Tuesday, July 8, 2008

A good start to a productive week

When I was growing up, every mom in our neighborhood had a daily and weekly routine for running the house. Monday, of course, was always laundry to get the sheets changed and clean clothes for the week. There was also a monthly cycle for bigger jobs and the infamous spring and fall deep cleanings. Many of these women followed their routine well in to their 80's.


As I have shared with you previously, my cleaning motivation is sadly lacking though I certainly know how to do it. Once I started raising a family and then went back to work, I tried to follow the pattern I had been taught but something always seemed to take a higher priority. I had no consistancy.


Last week I once again resolved to try to get my house back in order and keep it that way so I can invite people over without the 24 hour panic cleaning. Somewhere on a blog I read about FlyLady.com and decided to check it out. It isn't like there is anything new there but much like Weight Watchers, the reminders, testimonials and hints help keep me focused. What I like best are the reminders that my house didn't turn in to clutter mountain in a day or a week so baby steps are good. So far so good though my resolve usually weakens within about two weeks (kind of like New Year's resolutions). Today I'm supposed to be weeding out storage containers that are stained or lost lids. They are supposed to have lids? I just throw some Saran on top and call it good. Ok - I'll set the timer for 10 minutes and make a little dent.


Knitting continues to consume hours and my first grown up pair of socks are 1 1/2 completed. I worked on starting a storage tub for my small stash over the weekend and Pippin decided to help. It's a good thing I put the yarn away, because I discovered some cat has been playing "Yarn Barf" while I wasn't looking.


The other exciting thing this week is that our geriatric care business finally has a name! Hopefully it will be opening in September. It has taken us many weeks of discussion to come up with the name. We had lots of great ideas but many of them were either already registered in our state or trademarked nationally. By the time we checked both places, Googled and checked for domain names in every suggestion, it was a time consuming process. Now that we know who we are, we can start on the rest of the process.

That's pretty good considering that is only Tuesday! Upward and onward.

5 comments:

Em said...

Congratulations on having a name! That is a big step for a business. And Carepath has a certain ring to it, even if spellchecker hates it (i tend to hate spellchecker, so it's all goo).

When I was growing up, the house was always cleaned on Saturday, that way Sunday was available to relax or have adventures. There wasn't a lot of varying in this, bar the occasional family trip or spontaneous adventures. Since I work Saturdays (and am naturally somewhat less than neat), this hasn't been working out for me. But Colleen and I have mastered the art of 30-minute blitz cleaning.

roxie said...

Pippin looks soooo happy! What a good mom you are to have made such a nice kitty nest.

Donna Lee said...

My mother kept that kind of schedule mostly. I say mostly because my dad was the clean freak in the family. Woe betide (where did that come from?) the kid who dropped crumbs on the floor that dad had just cleaned. I do my best to clean once a week. I figure if you show up uninvited, you get what you get. If I invite you, then I make an effort! Somehow this spring I didn't get around to washing the curtains and windows. If I do it now, it's too close to the fall washing so I'm just going to wait. Nope, no guilt here.

Amy Lane said...

That's a lovely name, actually--I like it! (What a brave and intrepid yarn thief you have there--I like him immensely:-)

The idea of Flylady.com scares me right now--I'll wait until two or three children clear the door and then start weeding... (and doesn't everyone use butter tubs and whipped cream containers?)

Galad said...

I grew up thinking empty butter tubs and whipped cream containers were supposed to be your primary storage (not to mention the Dippety Do jars used for putting up jam :-)