making progress

A comment that I've seen made in numerous blog posts and video clips about living in a Tiny House is the need to be tidy. Now hopefully anyone reading this who has lived in the same home as me has not just spluttered their cuppa across their keyboard, or worse down their nose... as I'm not renown for having a tidy room. But I do usually have an organized one! I can normally tell you exactly which pile something is in, a skill I no doubt inherited from my mother. I like the idea of everything having a place to be put away in (I am also my father's daughter after all), and it works in the kitchen, I've just struggled to make it work in my bedroom/living space.

So having done a massive tidy-up before heading off to Summer Gathering so Megan could stay in my room whilst she was Grandma-sitting I was determined, as part of my working up (or should that be 'working down'?) to a Tiny House lifestyle, that I would endeavour to keep my room tidy upon my return.

Now this was going to be no small feat, it would mean putting everything away all the time, and not leaving it there until I have more energy to put it away properly, and not leaving it where I can see it so I remember to take it with me somewhere/finish it/find whatever else I need to complete the project etc. 

Leaving things so I remember to take them with me is usually a waste of effort anyway as I've been known to carefully step over/walk around whatever it was on the floor by the door on my way out only to realize half an hour later that I should've brought it with me, or more common these days come back to see it there and remember that was why I went out in the first place! So, after several months of having lapsed in the habit I've got back to writing things down that I need to do so that I don't need to have them under my nose all the time to remember (or not, as the case may be...).

I inadvertently discovered that my 'to do' piles all neatly lined up across my bedroom floor that I had seen as being organized (which they were...) had become my 'guilt piles' and them being the first thing I saw in the morning, and last thing before I went to sleep probably wasn't doing me any good. I'd got into the habit of leaving projects in progress where I could see them so that I didn't forget to go back to them, given how bad my fibro-brain can be these days it is all too easy to put something away and forget it even existed. But what was happening instead was that I'd keep procrastinating and getting more and more bogged down by the fact that it needed done and I hadn't done it yet. So, back to writing things down in my book... a habit I'd got out of precisely because the fact that some tasks had been written in there so long that it got depressing simply opening the book up to write in it, so I'd stopped. So I gave myself permission (*note to self write another blog post about 'permission' and Tracey's SG workshop!) to cross things off the list, not just when I'd done them, but when they'd started to become millstones round my neck. Usually these were self imposed tasks in the first place and the only person who it made any difference to was me, so why beat myself up about it??? Let it go for now. 

Needing the energy to do things has become less of an issue, well physically anyway. I've figured out that if I spell myself with regular periods of physical activity to break up the mental activity, especially screen work, then I get more done in a day. I aim for an hour on screen followed by an hour off. Which means all those little slightly annoying tasks of putting things away that require a bit more effort (like getting boxes down from the top of the wardrobe) suddenly come in handy as 'things to do' away from the screen - win win! So my room stays tidy/tidier and my head stays clearer, what's not to like?

I've been home almost a month now and so far so good, apparently it takes 21 days to ingrain a habit so I should be on to a winner. Let's see if I can keep it up for the rest of the year, if I can manage that then I'll consider another step towards Tiny House living to be achieved.