Just Do It

Trent and I lead a pretty crazy busy life. That's no secret.  Amidst all the craziness, normal life tasks sometimes fall through the cracks, sometimes for days on end or weeks at a time.   We get behind on laundry, my back seat fills up with random junk, dishes hang out in the sink, the bushes in front of the house sprout crazy limbs and need a haircut, our huge trees dump leaves on our porch.  You name it.  It happens and then usually we aren't able to remedy it for a while.  That kind of drives me nuts honestly...I'm an accountant, I like everything to have a place and everything be in its place.  The problem is I don't want to spend time putting everything in its place!   When we have bits of free time, I'd much rather read or knit or hang out with my husband.  Usually I give in and just do those fun things and look into the future for a Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon or free weekday evening when I can turn into a tornado of organization and accomplishment and set everything to rights.  Well, I usually don't get as much done as I wanted to and then get sad that I had to spend so much time on it and use up a big chunk of time.  So lately (as in, the past three days), I have been applying a new strategy:

Basically I'm trying to put the "I don't wanna"s aside and chip away at things more gradually as they are needed instead of hunt for these big chunks of  available time here and there to do damage control.  I'm trying to JUST DO IT when it needs done. No excuses.

Example #1:  We live on a corner lot by a rather busy residential street. Apparently these days people aren't taught that littering is BAD so random trash blows up into our yard a lot.  Buuuugs me.  So yesterday I got home from work, changed into shorts and flip flops (even though it's November...silly Texas) and headed out to the yard with a bucket before I could think of a reason not to.  Only took about 20 minutes but I cleared up the front and back yards and the random area in front of where Trent parks his truck. (And then I washed my hands really well.) And it was done!  Now I don't have to stare at the stuff anymore, for a little while at least until more blows in. 

Example #2:  I warmed up leftover spaghetti for lunch today (happy girl) then stared at the dishwasher full of clean dishes and the sink full of dirties.  Just dooooooo it.  So I did. Clean ones to the cabinets, dirties to the dishwasher, 15 minutes, take that, done, bam, and now I don't have to come home to those after youth tonight and can actually read or hang out with my hubby instead!  

Why didn't I implement this strategy sooner?  I guess it's more of a mindset. I'm going to do my best to keep it up and hopefully it will take away a bit of the crazy from our life and also take away some of the chore attacking marathons. Maybe I'll print out a "Just Do It" sign and tape it to a kitchen cabinet...eh that might be overkill...