Hour-A-Day April 2016: Day Two

My first HADA project today was actually picked by the kids. They found a jar of coins and decided to play "bank". Seeing this as an opportunity, I grabbed the coin wrappers and taught then how to count and roll coins, just like real bankers! Later, once they had wandered off, I dragged out the rest of the random jars of coins and finished rolling them myself. In the end, today's first HADA project earned me $102. Double win!

Most of the rest of the day was pretty unproductive. I did clean the clutter shelf where the coins had been stored, though. I discovered a terrifying Tupperware underneath some boxes of tea. Whatever was trapped inside had completely liquefied, and the lid was bulging about as far as possible without popping off in a shower of green and blue goo. I carefully placed the entire thing in the trash can. That's a mystery I don't mind leaving unsolved.

I had the house to myself from the afternoon on, and I chose to split most of that time between napping and reading. It was wonderful. But right before bed, I had a strong desire to accomplish one more thing, so I finished cleaning the kids' room and vacuumed their floor. Then that looked so good, I brought the Lego tables back into their room and glued the base plates on (a project that has been on my to-do list since Christmas).

Pro Tip: If you glue the base plates flush against each other, the edge is just a smidge too small and you won't be able to build across the joining lines. But, if you use Lego bricks to lock the base plates together as you are gluing them, you will get the exact spacing you will need.

And now, it's time for a little bit more reading and sleep, my two favorite activities in life right now.

Hour-a-Day April 2016: Day One

I picked one project to tackle today. One, simple, little project: gluing the base plates onto the girls' Lego tables. I didn't do it.

The good news is, I didn't do it because I did so much else!

You know when you want to do something, but you can't really do it until you do that other thing, and really, you should probably do that other other thing before that, and it would be much more efficient if that other other other thing was done, too? I call those things the "but firsts". I had a lot of "but firsts" for the Lego table project.

First, I needed to clean the kids' room, which is the current home of the Lego collection. I did that. I actually made the kids help, too. Bonus points for that. I got my hour in there alone. Unfortunately, I didn't finish that task, either, because I got side-tracked by the bathtub crayons on the tub walls.

I decided to try a little experiment. Three different substances that the Internet seemed to think might help get the old, dried-on crayon off the tub walls: cooking spray, shaving cream, and WD-40. I labeled three sections of the tub walls and treated each section with its respective substance.

Then I left that to sit while I did something else. I don't even remember what anymore. I was all over the place today.

I went to the store to get some supplies for some trophies I was making for a Girl Scout event tonight. It was a recycling-themed carnival and the trophies were made out of plastic bottles cut into goblet shapes and spray-painted gold. They actually turned out really cool, but I totally forgot to take a picture. Darn it. I made cardboard gold medals, too. And spray-painted the chest of drawers I had made out of cookie cases. And did some boring paperwork stuff. And made a trip to the bank to deposit cookie money. And did some weeding. And paid the rent. And dug up some baby strawberry plants to give to a friend. And took a shower. And did some reading. Wait, was this really all today? No wonder I'm tired and slightly incoherent right now.

Oh yeah, the bathtub walls. The cooking spray did nothing, the shaving cream worked pretty well, but the WD-40 was even better. Is there anything WD-40 can't do? Since it worked so well, I went ahead and finished scrubbing the bathtub walls.

Somewhere in there, I made lunch and dinner, too, and attended the Cardboard Carnival (which was awesome).

A pretty good start to this year's HADA, I think! I'm not even going to pretend I will keep up this momentum. Today was exhausting. Maybe I can get to those Lego tables tomorrow, though...

Hour-a-Day April 2016

I don't blog much anymore, but I can't imagine an April without HADA anymore, and I can't imagine HADA without blogging, so here I am. The rest of this post is basically just cut and pasted from last year's intro post, because I already said what I need to say, so why say it again?

For those of you new to the concept of Hour-a-Day April (HADA, for short), it's a productivity challenge that I started doing a few years ago when I realized just how much you can get done in an hour if you really put your mind to it. It might feel like trying to squeeze blood from a stone, sometimes. There really aren't any extra hours in the day, no matter how you slice it. But it's only for a month, and when it's short-term, it's easier to give a few precious minutes to making your life a bit nicer/simpler/cleaner in the long run.

My original post is here, but here are the updated rules for 2016:

Hour-a-Day April 2016 Rules

1. Think of something that you normally have a hard time finding time for. Sewing, cleaning, painting, organizing, playing basketball, crossing things off your honey-do list, it's up to you! It can be one big project, or a bunch of little projects. It might help to make a list at the beginning of the month of things you would like to tackle as HADA projects.
2. Spend an hour every day working on your chosen project(s). Set a timer and stick to it. Kids need your attention? Stop the timer and give them your attention. You have all day to squeeze in that hour, and if your kids are anything like mine, it might happen five or ten minutes at a time. But by the end of the day, make sure you've clocked that hour. Know yourself. If the best way for you to get in your hour is to get up early, get up early. If you clean best after everyone else goes to bed, do it then. It's only for a month.
3. Take one day off a week. If you're religious, you may already have a set sabbath, if not, just pick a day to be your "break" day. Or don't pick a day, and let it be a floating day off, so if you miss a day, you can just say, "Oh well, that was my day off." (I tend to do this last one.)
4. Keep others updated on your progress. Comment on this blog. Blog about it yourself, and send me the link. Join the HADA Facebook group, and chat about what you're working on. Post about it on Twitter (#HADA). Phone up your mom. Put a gold star on a chart.
5. Don't give up. Missed a day? Just brush it off and get back on the proverbial horse the next day. Even if you only do half the days, that's still 15 hours more productivity than your April would have otherwise had.
6. Don't let HADA set you back on all the stuff you normally do find time for. If you're having a hard time keeping up with the daily stuff, count some of it towards your hour (but not all of it, or the point of HADA is lost).
7. Don't let anyone or anything steal your joy and sense of accomplishment for the things you have done. HADA isn't about becoming perfect, it's about deliberately spending an hour every day tackling the projects you rarely get to. If you did your hour today, YOU WIN. Period. It doesn't matter if someone else did two hours, or if the sink is still full of dirty dishes, or if there are still 17 more hours of organizing to do. If you managed to squeeze a whole extra hour of blood from the stone of your already-busy day, be proud of yourself.
8. Celebrate when it's all over! If you live near me, let's go out to dinner together and order gooey chocolatey desserts. If you live far away, have your own celebration and tell me about it. Go ahead and splurge, you've earned it!

Filling Out pdf Forms Without Printing Them, Using a Pen, and Scanning Them

Disclaimer: Yes, there are many other ways of accomplishing this, but this is the one that works for me, using the programs I like to use.

Step 1:

Download the pdf form that you need to complete. Realize that it isn't a fillable form. Cry.

Step 2:

Stop crying. Open The Gimp. (Don't have The GIMP? You can download it here. It's a free, open-source image-editing program. Like Photosop. But free.) Open the pdf form you need to complete by clicking "File" and "Open". An "import from pdf" dialogue will open. Click "Import".

Step 3:

Choose the text editing tool from the list of tool options. It looks like a capital A. (You can also choose "Text" from the "Tools" drop-down menu.)

Step 4:

Create a text box in the first section that you need to complete by clicking in one corner and dragging to the opposite corner. Then you can start to type, and whatever you type will show up in the box you just created.

You can change the font, size, etc. if needed by selecting your text and choosing your options from the toolbar.

Repeat for all of the sections you need to fill out.

Step 5:

When the form is complete, go to "File" and choose "Export as".

You can choose the format from the dropdown list at the bottom left where it says "Select File Type", but if "(By Extension)" is selected you can just type whatever name you would like followed by ".pdf" and it should save it as a pdf automatically. Click "Export". Then click "Export" again.

Done!

HADA 2015: Days 27-28

Day 27:
Cleaned living room, washed living room windows, washed winter coats, paid Camporee balances for my Girl Scout troop. Ordered pizza for dinner.

Day 28:
A friend came over to help me clean today (we alternate weeks helping each other, but we had missed the past few weeks for a variety of reasons). We tackled the clothes/Lego/guest room. We got JW's too small clothes rotated out, and his next size rotated in (one more box to go, that I found later). Got all of the girls' clean-but-not-put-away laundry put away. Sorted through the next-size-up clothes for both girls, and purged some of the outgrown clothes to hand-me-down to a friend. Completely cleaned off the guest bed. (At some point in here, my friend had to leave, but I kept going for a while.) Tidied up the Lego table, and rebuilt some of the broken buildings that had suffered a toddler fate (my kids are "build it then play with it forever" kids, not "build, unbuild, and rebuild" kids like I was). Cleaned the entire guest room floor and vacuumed it. Cleaned the kids' room (with the kids' help!) Stripped D's bed to wash the mattress cover. Put away all the Duplo. Returned third floor toys to the third floor, books to the peaceful room, and laundry to the hamper. Vacuumed the kids' room. Leftovers for dinner.

HADA 2015: Days 19-26

So, a whole week has slipped by since I last wrote about my HADA progress. In that week, I think I probably put in my seven hours, in fits and starts, and a few marathons. I wrote a dozen blog posts in my head, but never sat down to actually type them up, because the bad days sounded like making excuses, and the good days sounded like celebrating mediocrity.

Depression really sucks. It minimizes your successes, and magnifies your failures.

I promised myself I would write something today. And maybe I will get around to saying something about HADA in a little bit, but right now, I want to share two images of my mental/emotional state right now.

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Image One:

I am a rock, on the floor of a cavern. Above me, there is slow, but steady, drip. Each drop hits me in the exact same place, and that place is being slowly carved out by the endless series of drips. Whenever I cry for help, I feel silly asking, because it's just a drip. One drop of water doesn't hurt. And whenever help comes, I am ashamed at how easy it is for others to bear the weight of that drip, and I am grateful for the reprieve, but eventually, my help moves on, and the drip resumes its slow burrowing into my core.

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Image Two:

I am swimming across a river with a strong current. I am swimming as hard as I can, but it doesn't look like I'm getting anywhere. I want to stop and rest for a moment, to get my bearings, and check my progress, but if I stop swimming for even a moment, I know the current will carry me away. So I keep on swimming, and pray that the direction I am heading is still the right one, because I can't afford to stop.

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At least once this week, I got caught up on dishes. And then I got behind again. I baked bread with the kids at least once, and I got fast food for lunch at least once. I tackled several clutter hot spots, and ended up with a clean front hall, a mostly-clean laundry room, a clear path to the basement, and a place to put all of the things I have been tripping over in the kitchen for weeks. Meanwhile, I lost the battle with the living room, the kid's room, and the guest room. I deep-cleaned the bathroom and half-cleaned the upstairs hallway. I organized about half of my Girl Scout supplies, and I started the process of retiring the winter clothes for the season. I weeded one section of the garden, but still need to till my new garden bed, so I can transplant the seedlings we started. But I forgot to water the seedlings a few times, and I'm not sure how many of them will survive until the transplant, anyhow. This past weekend was my only non-busy weekend until July, and I blinked once, and it was over, with my to-do list barely touched. Jeremy just went on a three-day business trip, and he didn't mow the lawn before he left, so I need to find the time to do that, now, too, with the kids underfoot. I got some groceries, but I'm still not sure what I'm making for dinner tonight. We missed the bus this morning, then the car wouldn't start. Drip drip drip.

I did take some pictures of my progress, on one of the "good" days. I forgot to take "before" pictures, so these pictures will only be impressive to those of you who have been to my house and know what my "normal" looks like.

Front hall:

From HADA 2015

Path to basement door: (This space was knee-deep with clutter all the way to the door, so that I couldn't even open the door without moving at least two boxes.)

From HADA 2015

Do you ever get home from grocery shopping, put away all of the perishables, but then leave the non-perishables in bags to "get to later"? This is the space where I leave those bags. It had bags going back almost a month.

From HADA 2015

John Wallace helping with the dishes during one of the brief times when I was caught up enough to include the kids:

From HADA 2015

April is almost over, and, at the moment, I am not overly optimistic about the progress I might make over the next few days, but I figured I could at least post an update today, so that I have a clean slate for my next blog post, with a bit less baggage.

Simple Sit-Upon Tutorial

HADA Days 16, 17, and 18 didn't happen. I've decided that days with Girl Scout activities take up too much of my attention to do anything extra on those days, and this week, we had a meeting on Thursday, and an overnight Friday-Saturday, so those three days were out. So, in lieu of a HADA post today, I am making a tutorial for the sit-upons we made at our overnight.

First off, if you have never been a Girl Scout, you might not know what a sit-upon is. It's basically a square of something somewhat squishy and waterproof for you to "sit upon" at outdoor events where there might be nothing more than hard ground or damp picnic tables to sit on. The classic sit-upon design involves sewing around the edges with laces, but I wasn't sure my Daisies would have the patience and/or dexterity for that, so we went with a duct tape edging. This still required a bit more dexterity than many of them had, but I think the end results were pretty decent.

Gather your materials

For each girl, you will need:

• Two 13"x13" squares of sturdy vinyl tablecloth (the dollar store kind is not sturdy enough). I traced my square cutting board, which happened to be exactly the right size.
• One 12"x12" double layer of quilt batting. (Or other padding of some sort.)
• Four 13" long strips of duct tape.
  Tip #1: Stick the tape on wax paper, so you can distribute them to the girls without them getting stuck to everything and each other.
  Tip #2: Buy them in the hardware section, not the craft section, where they are twice as expensive.
• One 24" long segment of parachute cord (or other sturdy cord). Melt the ends to prevent fraying (if you use a lighter, do this at home, before the meeting, because lighter fluid is not allowed at Girl Scout events).

You will also need:

• Sharp scissors
• Some sort of hole punching implement
• Sharpies

From GS Crafts

Assembly

Place your two squares of tablecloth together, with the pretty sides out. Tape along one edge, so that the duct tape overhangs the edge, and sticks approximately half to the sit-upon, and half to the table.

From GS Crafts

Unstick from table and flip over. Press tape down over onto other side, sealing edge closed.

From GS Crafts

Repeat until three edges have been sealed with tape, leaving one edge open.

Slide quilt batting into opening, taking care to flatten it all the way into the back corners.

From GS Crafts

Close the fourth edge with duct tape, as directed above.

Punch two holes a few inches apart on one edge of the sit-upon. (If your puncher is having a hard time getting through the layers of plastic, try putting a piece of folded card stock behind it.)

From GS Crafts

Thread your para cord through the holes and tie off, to use as a hanging/carrying handle. I used para cord because it is great for practicing knot tying, and could have a variety of uses on a camping trip.

From GS Crafts

Write your name on it in Sharpie.

From GS Crafts

Done!

From GS Crafts

HADA 2015: Day 15

Let's just pretend Days 10-14 never happened. They were wonderful, and terrible, and busy, and unproductive. I tried to clean my room once, but I only made 3 square feet of progress in 20 minutes, after which I was distracted by more urgent things.

But yesterday, I got back on the horse. Cleaned the kitchen table so I could have a staging ground to tackle this:

That's the desk in the corner of my kitchen. Where Valerie is supposed to do her homework. Where I need to hook my laptop up if I need to print anything. (See it there, balanced precariously on top of the huge pile of crap?)

And I did it. I have no idea how long it took, because my time was riddled with interruptions. Paper plate insects with the girls. Marbles in the side yard. Lunch. Vinegar and baking soda volcanoes. Dinner. But it did get done.

I still need to do the top shelf, but it's actually not as bad as it looks, because I just did it a few weeks ago. It just has a lot of boxes, so it looks deeper than it really is.

One of my non-HADA life goals is to include my kids more in the day-to-day stuff of life. Since it's April, this means including them in my HADA projects, if possible. We did alright on this today. Dorothy helped to wash the dishes. Valerie helped to sort the pens/markers/crayons/etc. (Aside: Is there a generic term for those? Implements of colorization? Draw-thingies? My drawers are not currently labeled, because I have one that contains paints, markers, crayons, pens, pencils, etc., which all seem to fit together categorically, but I don't know what to call them. "Writing implements" doesn't cover paints, but "coloring implements" doesn't cover pens. Yes, I am totally over-thinking life.)

While I was cleaning the desk, I shoved a few things into the "Mama Only" drawer, which can now barely close. So I dumped it out and organized it, too.

Before:

After:

It might not look that much better at a glance, but I can easily grab what I need, now, and that was my intention.

As for daily stuff: I did get the table cleared both before dinner from the desk-mess, and after dinner from the dinner-mess. The dishes are not done, and the laundry is currently backed up a bit due to a stomach bug, but I can get to the sink, so it's not the worst it has been this month.

And, with a clear table to play on, my family was able to sit down to an enjoyable game of Zooreka after dinner. I understand the sentiment of the whole, "Ignore the messy house, and focus on your kids," advice, but for those of us who tend towards letting the dishes pile up without well-intentioned poems telling us to, it's nice to be reminded once in a while that family board games start with clean kitchen tables.

HADA 2015: Day 9

Today was my Girl Scout troop's badge ceremony. Which was totally fine, because all of the prep was already done, right? Oh yeah, except for that whole bunch of last minute things I forgot about. Oops. So, a good chunk of today was spent making permission forms for upcoming events, and then gathering things that each, individually, wouldn't take long to gather, but together... well, you get the picture.

Other than Girl Scout stuff, I had decided that I would focus a little more than half of my HADA energy today on daily things. Since I didn't get the dishes done after dinner last night, I cleaned the kitchen table this morning, and I did make sure to get the dishes all done during the day today, so that I would have a clean slate for dinner. And after the badge ceremony, I somehow scraped together enough energy to clean the table and wash the dinner dishes, so I will have a clean slate for BREAKFAST tomorrow. Exciting, I know.

My printer has been acting up lately, giving me paper jam errors after every page or two. So I flipped it over and cleaned off the rollers that grab the paper (and, over time, assorted lint), so I could print my permission forms. I'm not sure that should count, though, since, "Crap, I need this thing right now, I better fix it," is pretty much my M.O. already, but I am happy it is done, and my printer works properly again.

And, for good measure, I also cleaned up the living room while Jer was putting the kids to bed. So, pretty good on daily stuff today. I also managed to play some board games with Dorothy on the clean kitchen table while her brother napped. I'm always happy when I manage to fit quality time with my middle child into my day.

Bible reading isn't going so great. I think I lack the attention span for extended scripture reading at this particular time of my life. So, I decided to try a new tactic. I just wrote out a Bible verse on an index card, and stuck it by my computer. One verse. That's it. I'll read it several times a day, and let it simmer in my brain for a while. Maybe a narrower, more meditative focus, scattered throughout my day, will work better for me right now.

Oh yeah, I folded a couple loads of laundry, too. A very disjointed day, but pretty productive overall.

HADA 2015: Day 8

My mom left this morning, but we still managed a decently productive day. I even made breakfast, lunch, and dinner! We had a play date in the morning, then John Wallace took a nice, long, much-needed nap, so I got to spend some quality one-on-one time with Dorothy making silly sentences with her sight words. (Pro-tip: Make "poop" one of your sight words. Hilarity will ensue.) Then Dorothy took a nap, and I had an unprecedented stretch of kid-free time to do one of my HADA projects, so I sat down and made a family budget spreadsheet. Woohoo, party time! Now that the hard part is done, we'll see how we do with the nearly-impossible part of actually keeping track of expenses and staying on budget. Once the excitement over the tech aspects of designing a spreadsheet wear off (What? That's totally a thing!), I'll need to find a way to keep caring about keeping it up to date. I'll let you know how that goes.

Anyhow, since this is the first time I have sat down in years and compiled a proper budget, and some things were not where I thought they would be, this project actually took several hours. (Fun fact: When I purchased renter's insurance 11 months ago and paid for a year up front, I never signed into their online system, so it couldn't find me when I tried to sign in today. Then I discovered that, although I purchased insurance from Company A, it was underwritten by Company B, but something-elsed by Company C, which was where I had to go create an online account. Good times.)

As for daily stuff, I did clean the living room before bed today, I did eat breakfast, I did make Valerie's lunch for tomorrow, and I did put away dinner. But I think that's all I will be getting done. I am seriously behind on sleep and need to go to bed early when I can.