Hour-a-Day April: Day Seven

You remember, at the beginning, where I said I would need to have a little extra grace with myself for HADA this year, because I've been sick, and I run out of steam so quickly? Apparently, I forgot. I was pretty down on myself for not getting enough done yesterday, for not finishing any of my projects, but I woke up this morning with renewed resolve. Not so much to get more done, but to feel better about what I DO get done. Anything is better than nothing. Everything counts for something.

Somehow, that resolve managed to coincide with John Wallace deciding to end his nap strike today. So, when he went down for his morning nap, I tackled the kitchen. Again. Yes, the kitchen. I would really like to stop hating my kitchen. (There's more to this story than just illness and neglect. It involves rats. If/when I get to my pantry, maybe you'll get to hear more of it.) But this time, I looked at the clock. Told myself, HADA or no HADA, I was going to spend an hour working on the kitchen. And I did. Progress was made. And no, I'm not done. But I'm getting there.

Once John Wallace woke up from his nap, it was a bit harder to make progress, but I am tired of plucking beads and bits of fluff and stickers and dice and miscellaneous crumbs from his mouth, so I was determined to vacuum the living room floor. I gave up on getting a completely clean floor, and just worked on smaller zones, clearing up a few square feet, then vacuuming that section quickly before it became re-cluttered again the second I turned my back. That took roughly an hour and a half, with many interruptions. And, looking back over the living room now, you would never know it was ever clean. *sigh*

Then, a miracle happened. I got both kids down for simultaneous naps! Amazing!

My "must-do" HADA project today was the side porch. One of the first things I let slide when I'm not feeling well is trash/recyclables. I've missed roughly a month of pick-ups, and after a while, it just devolved into me opening the door of the porch and throwing things out there, planning to deal with it later, and trusting the cold weather to keep it from stinking too much. I'm a bit embarrassed to show this "before" photo, but here goes:

The saddest thing about this mess? It only took 20 minutes to organize. Here's the "after". It doesn't look that much better, yet, but it's all organized, and half of it will go to the curb tomorrow, and the rest will go to the curb on Thursday, and then I will be able to walk through my porch again!

Then I put in another 15 minutes putting away craft supplies and other random stuff that I had swept up into a pile on the kitchen floor.

And now I am spent. I am going to allow myself some down time, and hopefully I will manage to rally myself in time to make something tasty for dinner. I'll hold off on posting this for now, just in case. (Okay, managed dinner, but that's it. I'm calling it a night.)

One week down, 23 days to go!