Hour-a-Day April: Day Eleven

I finally tricked myself into doing some of the kitchen today. I told myself I would just wash a few dishes, just enough to get the sink clear. Ten minutes, then I could stop. I did twenty. Then, I had some momentum, so I went back later, and did twenty more. Then twenty more. I have actually reclaimed one entire counter and the dining room table. Huzzah!

I also did some laundry catch-up. I would normally just count laundry towards regular daily upkeep, but I threw in two extra loads today in a deliberate attempt to get a bit of extra done, so I'm counting it. I also soaked a shirt and some tights with stains that have been waiting to be treated for a while. It's mostly folded and sorted, but I won't be able to put it away until tomorrow, because people are sleeping in all the rooms with closets.

I did a very small amount of bedroom sorting - mostly just moving things to better-fitting boxes. All in all, it was a relatively productive day, even if I don't have any dramatic pictures to prove it. It was probably the Batman shirt I was wearing (which, by the way, is so effective, I bought a second one).

Daily Total: About 1 hour and 45 minutes
Monthly Total: 11 hours

Hour-a-Day April: Day Ten

I finally found a bit of motivation again today! I credit it to the fact that I said, "Screw the dishes, I want to work on my bedroom." Yeah, the dishes should probably be a priority, but I keep telling myself I have to do them first, then doing nothing, so I figured I would stop lying to myself about the dishes and at least do *something*.

I think I have figured out what I want to do with our bedroom. It's going to be a long, slow process, but at least I set the groundwork today.

A few years ago, we lived with some friends, and we had a wall of bookshelves in the dining room. When we moved here, we didn't really have anywhere to put the bookshelves, so we left them with our friends. Then our friends moved across the country, and left the bookshelves behind, so I reclaimed them.

I put them against the back wall in our bedroom, then moved the regular furniture (dressers and desks) back in front of them. My plan was to use them as longterm storage - things like Christmas ornaments that I only need to access once a year. I'm willing to move a dresser to get at Christmas ornaments once a year; you have to be creative when you live in a 2 bedroom apartment with limited storage space. I honestly never really used those bottom shelves, though, because lazy always won out over organized.

Then I remembered my joke about throwing a blanket over the boxes to make a computer "room" in the back of our bedroom, and I thought about my doubly-furnished bedroom wall. Maybe I could solve both problems at once!

I had to move a bunch of things around, and honestly, other than moving things from Spot A to Temporary Spot B to Semi-Permanent Spot C, I didn't get much sorting/organizing done. I did put my clean clothes in my drawers, and I relegated a few boxes of electronic stuff to the computer "room". I added a couple things to the "get rid of" pile, threw out a broken mobile, unpacked a box of hand-me-downs for Valerie, and consolidated some miscellaneous diapers we don't use to give away. I kept getting interrupted, so I'm not sure exactly how long I spent, but it was at least 1 hour and 15 minutes. I'm really excited about our new computer "room"!



I may make the computer "room" a little bit bigger once I get the rest of the room assembled as I'd like, but for now, it's a functional, kid-free space for all the computers and miscellaneous electronics to reside. Yay!

HADA Codicil

Inspired by some of the awesome ladies over on our Hour-a-Day April Facebook Group, I'm adding an extra rule for HADA 2012:

• 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.

Hour-a-Day April: Day Nine

I hate Mondays.

I didn't get much done today. But I did do two things that fit the HADA criteria:

1. Dorothy went down for her nap early, so Valerie and I had a tea party for lunch. I try to make a conscious effort to give her one-on-one time every day, but I must confess, it doesn't happen enough. It's rough being a big sister when your little sister is old enough to want to play, but not old enough to play properly. After our tea party, Dorothy woke up, and I instantly wished that I had used that time to take a nap myself instead. (The only way I ever get a nap is if I put Valerie in her room for quiet time right after Dorothy goes down for a nap. It's a balancing act, but I can swing it occasionally.) But then I remembered the look on her face when I told her to go upstairs and put on some dress-up clothes so we could have a tea party, and it makes up for it. Time well-spent.
(about 30 minutes)

2. I uploaded the rest of my February pictures to Flickr. I hate how long this process takes. It would only take a few minutes if I would just upload all of my pictures, but I am too critical, and I have to sort through and cull them before putting them on public display. Once I am caught up, I usually do pretty well at updating regularly, but when I am behind, the size of the project is daunting, and I don't do it at all. I'm inching my way toward the gazillion pictures we took at Easter, at least!
(about 30 minutes)

The day was pretty much downhill from there. I tried to get moving, but I just got more and more tired. I think I must be fighting an illness or allergies or something, because by the time Jeremy got home from work, all I could do was hand off the baby and go to bed. Then I slept for 3 hours while he took the kids to his parents' house for dinner. I got up to eat something, but I'm planning on going back to bed pretty soon. Just feeling pretty bleh overall. I hope I'm feeling better tomorrow!

Daily Total: 1 hour
Monthly Total: 8 hours

Hour-a-Day April: Day Eight

Well, today was Easter, which meant we spent the whole morning at church and the whole afternoon at Nana and PopPop's house. But that worked out fine, because I have decided that Sundays in April will not be my days "off" for HADA, but that whatever I choose to do on Sundays should deliberately be restful. That way, I get to keep a sabbath AND be lazy one other day. Win!

Today, I started a crochet project that I've been thinking about for a while. I spent several hours working on it, but I was usually doing something else at the time, too - it's not like I sat and just crocheted. It's too soon to tell if it's actually going to work or not (it's a bit of an experiment), but it's something I wanted to try, so there you go.

Then before bed, I decided to upload a few more pictures to Flickr. It took me until the end of March to finally upload my December photos, and I would really like to be caught up before the whirlwind of summer activities starts up. I managed to dig through January and half of February (this took me about 40 minutes). I still have a ways to go, but I'm getting closer!

Daily Total: 1 hour (okay, it was more than an hour, but I only like to claim more than an hour when I'm being super-productive)
Monthly Total: 7 hours

Hour-a-Day April: Day Seven

Bleh. Today was one of those days where I just couldn't get going. And then, when I did, it just seemed like I wasn't making any progress, which was disheartening, and made me lose what little momentum I had. Then I had some dumb little things come up, like my phone running out of memory, and having to upload all my photos and videos to my computer and figure out how to delete them from my phone. I got a bunch of dishes done, but there were so many to begin with, it barely looks like I made a dent. We went to the grandparents' house to dye eggs for a few hours, which was a fun diversion, but it didn't get the kitchen cleaned. Also, we lost the remote for the Roku (which is pretty much the only television we watch), and spent goodness knows how much time looking for it. (We still haven't found it. I finally downloaded an app for my phone to use it as a remote, but every time I try to sit and watch TV, it bugs me too much, so I get up and start looking for the actual remote again.)

I'm trying not to be too hard on myself, but I keep seeing other peoples' progress on HADA, and feeling like a bit of a failure. But one of my rules is "Don't give up. Missed a day? Just brush it off and get back on the proverbial horse the next day." Gotta remember that. It's still only the seventh, I can still get in a lot of productivity this month. You know, when it's not Passoveaster.

Okay, just so I don't feel like a total failure, here's what I did accomplish today:
-one dishwasher load of dishes, loaded, washed, and put away
-several big pots and both crock pots washed, dried, and put away
-solved the memory problem on my phone
-tidied up and vacuumed the whole living room (I was hoping this would turn up the remote - it did not)
-made a dessert to take to the egg-dying party
-tidied up the girls' room while Valerie was in the bath
-took out the trash (kitchen and upstairs bathroom) and recyclables (paper and co-mingled)
-made a list of all the words Dorothy can say (I've been promising my mom I would do this for weeks)
-did not find the Roku remote, but did download an app to use my phone as a remote, which I have been thinking about doing for a while
-made dinner

Daily Total: Way over an hour total, but it doesn't feel like an hour's worth of proper HADA projects. I mean, mostly, it's day-to-day upkeep stuff that I may not actually do every day, but I should do every day, and usually get to eventually. I think I'll call it half an hour.
Monthly Total: 6 hours

Hour-a-Day April: Day Six

I was pleasantly surprised today that my husband had the day off work. I had all kinds of great plans for being productive today, but they were trumped by the romantic notion of a family errand day. We had lunch at Target, bought tights for Easter, went to a hair salon, got 50% of our hairs cut, then went to Payless and bought 8 pairs of shoes (4 for Easter and 4 for a wedding). I took a long, well-earned nap, after the insanity of the past two days. I did get the dining room table cleared completely for dinner, but I didn't even start on the dishes. A tiny dent is better than no dent at all, though, right?

I could do the dishes now, but I need a sweater for Easter, and I would rather go to a 24 hour store tonight than brave Saturday-Before-Easter crowds tomorrow.

So, I'm calling today my day off. There were probably a few minutes here and there of deliberate productivity, but not enough to call it a HADA project. I'd rather just call it a day off, go to bed less guilt-laden, and tackle the kitchen tomorrow.

Hour-a-Day April: Day Five

Day Two of Passover Prep. I made 10 quarts of matzah ball soup, 6 quarts of tzimmes, 10 pounds of charoset, and 3 whole chickens worth of dried fruit and kalamata chicken (in addition to the six-pound brisket and the dessert I had pre-made the day before). Set the tables, gathered all the elements, then led the seder with my husband (while my awesome in-laws wrangled the kids for us). Then we brought home an insane amount of leftovers, for which I had to find storage containers and fridge space. I finally went to bed, bone tired, at 11:30. I'm pretty sure I logged at least an hour in there somewhere. ;)

Teaser for Day Six: After all that cooking, I don't think there is a single clean dish left in my kitchen. I have some serious clean-up to do!

If you're participating in HADA, let me know! I started a Facebook group, and reading about everyone else's progress has been really inspirational. You've seen pictures of my bedroom. If I can do this, you can too!

Hour-a-Day April: Day Four

I am currently in the middle of preparing a Passover meal to serve to 24 people tomorrow night. Every year, I seem to add two more things to the things I make for Passover, and this year, I think I officially took on too many things. So, my HADA for today and tomorrow is pretty much all wrapped up in Passover prep. Today, I hammered out my menu and my to-do list, did my massive shopping trip, cooked the brisket, cut up the chicken, made the broth, made the matzah turtle bark, and, just for fun, wrote an English version of Mah Nishtanah. I also did a load of laundry, put away a load of dishes, and ran another load of dishes. Oh, and I can't forget the forced fridge cleaning brought about by all the Passover food that needs fridge space. All told, I probably spent 8 hours or more being productive today, not including my normal day-to-day parenting of two children. But I won't be greedy, I'll just take my one hour for HADA.

Daily Total: 1 hour
Monthly Total: 4.5 hours

Hour-a-Day April: Day Three

Alright everybody, here it is, the whole reason you are following along with my HADA blog posts: Photographs of my messy house so you won't feel so bad about your own.



My bedroom. The dumping ground for everything that doesn't have a place yet. When I was going through last year's posts, I had to laugh at how many things are going to be a HADA project again this year. That's just the way my life is.

Believe it or not, my bedroom wasn't *too* bad up until we got bunk beds for the girls' room about a month ago. In order to make room for the bunk beds, I had to move the toy shelves somewhere. So I put the toy shelves in their closet, but then I needed somewhere to put all the boxes that were stored in their closet, so, surprise surprise, they ended up in my room. In a big pile in the middle of the room.

I got a bit of a head start on HADA this year. My mom came to visit for a week in March, and I got several projects done in anticipation of her visit, and several more done while she was here and I had extra helping hands. I got the space around the bed mostly cleared of clothes and stuff while my mom was here, and then I tackled the mountain of laundry that created (and actually got to the bottom of it!) before moving on to the other side of the room. I had shoved all the stuff to one side to make room for the pack 'n play a couple weeks ago, because I thought we might be able to use it for naps now that the girls share a room, but it didn't end up working out. So that was one chunk of room that was easy to reclaim. Then I set to work trying to clean with a 17-month-old undoing all my work behind my back.

Aside: A few tips for tackling projects like this with a toddler underfoot:
1. Use small trash bags and tie them off frequently.
2. Make frequent trips to the laundry room, rather than expecting a big pile of laundry to remain piled.
3. Even though it's inefficient, put things away as you go, rather than sorting things into piles to put away later. Believe me, resorting the piles 10 times is even more inefficient.
4. Whenever you come across a toy, put it in a prominent location, as toddler bait (to keep her away from the stuff you don't want her to play with). Sort and put away the toys last.
5. Use the bed for any pile-sorting you need to do, or better yet, use boxes to keep things separated. If you're lucky, she'll be distracted by all the stuff within easier reach, and leave the boxes on the bed alone.

So, I did an hour, but I forgot to budget post-sorting clean-up time, so then I had to do another 30-45 minutes so that we could, you know, sleep in our bed tonight, and so I could vacuum and feel good enough about my progress to take a picture.



I'm still not sure where the boxes are going to go, but I have 27 more days to figure that out. Plus, once I put the boxes away, I will lose the box-wall that is currently keeping a certain curious, button-pushing toddler away from the computer corner. Maybe I could just throw a big blanket over it and call it a room divider...

Daily Total: 1.5 hours
Monthly Total: 3.5 hours