Time to Take the Tree Down

OK, we've all done it, but let's not do it this year. We all know people who still have the Christmas decorations up clear into March, but that's not going to happen this year. Yes, it's a big job, but you can do it fairly quickly and then you'll be done for another year.

My mother was quite superstitious and we should be horrified that I am keeping my tree up past the New Year. She felt that it would bring the spirit of the past year into the new year and Lord knows, 2008 has been gnarly enough, but I'm not as superstitious as she was. And I have a reason this year. We are having a New Year's Eve party and since we didn't really have anyone over during the holidays, I'd like people to see my pretty decorations before I store them all away. But I promise you, it is coming down no later than January 2nd! If nothing else, I want my living room back.

So, how to go about it? Well, there are two schools of thought here - a bit at a time, or the whole enchilada? I know myself and I know if I do it a bit at a time, I won't get back to it for days, so I always opt for the whole enchilada. If you want to do it a bit at a time, schedule 15 minute sessions once or twice a day with the goal to have it done by the end of the week.

If you're going to do it all at once, set aside an evening (like tonight!) when some of Santa's helpers will be around to help you. I have my husband and son do all the lugging of boxes up and down the stairs while I do the more delicate work of packing everything up so nothing gets broken. Most of my decorations are hand made and very precious to me, so I don't usually like for anyone else to put them away. Then if I break something, I can't get too mad at myself.

I use the empty boxes to store all my everyday decorations, so it's more like redecorating than undecorating. Keep a store of tissue paper or newspaper handy for the more delicate ornaments and be sure to put the heavier stuff on the bottom. Don't forget the outside decorations. Maybe not the lights until ice and snow go away, but be sure you get all the wreaths and stuff from outside. Don't forget to take one last sweep around the house before you put away the last box. There's nothing like forgetting one darn thing and having to dig everything back out to put it away. Or worse, having it hanging around the house all year.

That's it. Bye-bye for another year Christmas decorations. Go and have yourself a cup of hot cocoa. You've earned it.

I HATE filing!

I'm at work today and it's kind of a slow day, so I am catching up on my most hated task - FILING! I don't know why I dislike filing so much, but I always have and that isn't likely to change soon.

So the question is, how do you approach a task you really dislike doing?

- Put it off and hope it chokes and dies! (Appealing, but not likely)
- Pay someone to do it for you (outsource it to India??)
- Foist it off on someone who doesn't mind doing it, or trade a job someone else hates that you don't mind doing. I do this one a lot around the house. There are some jobs that people like and some they don't. I will take dishes over mopping every time, for example.
- Do a little every day so it doesn't pile up to a big ugly job
- Simplify the task so you can get it out of the way quickly
- Offer yourself a reward for doing it (hey, this works on my kids!).
- Get someone to do it with you so you can at least have some company while doing it.

For filing, I take an approach that hits most of these points. First of all, I do put it off for as long as I can get away with it. It's not a critical part of my job, so I can do that without too much guilt and that's better for me than having to face it every week or so. I usually can fit about 3 months worth of work into my desk storage before I really feel like I need to clear it out and move it to my filing cabinet.

I'm rarely able to foist it off on someone, but I have managed to a couple of times. There's been a few times when my kids were in the office and I was able to bribe them into doing it for me. Also, my co-worker doesn't mind filing, so sometimes I can trade a job with her or at least get her to help me with it so I've got someone to talk to.

Also, I have simplified the job so it is MUCH easier and quicker to do. I used to sort all my invoices by area code and month, and it would take me about 3-4 hours to do. Then I realized that I only dig into my files about half a dozen times a year, so it's not really worth the time and effort to sort them so much. Now, I just sort them by the 1st number in the area code (all the 2's, 3's, 4's, etc.) and dump them into a big folder. So if I need to find something in the 208 area code, I only have to dig through one folder and maybe 75 invoices to find it. Now the job only takes me about 2 hours and everything fits in one drawer, so it's easier to find things.

What job do you hate that you end up putting off all the time? What can you do to make it easier?

The Power of Little Minutes

I think one thing that separates the "cleanie" types from the "messy" types is the way they use their spare minutes. We tend to want to do our housework in big blocks of time while they tend to do theirs for just a few minutes at a time numerous times during the day.

The big problem with this system is that big blocks of cleaning time don't present themselves very often. And in between the blocks of cleaning time, the house is deteriorating around you minute by minute.

On the other hand, little minutes present themselves numerous times every day. You can slip in a quick tidy up when things are cooking in the microwave, while you're talking on the phone, while you're waiting for the kids to get dressed. You can tidy the bathroom while your young children are having their bath, or tidy up their room while they are getting dressed. When you start looking for these opportunities, you'll find them everywhere throughout your day.

You're probably thinking that you can't get much done in just a few minutes, but you would really be amazed! I've timed it and I can empty my dishwasher in three minutes, fold a load of laundry in five, and sweep my kitchen floor in ten.

Here is a good example of one of these quick time clean ups. This is my bathroom counter. It doesn't always look like this, but I do find that "my" rooms tend to get a lot less attention than the more "public" areas of my house.

Here is how it looked at the five minute mark. Looks a lot better, doesn't it?



Five minutes later, I had the rest of it done and look how great it looks. Ten minutes flat to a nice clean bathroom counter. Another couple of minutes to swish the toilet and sweep and mop the floor and voila! I had a completely clean bathroom.



That's a good way to accomplish a clean up in a very short period of time. However, an even better strategy would be to spend just one or two minutes every day to put my things away and give the counter and toilet a quick swipe. That's what the clean people do and Lord knows it's easy enough to do.

But if I do fall down on the job - again. At least I know I'm only 15 minutes from starting all over again.

My Story

Here is my story and how my Messy Mom's program came into being. It has taken me more than 20 years to finally feel comfortable with my house and my level of organization. I have learned a lot along the way, both about myself and about the basics of housecleaning. I got to a point where I felt like I wanted to be able to share these tips with other women who are in the same position as I was.

I think for a lot of us the messy house issue is rooted in childhood. Whether your Mom kept a clean house or a messy house, it has an effect on you. My husband and I came from completely opposite backgrounds. His Mom was definitely a perfectionist and kept a very clean house, but because she never allowed him to participate in the cleaning and never required him to do the daily things that are necessary to keep his own space clean, he never learned how to do it himself. I'm sure there was also a habit of rebelling against her because she was always nagging him about keeping things picked up.

In my case, I grew up in a fairly messy house. My Mom was a single, working Mom who worked basically every day of my entire childhood. She left the house at 7:00 in the morning, dropped me off at the sitters and picked me up again at 6:00 or so. Then we popped in TV dinners for dinner and spent the remainder of the evening watching TV, reading books, and working on our craft projects. Dishes were left in the sink for the weekend, laundry was done once a week and vacuuming and dusting were done once a month, if we thought to get around to it.

That's nothing against my Mom, it's just that she had other responsibilities in her life and other priorities. After working all day and all week, she felt like the rest of her time should be spent relaxing and spending time with me. The TV was on virtually all the time. She rarely cooked, and people almost never came over to our house, so it wasn't a problem if our house was cluttered or messy and it usually was. She was a bit of a compulsive shopper and having grown up in the Depression, she rarely, if ever discarded anything, so we had a lot of "stuff".

So when my husband and I got married 25 years ago, we both had a lot of challenges as far as the house cleaning goes. Neither of us had any concept of daily cleaning routines, or felt that housework was a priority. We also both worked full time and since we had custody of his son, we had a three year old child to care for most of the time.

By the time we had been married for several years, we had a perpetually messy house, were fighting constantly about the housework, and had accumulated a LOT of "stuff" that we were constantly trying to get a handle on. I think the real eye-opener for me was when we moved from California to Utah. We were living in a mobile home that had belonged to my parents and they had left a lot of their stuff behind for us to deal with. When we moved, it took us a 15 foot moving truck, which was absolutely crammed to the gills, plus we had filled up every inch of my car which my parents had driven with our boys who were then 3 and 11. At the last minute, we ended up filling up the bed of my husband's full-sized truck, plus a 10 foot U-haul trailer. In addition, we left behind a whole side yard full of trash and a few items we really wanted, but didn't have room for.

I had no idea that we had that much stuff until I saw it all in one place. From that point, I started shedding stuff. I started taking a really close look at what I had and how much of it, I really didn't need. We had also bought a really gorgeous house in a very nice neighborhood, so I was really motivated to want to keep it clean. I started doing regular clear-outs of our clothes, books, movies, and toys. By the time we made our next move, a year or so later, we had about 20% less stuff.

We made a couple of more moves over the next decade and each time, I made a big point of decluttering more and more stuff and got a better handle on the overshopping problem so I wasn't bringing so much stuff in. I also started to work on building some cleaning routines that worked well for myself and my family. About this time, we got a computer and started to get access to that "new" thing called the Internet (yes, I am THAT old!).

I found a website called Flylady.com that really saved my life. She started to teach me that being messy wasn't something I needed to be ashamed of. I wasn't a bad person and I wasn't alone. I was just doing the best I had known how to do and if I would just start building some simple daily routines I could get a better handle on things and be happier with my life and my house. I didn't have to be perfect and I didn't have to spend all my time cleaning. In fact, one thing I discovered is that as a messy person, I spent much more time cleaning than the clean people did because they don't wait until it gets so far out of control that it takes whole days to clean things up.

By the time I turned 40, I began to be very interested in changing virtually all aspects of my life, including my housecleaning habits. I began to read self-help books - LOTS of them. I read books, listened to audio tapes, and bought movies of all the major self-help authors of the 20th century, including Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Tony Robbins and more others than I can count.

I also got numerous books by all the "cleaning gurus" - Flylady, Sandra Felton, Julie Morgenstern, and many others. And I worked weekly with a personal coach. Very slowly, things in my life started to change, bit by bit. I began to have a most positive attitude. I began to look at the problems in my life in a different light and to see more possibilities to resolve them. I began to have more hope for the future and to take more responsibilities for my actions.

As I began to get my house in order (both literally and figuratively), I wanted to share what I had learned with other women who were facing the same challenges. I love to write, so I started reviewing the books I had and started putting building some lessons. I did some advertising and started teaching my first classes. I didn't have a lot of attendees in the beginning, but I was so encouraged when I started seeing what a difference these classes were making in the lives of my students.

I continue to work towards my goal of perfecting my routines and getting my house exactly the way I want it, but as long as I continue to make progress, I'm content. Perfection is never the goal, just progress, and when I look back to where I started and see how far I've come, I can see that I am well on my way.

Today's Tips from Mary Hunt

Here are some great practical tips from Mary Hunt at the Everyday Cheapskate:

In a recent column, I answered a question about how long to keep spices. I got a flood of tips in response, detailing clever ways to keep track of those seasonings. This was one of the more efficient suggestions, helpful not only in tracking dates but also in actually finding the spice you need quickly. SPICY ORGANIZING. When I open a jar of spices, I use a permanent marker to write the date on the lid and on the label so I know how long the jar has been opened. I even write the name of the spice on the lid and alphabetize them in a little box so that I don't have to lift each bottle to see the label name. Bonnie, Georgia DISH SOAP DOUBLES. I purchase a quality brand of dishwashing liquid, such as Palmolive or Dawn. At home, I pour about half of the soap into a separate jar and fill the bottle back up with water. Then, I slosh it around to mix the water and soap. It works even better than the original, thicker soap because you use less and it suds better. Judy, Oklahoma CREDIT FREEZE. I completely stopped credit card companies from sending me offers. I mailed every single offer back to the company in their prepaid envelopes for about two months, and wrote on each one to please remove me from their mailing list. I do not get offers anymore. Maralee, Arkansas CEREAL SAVER. Have you ever bought a box of cereal and found that your family does not like it? Instead of throwing good cereal away, buy a bag of marshmallows and make after-school snacks like Rice Krispies Treats®, only with a different cereal. Cereals like Kix work wonderfully, or you can use raisin bran types. Just take care not to break the flakes. For a sweeter snack, mix in some M&M's. This has saved me from wasting unwanted cereal and the outcome is not much different from the bars you buy for almost $3 a box. Lisa, New York CONSERVATION KEY. We recently installed a hot water recycling unit (approx. $400) and set the timer to circulate the water at specified times throughout the day. Now, when we get in the shower or use the sink, hot water is at our fingertips immediately. That saves our precious resource from rushing down the drain while we wait for hot water. Ruth S., email BLOODY BATTLE. I found a cheap way to get blood out of clothing. My husband had a shirt that got blood on it. I found it three months later and poured hydrogen peroxide on it. I let it sit for five minutes. Then, I washed it with soap and cold water and not a trace of blood was left! Leslie, email CRAFTY PLACEMATS. My granddaughter is not yet two, but she is learning to eat at the table on a plate. I've made several placemats for her out of the foam kind of shelf liner that keeps things from slipping. Now her plate doesn't scoot around as she uses her fork and spoon. Artistic types could cut the mats into fun shapes like animals or stars. Evelyn, Illinois PRACTICAL PEELS. I peel oranges in a long ribbon and hang them to dry. They make great fire starters and they smell wonderfully as they burn. Irene L., email

A Great Winter Organizing Idea

I found the most fabulous idea today and I thought I'd share it with you. I found it over at Organizing Junkie - click here to go and see a picture of it. It's a great blog and has some nice ideas over there.

If your house is like mine, you have a ton of gloves, hats, and scarves. Do yours get scattered all over the house? Ours aren't too bad, but sometimes they get out of control. I keep all mine in a little treasure chest that used to belong to my Mom. It works, but I find them digging through it and sometimes tossing them onto the floor until they find what they want. Over at Organizing Junkie, they took one of those over the door shoe hangers. The kind with about a dozen plastic pockets. You just fill up all the pockets with the hats and scarves and gloves. Seems like a great idea to me. You could even put it on your garage door so the kids could take their stuff off and put them in the pockets on the way through the door. Sounds like a great idea to me.

I had another idea that I've seen using that same type of shoe hanger. One of my aunts used to take all kinds of magazines with pretty glossy covers. Then she would roll them up, tie them with a pretty ribbon and display them in one of these shoe hangers. It was really darling!

Loving vs. Indulging Yourself

This quote ties in really well with the message from the other day about how you would treat a child who behaved the way you have ben behaving.  

"Loving yourself is not the same as indulging yourself"

If you are a little bit tough on yourself and make yourself do the things you know you need to do, you are likely to be happier beause you won't have the guilt of having your chores hanging over you.