Do You Act This Way In Public? (or why we treat other people's homes better than ours)

I mentioned yesterday that it was time to start treating my house better than other people's homes. What does that mean? I'm sure you've been there. You washed your hands in the bathroom which resulted in water on the bathroom counter or the mirror (yes I'm messy) and you/I immediately wipe it off. Or you drop something on their floor and you immediately clean/pick it up. Do you do the same thing for your house? I am more of the "I'll do it later" type person.

I am making the vow that I will no longer treat my home differently than those I visit. After all, isn't my family more precious to me than anyone else in the world? Of course it is. My family shouldn't get second best in living conditions or second best when I'm too lazy tired to make dinner.

Still working on my "new" homemaking job. Today I finally got the boxes of Christmas decorations into the basement and realized I need a new tub to fit the remaining decorations. I swept and mopped the hardwood areas and started cleaning off the dining room table. I also cleaned out the refrigerator so that I have room for real food instead of harboring the science experiments of leftovers that have been shoved into the lost maze of the tiny shelves of my refrigerator. I still can't figure out how my little refrigerator seems to swallow the leftover containers.

Anyway, I have already made more progress by this homemaking job experiment than I did trying to make just the tiny baby steps. Now don't get me wrong. I still am making sure my maintenance work involves the dishes, the laundry and making my bed (14 days in a row, woohoo!!!!!!!). Wait, don't think that the dishes and laundry are 14 days. Just the making the bed part. Of course it helps that I had attempted to start that habit back in December.

Enough rambling. Time to change the laundry. After all, I wouldn't leave someone else's clothes sitting in the washer for hours and hours until it went sour and I had to wash it again. I wouldn't want for them to discover such a thing and I certainly would feel bad about using another scoop of detergent, more electricity and more water.

It's All About the Focus . . . Squirrel!!

I'm a rather flighty person. I've been known to be in the middle of a sentence only to stop talking because I've lost my train of thought. Who does that? While I think that's a bit on the rest and nutrition side it doesn't change the fact that I can get off task rather easily.

The internet is a big distraction for me. There, I said it. But then I can also walk into a room and forget what I went in there for. In essence it means that I have to hyper focus on what I am doing at one particular moment.

Enter my concept to look at my homemaking and role as a mom as a job. Gasp! Homemaking as a job. How dare I not see motherhood as the sacred calling that thousands of other women do? Yeah, well, as much as I love my kids and my husband, the sacred calling thing just doesn't scream that I should be grateful for mountains of dirty laundry. Go ahead, throw stones.

When you start a new job you receive training, an employee manual and a list of job duties. I am in the process of putting together a more comprehensive manual (or household binder if you will) but for now I went around my home with a spiral notebook (an idea inspired by a great friend of mine). In the notebook I looked at the house as an outsider. If someone hired me to come in and take care of their home what would they expect me to do? I went room to room asking that very question and writing down the answers in my notebook. They I got to work. Now it just so happened that today was a virtually unplanned day that worked for me to tackle things. No grocery trips, no website work to do, no sick kids.

I cleaned off the kitchen counter tops and the stove. I did three loads of laundry and folded it. I also cleaned the trash of my nightstand and my desk. Oh and since I freed up one of the laundry hampers in the kitchen (where my washer and dryer are) I was able to put that hamper in the bathroom where the kids could throw their dirty clothes instead of on the floor.

It's time to treat my house better than I would treat someone else's. But that's another post.