I made a hard-copy control journal, and I think I like it better than my Palm one. I don't check off items as they are done with the dry-erase marker, but I still use sheet protectors because I'm always wiping water droplets off the page. It's nice to just look at the page for "Afternoon Routine," scan down the list and say, "done, done, done, I'll go do that now, and done." Then I come back and flip the page to the Tuesday routine (one item: bring in trash cans from the curb), look at the page for the current zone (currently no specific items) and go pick up for 15 minutes. I have post-it notes marking the pages for the current day and zone, and I move them to the new page when the list is done. K.I.S.S., you know.
I keep my control journal on the kitchen counter where all my dirty dishes used to go. Now my dirty dishes go in the dishwasher, because the clean ones have been unloaded by me instead of me waiting for "someone else" to do it. I had to break out of the mindset that one of my siblings would unload and I would load like it always was when I lived at home. My husband doesn't have the same chore list that my siblings had, and I shouldn't expect him to do those chores. It's funny how having "Unload the dishwasher" written on my list makes it mentally ok for me to do a task that I always saw as "someone else's job." I find that I run the dishwasher when it's much less full than normal, too, because that's all the dishes I have dirty, and it's not every day, either.
So it's going well for me. I can't wait until tomorrow when the zone includes the dining room, because that is the central room in my house, and it's currently the one in most need of cleaning. But the table is mostly full of my husband's stuff, so I'm going to have to make him help for 15 minutes. :-)
And I've cleaned out the filing cabinet and started filling it with the "to be filed" papers that I culled out of all the other paperwork mess. It's fantastic! All I'm keeping filed in there is:
1. Tax information for the last 7 years,
2. Retirement plan statements for the last 7 years,
3. Bank statements for my main bank account for the last 7 years.
I have receipts and car titles and some other important stuff and some other not important stuff in the green plastic file holder, but eventually I'll clean that out, too. The file cabinet is my focus first. The only thing that makes me sad is that I had three years worth of Jan-Dec folders all neatly tabbed and labeled in there, and I have no use for them now. Now I have one folder per year for each of the three categories above. So what can I file away by month... hmm...?
Oh, and on September 5 (5 days from now) the zone should be the kitchen again, so I will have been through my whole house. Cleantacular!
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