept trying to continue to meet unmet goals. But the point of these months was to try to focus on things I wanted to do for myself. And I've done that. So from now on--anything that doesn't get done by the end of the month, falls off the list. If it didn't stick, it didn't stick. I will acknowledge it and move on.

So yeah, cooking 3+ nights a week...never going to stick until I'm either a) the mother of kids who need balanced meals or b)have a lot more time on my hands. But I did find that I liked when I cooked and I seem to be fairly talented at following--and tweaking--recipes. Go figure. I can cook!

And--I didn't forget about the cleaning plan. I've been developing one and have an appointment to talk to Michael about my proposal tonight. I have two options to offer him. Option 1--and my preferred option--is a chart of weekly and monthly household tasks that need doing. We'd decide together at the beginning of each week/month who would be responsible for which tasks, trying to roughly divide the work in half. The nice thing about this plan is that I can be assured that most of the important things will get done regularly, and so can be more flexible about when it gets done. As long as it's done once a week, I can't try to control when.

There are a lot of benefits to this system, but honestly, we might be too old for chore charts. It's hard to know if it will stick. Maybe it will feel patronizing.

The second option is committing to 15 minute "cleaning frenzies" before dinner 4 nights a week. We would both just see how much we can get done in 15 minutes and leave the rest. Probably work room by room. This would work better to control clutter, I think, but we'd probably never have time to vacuum or dust and laundry wouldn't ever be a priority. Also, we don't seem to do well with this type of commitment, because we never find time.

OR we could do one hour-long cleaning frenzy on a specific day.

Both would allow us to each choose the jobs we hate less, assuming we both don't hate the same things equally. Both would probably require roughly the same amount of time commitment per week. I think it's reasonable that we spend an hour a week maintaining our home...what do you guys think?

Anyway--I'm going to present the pros and cons and see if Michael has any better ideas or improvements to offer. And then we can put it into place and see how it goes.

August is going to be creating month. It was originally slated for writing month, but I think maybe I can build in time for writing during the school year, but I'll never get these creating projects done during the school year. I want to print, frame, and hang pictures from the wedding and vacations of the last two years. I want to edit our wedding video. And make some glass. And figure out how to use my damn camera correctly and consistently. That's a lot, considering I'm gone for a week and a half and then have to start getting the dorm ready. (AGH)

But, I'll just see what I can do.

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