T minus 6 hours until the beginning of my July New Thing- a 10 day Media Cleanse. This is going to suck. Why can't I be complacent in this aspect of my life? What if something happens in the world (or on Facebook) and I miss it?
My goal is to focus my time on things that are important or relevant and to cut out all of the time wasters in my day. It's easier said than done.
Things I can do for the next 10 days during my Media Cleanse (what I'm calling my experiment of no tv or internet surfing- my two biggest time wasters):- Floss. I've been meaning to do more of this anyway.
- Clean my bathroom. I've been meaning to do more of this, too.
- Transfer my damaged recipe box to a new recipe binder. Just call me Suzy Homemaker... really excited about this one. (There should be a sarcasm font. The completed product will be nice, but I'm not looking forward to the project as my recipe box got moldy from sitting too near the sink.... Riveting information to share, I know).
- Organize the Christmas and birthday gifts I've bought.
- Finish Christmas shopping.
- Write a to-do-list.
Day 1- Thursday, 7/22/10
When I drove to work this morning I wanted to get off to a good start on being productive. So, instead of listening to the radio like I normally do, I called my sister-in-law and worked out some dates for an upcoming garage sale and talked through ideas for a niece's birthday party.
After work, my daughter and I went to Walgreens and CVS to pick up a few things. She loves going "to the stoo-ah," as she calls it. Her favorite part was tearing up a sales flyer and throwing it in the cart, tiny piece by tiny piece. I let her. After we checked out I shoved the million little pieces of paper in my purse to take home and put in the recycle bin. It was worth her being entertained so I could get my shopping done.
After she went to bed, I organized and inventoried all gifts I have bought for birthdays and Christmas, boxed all the kids' gifts and made a list of who I still need to buy for. I told my husband that if I die tomorrow, he'll be set for the next year with a list of what we have for who. Then we had a friendly debate as to whether or not he has bought a single gift for someone besides me since we've been married. He hasn't, I'm sure. He was fairly confident he had, but couldn't produce a name or item.
I also made a to-do-list and went to bed at midnight. To keep myself accountable and motivated, I'll share my list of things to accomplish during my Media Cleanse, to be completed by July 31:
- Inventory Christmas and birthday gifts. (Done! I just wanted to be able to cross something off already).
- Organize and de-clutter
- my closet;
- my 2 year old daughter's closet;
- the cabinet under my bathroom sink;
- and the basement.
- Prepare for a garage sale by
- set things aside during my organization adventures;
- price items;
- and take pictures of furniture and post on Craigslist for people to come by the day of the sale.
- File all 2010 paperwork.
- Put Ella's 2 year portraits in frames.
- Work on the marketing and PR tasks I volunteered to do for a fundraiser for a local homeless shelter.
- Complete recipe binder project mentioned above.
- Research publications to submit my writing to and then do so.
- Blog 2 times a week.
At 6am I cleaned out Ella's closet and re-organized it, removing all items that were still in there from before she was born (such as old cell phones). I also removed and stored all of the things that she has outgrown. After Ella went to bed, I cleaned the whole house.
Day 3- Saturday, 7/24/10
We traveled a few hours away to spend the day at a nearby state park with family and had a great time fishing, swimming, and playing Monopoly with the nephews.
Day 4- Sunday, 7/25/10
We didn't go to church this morning because we got home so late last night and felt the need to sleep in a little bit.
We had quite the productive day. I did laundry, sorted Ella's 2 year photos and put them in frames, reviewed information for the charity event I'm volunteering for and sent some emails in regards to that, loaded and ran the dishwasher, made banana bread, researched publications to submit my writing to and booked my tickets to go to New York City in September. (I'm going to NYC in September! I've never been and am SO excited). Ella and I played outside for a while and I even got to take a nap this afternoon when my husband took her to the park. Not a bad day at all... :)
In this experiment, I'm finding that if I pay attention and keep moving things moving on my task list, I enjoy my down time a lot more. I think it's because when I was laying on the couch watching The Real Housewives of New York City, I wasn't always enjoying it because I had other stuff I needed to be doing. It's kind of like how a milkshake tastes when you're on a diet.... you budget Weight Watcher points all week to be able to "afford" the milkshake and it tastes far better than if you allowed yourself a milkshake every day.
I'm not going to lie, though. It hasn't been completely easy. There are a few times that I really wanted to turn my brain off and just watch some tube for a while. I had a couple of email correspondences today that I had to send through Facebook and I really wanted to read through all the updates to see what was going on with all my friends... just for a minute. But, I didn't. I got in and I got out.
Six days to go on my self-imposed ten day Media Cleanse for New Thing #8. We'll see how it goes and how I adjust my new habits for the long-term.
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