Conquering the Clutter.

After spending this entire month trying to be more organized, I have yet to have a day plan, my house is yet to have a place for everything, and so many things are just, well, thingy.  Every day I accomplish something, I find my self taking one step foreward, two steps back.  Every. Single. Day. 

Mout washmore is getting ever bigger, Mt. foldmore is twice that, and the folded laundry, well, its about triple.  My clothes really need to stop procreating already.  Especially those socks!  I mean, if you're going to procreate, sure have at it, but dear mr. socks, stay with your mate.  I'm not a fan of polygamy and I'd like it to be easier to keep you and your pair together.  Next time, you're being safety pinned if that's what it takes!

And the craft room.  Oh the craft room.  I really don't have too many crafts.  At least, I don't have too many compared to many people.  What I lack is places to put them!  I need shelves!  Or something.   Big rubbermaid totes and the ONE bookshelf aren't doing it.  And I'm too much of a bibliophile to put my books away.  I -NEED- those amazing things there too.  So, I've reached a conundrum, and quite frankly, I feel stuck.  In a giant hole of what the hell do I do with this?  Where do I put it!?  I mean, most of it is used or will be used, as I've already gotten rid of everything that I don't/won't use.  (Yay for decluttering!) 

And the rest of the house.  Lets just stop right here.  Ok, so the rest of the house really isn't bad at all. I just happen to be OCD it seems.  I feel like I -have- to be organized, but I just don't know how to get there.


Enter the Flylady!  If you've never heard of the Flylady, go check out her website.  This woman's principals are definitely for those overwhelmed procrastinators like me.  I don't like cleaning, and I certainly don't like spending all day doing it, especially when theres -a lot- of mess.

For now, while I continue to work on establishing my routines again, I'm going to try to spend at least 15 minutes in each horror room that needs tackling.  Why?  Well, you can do ANYTHING for fifteen minutes.  (And yes, this can be used against you.  Just as my husband.  >___> )

Anything. 

Time management seems to really be the key behind all my sanity and lackthereof.  So, I've been timing myself.  I'll set a timer for fifteen minutes, and see what I can accomplish.  As I finish a task, I'll write the time down, and move on, that way I know how long it takes me to do each task individually as well.

General tasks:

Folding one large load of laundry:  Average 7 minutes
Vaccuuming/Mopping my Dog's Room:  8 minutes
Picking up the toys in the kids' Rooms:  Average 5 minutes
Vacuuming kid's rooms:  5-7 minutes for both.
Cleaning up the entire bathroom:  2 minutes 
Putting away everything on ground floor and general cleaning:  10 minutes
Vacuuming the ground floor:  6 minutes
Mopping it:  8 - 12 minutes  (this one depends on what kind of music is playing.)
A day's worth of dishes:  13 minutes


Those are only the tasks I actually timed.  If I did all of that consecutively, it would take me about 80 minutes, or a little over an hour.  That's quite a bit to manage in such a short amount of time if you think about it.  Though, this is considering most of the tasks are generall done every day, so of course, the cleaner it is already (such as picking up the random items on the ground floor), the less time you'll spend doing it. 

So, in reality, most things don't exactly take more than fifteen minutes, and you'll accomplish more if you do one thing at a time than doing all the things at one time.  Time for me to teach myself how to better manage my time, and I think the fifteen minute rule will work.  Afterall, I'm coming close to the fifteen minute mark on this blog post, so I'd better close it up.


Oh, before I do go, I must say, spending hours on the internet is a huge waste of time.  I do it often.  Especially on Pinterest and Memebase.  Sigh.  Timing myself on the computer is now in effect.  More to come on how this went EVENTUALLY!

Now, I challenge you all!  What can you do in fifteen minutes?  Tell me about it!