A new way to look at things

I've been reading daily emails from Flylady (www.flylady.net) and I have to say it has really changed the way I approach things. She's an organizational/housekeeping/self care guru who has learned through her own experiences and freely shares her knowledge (literally freely, the website and daily email are free). She has so many great, small ideas about making progress in small steps. She is very encouraging and positive.

One way she has helped me in this remodel is with tackling small amounts of housework every day. Given that there is construction debris, dust, and tools everywhere and the place is generally chaotic and disorganized due to the fact that we can't really put much away, it would be easy to just say it's not worth it to clean. But, by spending just 15-30 minutes a day, the place has really shaped up. It is such a huge improvement. One of her slogans is "Progress, not perfection." So, even though I can't have a "clean" house right now, I can have a much cleaner house which makes life so much better. The things I can clean, like the kitchen and bathroom, are always clean because I do a little bit each day.

Another example of how she has helped me is with her idea of tackling big, overwhelming tasks 15 minutes at a time. I never really thought of doing things like this - I would always say "I'm going to to X" and work on it until it is done. If it is a particularly long, tedious task this can be really unpleasant. I am applying this to finishing the windows in the house. It is a really long, really tedious task (hundreds of hours if not more). At first, I would say that "today I am getting a coat of shellac on the windows." It would take 5-6 hours to sand, vacuum, tape, buff, and paint and I'd be burnt out and doing sloppy work by the time it was done. I was also not making very fast progress because let's face it, how often can you set aside 6 hours of time for one job? Now I tackle them in 15 minute increments. I do 15 minutes a day no matter how much I don't want to and little by little they are getting done. As flylady says, you can do anything for 15 minutes.