New Year's Resolutions Part II

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about engineering your life to support your new habits (or breaking old ones), I had a thought. I was thinking about one of the really brilliant ideas I'd heard of and thinking how it could be incorporated into your change mechanism.

Here is the brilliant idea - (and if you're the parent to a teenager, you're welcome!) One way to get your teenager to observe their night time curfew is to set an alarm clock for their curfew time. Then you can go to bed or go about enjoying your evening. If said teenager arrives home before the curfew time, they get to shut off the alarm clock. If they don't get there in time to turn off the alarm, they are automatically on restriction. The only drawback is that they might pay off their brother or sister to turn off the alarm for them, but of course, if they get caught doing that, they would also be on restriction and maybe be in a little more trouble besides...

Now, how could you incorporate this strategy into supporting your new habit? If your habit was to clean up the kitchen every night before bed, I would set an alarm for your normal bedtime. If you do the dishes, you get to turn off the alarm and go to bed. If you don't do the dishes, then you have to stay up late to finish them. Works the same with laundry or any other chore. It also gets you to go to bed on time - a twofer!

Here's another idea for you. I have a terrible memory - really! I have so many things going on in my life, I have a hard time remembering things from one minute to the next. I don't know how many times I have been at work and thought about something I needed to do on my way to the bathroom. Three minutes later when I'm back at my desk, I've forgotten it completely - sheesh! So I checked out a book from the library on improving your memory by a famous memory guy. You'll laugh, but I've forgotten his name. Kevin something or other.

One of the things he tells you to do in this book is to use funny pictures to jog your memory. For instance, to remember the Seven Dwarves, you picture them around your house doing funny things. For instance, Gumpy is in your kitchen, scowling into his coffee. Doc is peeking into your medicine cabinet. Sleepy is taking a nap on your couch, Bashful is hiding in your closet, Happy is watching a funny movie in your den, Sneezy is refilling your pepper shaker, & Dopey is standing in the mop bucket in the middle of your kitchen floor. See how easy that is?

When the idea for this post came to me, I was just drifting off to sleep and I didn't want to forget it. So I decided to tie the idea to something I knew I would see in the morning. Since this is a post about clever ideas, I wanted to think of something clever. This is my cat Buster. He's very clever. He likes to play hide and seek with us when we are trying to pick him up and he likes to slither into cupboards and try to open doors with his paws. So I decided to attach the idea to him.



However, I was afraid I would see him, remember the word clever, but forget what the clever idea was. So I took it a step further. See that collar around his neck? It has a bell on it, so I decided to replace the bell with the image of an alarm clock. Then I would remember the whole idea. Sure enough when I sat down to my computer this morning, Buster wandered over to investigate and I instantly remembered the information for this post.

Oh and and the other memory tip - you aren't supposed to say that you have a bad memory. It reinforces the thought that you have a bad memory. Whoops! I forgot!

So, how can you use this memory tip to help you keep your New Year's Resolutions? Well, let's say that your resolution is to start your daily routine with three tasks - make the bed, do a 15 minute tidy up, and start a load of laundry. To remember this, could you form a picture of making the bed and tripping over a laundry basket filled with timers all set to 15 minutes? Bet that would help you to remember what you need to do. Oh and don't forget to set that alarm clock too!

A Little Help for your New Year's Resolutions

I've been scouring the Internet for good tips to help you with your New Year's resolutions and I thik I've found a really great one. This post from Zen Habits is a couple of years old, but it had such good information, I just had to share it with you.

Controlling my habits is probably the biggest challenge I've ever had to deal with, both breaking bad habits and creating good ones. And I'm not alone. I read somewhere that something like 90% of heart attack patients can't change their habits, even when it might cost them their lives. No wonder we struggle so when we make our little resolutions to lose weight, clean up our houses, and stop abusing our charge cards.

So, what's a girl to do? Well, actually this article has some excellent suggestions for building up your habits in a very deliberate way that will make your changes stick. It's called Engineering Your Life and if you do it properly, you will make it almost impossible for yourself to fail.

One technique that I have used is very similar to the ideas shown in the article. I am perpetually late for work, mainly because I like to dawdle in the shower. That's where I do my best thinking and it's not unusual for me to be in there for half an hour or more, which always makes me late for work. So I set up a plan with my youngest son Blake. When I go to get into the shower, I set out a load of laundry along with a timer set to 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, he goes down to start the washer. I'll tell you, that gets me out of the shower extra quick, when that water turns cold as ice! Plus I get a good start on a load of laundry for the day.

Click HERE to read the article.

Party was a great success!

Well, our New Year's Eve party last night was a great success! The house looked wonderful and even though I had worked until about 4:30, with a little help from my family, we had the food all prepared, the tables set up, and the plates and glasses all ready in record time. I even had time to sit down and read a magazine for a while before the party started.

We had about a dozen people and even though we had a couple of "oops" moments - one of my dishes leaked all over the oven and stank up the kitchen, and I totally forgot to fix my signature Red Beans and Rice, other than that, everything really went off quite well and we all had a fabulous time, including the kids who got to stay up until midnight playing the Wii and eating everything in sight.

It's such a shame when we deny ourselves and our family such a fun time with dear friends because our house isn't fit for company. Let's work on that in 2009.

I'm Having a Party Tonight

Does the thought of having people over to your house freak you out? Flylady calls that CHAOS - Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. Before I came up with my cleaning and decluttering system, I used to do that too. Having guests over was a virtual guarantee of several days of panicky activity as I would run around doing crisis cleaning and yelling at my family the whole time. But now it's no big deal and I have company over all the time. It's fabulous!

We're having about 12 to 15 people over for New Year's and getting ready for it was pretty easy. Even with it being on a weekday after a whole day of work. All I really had to do was stick to my daily routines. That took care of the basics like dishes, laundry, and making beds. Then I used my 15 minute clean-up time to clean one room each morning and delegated another one to my husband when he got home. His TV room was in pretty bad shape, so I'm sure it took more than 15 minutes, but he did a great job on it and it will be all set for a week or two. It took the boys a bit longer than that to do the downstairs family room, but that's Matt's fault. I swear that boy simply explodes when he hits a room! His keys are in one place, his wallet is in another and his shoes, CD's and magazines are everywhere. I guess that's a teenager for you!

Matt is in charge of floors, so I've had him doing a bit of sweeping and mopping in different areas every night and Blake has been keeping up on the trash and the cat boxes. All I had to do was do a bit of dusting, clear some everyday stuff off the kitchen counters and give the bathrooms a quick scrub. Then I can spend a couple of hours this evening setting up tables and chairs and preparing the food and still be nice and fresh to enjoy my evening with my guests.

This is exactly what I try to teach in my classes. I've spent too many Saturdays frantically scrubbing and cleaning to want anyone else to have to go through that hassle again. With the daily routines I teach, along with proper decluttering and learning how to get your family on board, having friends and family over can be fun and virtually stress-free. Click HERE to get more info on my new round of classes starting in January.

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.