Soliciting Ideas for April

I'm looking for an April goal. Now soliciting any and all ideas. To refresh, here is what I'm talking about when I say "goal". Here, here, and here are my goals for January, February, and March.

A few ideas:
One bag of trash for the entire month. (Apparently there is a Charlottesvillian who only goes through less than a bag a year!)
No shows for a month.
Read (fill in the blank) number of books.
Run three times a week.
No-spend month.

I'm kind of drawing a blank and feeling a little uninspired. Calling all blurkers- come out and give me a suggestion. I loved my goal for January. February was a great goal to get me moving and out of my winter stupor. March has been a struggle, which is great to realize. More on that later.

What is inspiring is this picture, which also came up when I googled "person thinking" images. Courtesy of tovadarling. Ha.

March's goal of limiting my internet use has been difficult and that is great to realize. Like the other two goals, when I started out I think I envisioned it being pretty simple to stick with. Not so. I am more aware of how often I flee to my laptop to just zone out and relax once the kids are (finally) napping. I'm embarrassed to note how poorly I've kept this goal. And that's good for me to know.

Here I thought I would wile the hours away, contemplating life, writing poetry, doing yoga, or arranging flowers in a vase whilst enjoying the late afternoon sun. Such lovely things would I do, instead of losing brain cells by looking at other people's vacation pictures from 2003 on facebook. I would journal! I would pray! I would make complicated dinners! I would do sit-ups!

Sigh.

B & A: The Dreaded Laundry Closet

I am so far off the wagon with my March goal that I can't even remember what the wagon looked like. I can't motivate to do much. I am devoting some mental energy into figuring out why I feel compelled to "produce" or "accomplish" things with my days. Maybe having something to show for my days (a new light fixture or a cleaned out cabinet) is a necessary balance for having so little to show for the majority of my time. I mean, raising kids doesn't really come with a report card or something to "show" for how I've spent most of my day.

Now before you get all "but you're doing the most important job of all" and "you have beautiful, perfectly behaved children to show for your time" (oh, stop. really) just hear that I do not really think that I have absolutely nothing to show for spending all day with my kids. It is valuable time and they are better behaved with me mothering them all day than if, say, the feral cats in the neighborhood raised them.

Sure. But most of the kids' awake time is spent in repetition- change diapers, wash diapers, serve meal, clean up after meal, and so on and so forth. And some days it is hard to feel like that adds up to much but crazy-making.

So periodically I like to tackle projects with a definitive "before" and "after". A finished product. Cue the laundry closet.

You threatened to defeat me, oh laundry closet. Oh yes you did. But in the end I prevailed.

The laundry closet has been the bane of my existence for several months now. We have open shelving on the right, the stacked washer and dryer dead ahead, and tons of crap on the floor at all times. When it is time to load the washer, picture me standing in the doorway to this laundry closet, trying to chuck various clothing items into the washer from about five feet away. There's always so much stuff in my way that getting to the actual washer is not really an option.

See how this is ripe for a good cleaning? And would give me such a feeling of accomplishment?

Here's a few tips when you decide to clean out an area. It doesn't matter if it is your bedroom or the top of your dresser. These rules apply:

1. Start in one place and work your way in one direction. Start at the top and work your way down, go left to right, or (if you're tackling an entire room) work clockwise. For this project, I started at the right side of the bottom shelf and worked my way to the right, then moved up to the next shelf, and continued the process. Don't move onto the next area until you have finished the one you are currently working on. Do not move onto shelf two until you have finished shelf one. See?

2. Stay the course. Don't take this opportunity to empty your vacuum bag, even though you move the vacuum and see that it needs it. You're not doing that right now-- you're organizing your laundry closet.

3. Get rid of as much as possible. Recognize that you don't need a good percentage of what you have, and getting rid of things frees you up to enjoy what you hold on to. Some things I got rid of: old medicines, cleaners I don't use, the bleach container that held about 1 tablespoon of bleach, ratty old towels (some repurposed for rags, some tossed), dvd's we haven't watched in years, and cd's.

4. Leave space so you can move things around on your shelves. This applies to dressers and closets, as well. If you have to stuff things onto your shelves, balanced precariously so it all stays put, chances are that you're missing out on lots of things that have gotten jammed to the back of the shelf. So get rid of some stuff so you can actually access all that is in/on your drawers, shelves, and closets.

5. Resist the temptation to buy lots of storage containers before you organize. Purge as much as is necessary, organize, and then see if you still need containers. I ended up with two spare containers at the end of this project, to be used elsewhere in the house. Score!

6. Keep in mind that the space you have right now is all that you've got to work with. Don't buy clothes or linens or cleaning supplies as if you live in 3,000 square feet with too many closets to count when, in fact, you are actually in 900 square feet with one closet. As my friend Carolyn said- "get real with yourself". This applies to the things we hold onto, and the space we are actually living in. Get real with yourself. For real. Like, seriously.

Behold the "after":

60 Minutes

Theoretically I'm 11 days into my March goal of keeping my online time to 60 minutes or under.  I say "theoretically" because I started a few days late... and I haven't been doing a great job of sticking to my goal.

I'm not sure how long I've been browsing aimlessly, but I'm sure it's been longer than an hour some days.  Some reasons why this is true:

1.  I have had two sick kids.  Sick kids means lots of time on house arrest, unable to leave our apartment and do things.  This means I feel like I'm going to lose my mind a lot, which means that I want to escape mentally.  Which leads me to browsing here and there, to avoid the reality of being on house arrest.  See?


2.  I can't get myself motivated to do much else.  I was with my friend Megan yesterday and she phrased it something like "I just couldn't make myself find any new projects".  Yup.  The daily necessities are done, but I can't make myself gather up my energy to tackle something else.
Something that would ultimately feel more purposeful and enjoyable.

See, I'm not opposed to good time zoning out on the internet, looking at blogs for inspiration and whatnot.  But I don't like using it as a way of escape or procrastination.  Not when I know that's not what actually feels good to me.  Take yesterday.  I was tired and should have napped.  That's what I really needed.  Instead I bopped around online, using up the precious naptime that I had, until my kid woke up and puked on me.  If I had napped, I might have had more energy reserves to deal with this.  I hadn't.  So it was just puke on a tired person who wished she had napped instead of frantically reading blogs while thinking "I don't really want to be doing this."

Follow that?

All that being said, I did start off the week with a little more gusto and adherence to my goal.  Here's what I did on Monday:

A close up:

Idea came from here.  With a few modifications.

See what awesome things happen when I get my tail off the internet? 

Marchy Marcherton

(From instructables.com.  I love this picture.  The ultimate weird Snuggie-like thing.)

We're a few days into March now, people.  In case you haven't noticed.  Here in Charlottesville, that has meant freakish good weather and, in my house, teething and fevers.  Monkey has four teeth coming in up top.  Chicken just got struck with some fever virus that makes her want to sleep all the time.  (Ask me if I'm complaining about that.  Nope.) 

I've really gone back and forth about my March goal.  Two front-runners:
1.  Get in bed by 10:00 and get up by 6:00.
2.  Curb spending, limiting all financial transactions to Sunday. 

Here's my thoughts about these:
1.  With a consistent bedtime and wake-up time, I prioritize getting rest.  Getting up at 6 gives me an hour or more head-start on my kids, allowing me time to shred, eat my breakfast, shower, etc etc-- all before they're up and making me crazy.
2.  The money idea was totally not mine.  Lisa was the first person to pitch it to me, and I heard through the grapevine that she and hers might be embarking on this goal during Lent.  I love it.  I love the idea of thinking outside of the box for how to entertain ourselves and, also, noticing how much thoughtless spending I do on a regular basis.

However, neither of those goals really grabbed me enough to commit for the month.  Maybe another month, but not March.

So that brings me to my goal for March:
To limit my internet usage to an hour a day.

Yes, I realize I am announcing this via a blog.  That you are reading via the internet.  Allow the irony to wash over you.  Really embrace it and roll around in it.  It's quite potent. 

I get sucked into the vortex of the interweb waaaay too much and for waaay too long.  I open the old laptop to do a quick email response and 45 minutes later my eyes are glassy and I am shushing my children so I can just refresh Facebook one more time.

Don't get me started on how much I know about random hipster Mormon moms.  Please.  Their blogs alternately make me want to have seven more babies (which I would homeschool) or just give up because I will never be able to furnish my house in wall to wall Anthropologie.

I would like to contain this a bit.  One hour doesn't seem like much.  I think it will go quickly.  I will probably miss out on...status updates.  And if that Mormon mom in D.C. added any new pictures of her baby and bulldog that are soooo cute.

But I'm interested to see what else I do with my time when I'm not refreshing fb and reading blogs and whatever else I do on this here laptop.

Because I make the rules I also hereby decree that watching shows on the interweb does not count.  We don't have a t.v., so watching 30 Rock happens on hulu the day after.  (Or Parks and Recreation, or the Bachelor).  For vague mysterious reasons that you will never understand, watching shows online does not count in my 60 minutes per day.

YesItypedthisveryfastsoitdidnottakemelongerthan60minutes.