How To Be Productive At Home

Tuesday we talked about how quickly we can accumulate and some ideas for keeping up on it. And as promised, today I’m going to talk about what I am currently learning when it comes to home management.

If you’re anything like me, and you’re on pinterest, you have seen these awesome cleaning schedules. “Have a deep-cleaned house in only 15 minutes a day! I have a chart! I know what I’m talking about.” or “Cleaning doesn’t have to be overwhelming if you just do a little at a time.”

While these things are good and true, they aren’t necessarily true for every one.

When I started being a stay-at-home mom, I gave myself a lot of grace on schedules and housework and getting things done. Plus we were living with my parents, and there were four adults and one baby. How messy could it get?

Then, I had my appendix out. Then I got pregnant. Then I got put on lift restriction. Then I got put on lift restriction again. Then I was the size of a duplex. Then I had a new baby. Then my husband was in the hospital. Then I was trying to pack. Then I moved. Then I was trying to unpack.

There was always something. And that’s when I realized there would always be something so I had to start sometime. So when we moved I said to myself “I will make a cleaning schedule and I will follow it and I was be awesome.”

And I made a schedule.

And I didn’t follow it.

I followed the advice of a lot of the popular cleaning schedule blogs out there. Clean a little bit every day for a continually clean house.

So my schedule had me vacuuming one room one day, another the next day, then doing toilets, then cleaning the fridge, whatever. Just a little each day.

This actually turned into a demotivator for me.

 Why would I get the vacuum out of the place where it lives to vacuum for 2 minutes and then put it away? I’m not doing that. So I didn’t vacuum.

Why would I clean this toilet and not the other toilet? Why would I wash the sheets if I just did the other day? Why would I scrub the highchair when it’s going to be messy again in three hours?

And on and on it went until I would look at my floor and think “When was the last time I vacuumed?” then get the vacuum out do the whole house in a whopping 8 minutes and think “I’m never going to figure this out”.

At the same time, wouldn’t you know, I’m trying to write a blog, work for a ministry, work for my husband, raise two children, considering homeschool, and trying to help bring more income into our family. Most days ended with me thinking “did I even get anything done?” as my to-do lists got longer and longer and longer.

I realized that I had a harder time fitting in a bunch of 5-minute activities instead of longer ones. Or I would think “O I only have a minute” which would turn into 5 or 10 or more and then I’d waste them on my computer. And I would have a hard time switching my brain from blog to ministry to kids to work to cleaning to kids to blog and all over the place. My already tired and stretched brain capacity was having a hard time not over heating and breaking down.

Little by little with the help of my husband and some good encouragement from some ebooks on homemaking, I started seeing how I could feel like I was getting something done with my day.

This was about six months of change and tweaking of how I was thinking. If you think this is something you want to try too just be aware that I didn’t do this in a day, a week, or a month. Maybe you can, awesome sauce. And maybe it’ll take you six months or more. That’s awesome sauce too. Because progress is progress no matter how slow.

Are you ready? Good.

How To Be Productive At Home

1. Choose a small goal that you want to be successful at every day. I have a friend who has chosen “make our bed every day”. I chose to have my quiet time. Track your progress in getting this done. I actually made myself a check list that said “quiet time” and had a box for Sunday through Saturday and I would check off the boxes. I could see how consistent I was or wasn’t in that week.

Once you see that you are making consistent progress, start noticing how this changes the way you approach your day. For me, I started with my daily quiet time during afternoon nap. I would do it right away after I got both kids down. This was great for a while, but I found that I didn’t feel productive until I could cross that off my list, regardless of what else I had gotten done. I also felt like I would put other things off until after it was done, clogging up my afternoon. Over the course of a few months, I went from quiet time being the first thing I did during afternoon nap, to squeezing it in while the kids ate lunch, to making it a priority once the baby was down for his morning nap. Then I saw a flaw – I couldn’t necessarily base this habit solely on naps because naps change. So I have started quiet time in the morning as I make breakfast.

 

Think about your one goal. Would you share it in the comments? Then be sure to come back next week for some next steps. 🙂 Subscribe in the sidebar so you don’t miss it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

This post is part of a series. Click here to see the other posts.