I heard this tip several years ago on the Happier podcast with Gretchen Rubin and it’s one that has stuck with me over the years. It’s the five minute rule. You ready for this? Ok. So: If something is going to take less than five minutes, do it now. Don’t put it off until later. When you think of it, just do it. Emptying the dishwasher this morning took me 3 minutes and 42 seconds. I timed myself going at a leisurely pace so I could tell you. Starting a load of laundry, switching the laundry, tidying a room, making the bed, prepping vegetables for dinner, putting those shoes away that you thought to yourself “those really need put away”, reading a book to your kids? All less than five minutes. Well…depending on the book they choose. I think we often put things off because we think that we’ll just do it later, but what if you did it now instead and then you don’t even have to think about it later. Or have it hanging over your head all day? Anyway, try it. It might help you get more things done in a day!
Other things I do to get things done:
Set a timer and race against it to get something done quickly.
Give yourself a treat. I only get X if I do Y first. (Examples of treats are: reading a chapter of my book, chocolate, a baked good. If it’s something big maybe you get to buy something for yourself, etc)
Make a list. There are few things I love more than crossing things off of a list.
Do you have any tips for productivity?? I’d love to hear!
In the grand scheme of fast weeks versus slow weeks – it was a fast one, but I can’t say that it’s one I enjoyed all that much. This morning, our whole street was blanketed in a thick sheet of fog. We drive down a mile long stretch of straight road to get out of our neighborhood and on my way to drop the boys at daycare (just Charlie and Ben. I’m still home with Luke.) it felt as if I was driving into oblivion with Charlie and Ben in the back chattering about where the moon might be. I’m not quite sure where the days went. Maybe I lost them somewhere up in there in the fog. And all week, despite being home with Luke and not doing nearly as much as I normally do, when the days were over I tossed myself into the couch and almost immediately fell into a deep dreamless sleep, waking around 11 when I realized I was not tucked in my bed as I should be. I’m glad it was a fast week because honestly I’m ready to move on to the next one.
Things are going full speed ahead in our primary bathroom remodel. Everything has been torn apart, and the task of putting it all back together again has started. Drywall is going up today, electrical work is done, and next week tile will start to go up. That’s when it starts looking like a bathroom again instead of an empty shell. We’ve made our picks for tile, but still have to pick up everything else. Honestly, I think it’s going to wind up looking an awful lot like the boys’ bathroom except with a shower instead of a tub and that will make for a very happy bathroom indeed. Should be done in another week and a half, just before my parents arrive for their annual February stay.
This weekend will consist of trying to get my bearings, trying to decide if Luke is well enough to go to school on Monday, and I hope lots of fresh, clean, healing air. What have you been up to? I hope you had a lovely week. How about some links from around the web?
If you follow me on instagram, I’ve talked many times about a document I made several years ago after having my first son, Charlie. To give you a little background – I was just going back to work after maternity leave and felt so sad about it all. I wanted to stay home longer with him, quit my school librarian job, throw caution, our family insurance, and my pension to the wind, but I just couldn’t. But after I had a second son, and then a third, I’ve since come around to being a working mom and I’ve actually found that I am a much more balanced and happier person this way. Now…of course, I am on a teacher schedule which I highly recommend if you have kids and are looking at work options. I have summers off, long holiday breaks, I get off at 3pm every day, and I don’t take any work home (Let it be know that I often did have to bring work home my first few years of teaching and of course I have no homework, papers or tests to grade).
Ok but that’s right now – when I started back at work after that very first maternity leave, I was struggling emotionally and just with figuring out routines and how to make days meaningful when I was so tired all the time from working all day and then caring for a child all night. I would sit in my office while pumping and watch the online video feed of my son crying at daycare and I would cry too. I would get so upset about how unnatural it is to separate a mother from her child at 12 weeks when he was just so tiny and helpless and needed his mama. Phew! I’m getting emotional just thinking back on it.
Well…I soon got pregnant with a second son and decided that something had to change. I had to figure out a way to manage it all – to make childhood magical and special for my kids even if I was so freaking tired I couldn’t even think about how to get to bedtime every night. I wasn’t depressed. I was just struggling with how to do it “all”. And no one was going to figure it out for me. If I didn’t make the memories happen – they just weren’t going to happen. My husband is wonderful, caring and everything one could want in a partner for life but he doesn’t really care about having green milk on St. Patrick’s Day, God love him. I found that things were passing by without me noticing. I forgot St. Nicholas Day, I forgot to send a homemade card from the boys to my mom for her birthday, I realized my husband’s half birthday had been the week before. These things matter to me. All these special, (seemingly) silly little moments passed me by without me doing anything about it. My life was being lived. Not celebrated. And not to mention that we didn’t have clean laundry because I kept forgetting that I had to do a load of laundry every day, and I had to make dinner every night and also somehow keep the house clean and get the boys to daycare and myself to work on time?? After many weeks (or was it months?) of floundering – enter, The Document.
As a librarian, I have a mind that likes to put things into categories. (I live by the Dewey Decimal System after all). So I started to think through what things are important to me. Tradition. Family. Celebrating major and minor holidays. Baking. Acts of Kindness. Food. Having a clean house. Predictability. I am a huge believer in rhythms. If you know nothing about rhythms or the importance of routine for small children, try reading Simplicity Parenting. It’s one of my favorite parenting books and gave me so much inspiration for what I wanted my own parenting to look like. Anyway. I could go on at length about all of these ideas, but I wanted this post to serve as a little introduction to these ideas, and where Making Every Day Special came from. I especially wanted to have a place on here for this spreadsheet that I made to manage our life. It may seem a little structured and boring to you at first, but I feel like it has helped me so much in just wrapping my brain around doing “it all”. I’ll probably use this space to talk through some ideas for celebrating life every day, but now this document has a place to live!
Just click on this link to make a copy of the Making Every Day Special that will go directly to your Google Docs. If you don’t have Google Docs – Here is the Word Document.
I left my text in there to give you ideas for things we do and celebrate, but make it your own! I usually go through throughout the year and add and delete things for the new year. Delete everything that doesn’t speak to you, and add new columns for things that are important to you.
Welcome to a tiny corner of the internet! Things are just getting up and running around here, but you can expect to see posts on food, books, motherhood, marriage, home, librarian-life and the like. Most of you have probably found yourselves here from my Instagram account (which if not, here’s the link!) and if you’re familiar with what I post there – you know what to expect here. And if not – go see! But the problem I’ve been finding is that it can be really hard to sum up an idea in a single instagram post or story.
I’ve also been pondering the idea of routine lately, especially as it’s the beginning of a new year. What do I choose to include in my everyday routine? And what is just purposeless filler for the empty spaces that pop up? I want this spot to become an intentional part of my routine. This check in to share how we’ve been seeking joy lately, if we’ve been slowing down, or if we need to. To share what we’ve been cooking, making, baking, celebrating, doing, and perhaps most importantly, a bit of memory-keeping for years down the line when I know I’ll be happy to have everything here in a neat little package. And just maybe a few of those things might inspire you too. Let’s sift through all the noise of the world, and keep the good stuff we’ve found.
All those things currently live in a vault in my mind, and a little (seriously, such a tiny) glimpse into our days can be seen on Instagram, but with a website, everything can all be laid out here in a scroll-able, readable, categorized date-stamped format which is such a joy to a librarian such as myself. To sum it up: expect to see this space as a reference, an idea space, a daydream, a mindful reflection, a supportive community, and a guide for each season of life. I think it could become so good, you guys. And I’m so dang glad you’re here to see it. I hope you stay a while to see what it becomes.
The Metroka Family 