Practice makes it possible

Oh dear.

My very first post after making my "resolutions" is about how I'm not doing as good as I hoped. I was afraid this was going to happen.

BUT... then again I'm a frustrated perfectionist so I shouldn't be surprised. This is why I evaluated and picked the resolutions that I did. So when the inevitable happened and I became sidetracked, I could look at them honestly to see if they were the right ones to start with.

When I started to beat myself up for not following through (again!), this time I tried to re-evaluate instead. Did I need to do something different? Did I need to look even further out of the box to accomplish my goals? Did I need to break the goals down even smaller? And instead of just feeling angry with myself, I came up with a couple of do-able solutions.

1) The places I scattered my devotionals are not necessarily in plain view so I'm going to make little reminder signs to help me out.
2) Even though I haven't posted twice or even once a week, I HAVE done a lot of behind the scenes work on it, finished up some old posts, and worked a lot on my other blog.
3) And housework- the bane of my existence! I've haven't followed all of the reminders the FlyLady send me but I have shined my sink most nights and I'm learning how to make better use of my time through using my timer!

As I was thinking about all this, I realized anew the problem with New Year's resolutions- you fail before you even begin by expecting perfection just by making the resolution. I've done this to myself so many times before. Attempts at piano lessons come to mind. But we really don't work that way. We need time and lots and LOTS of practice.

I also have to remind myself that the goal was to get better at all of this by next year, not be perfect next week. (It begs to ask the question if it really was the goal, if I'm frustrated already!)
So I'm going to give it a go again with more patience and permission to take time to build these habits in my life. I'll also keep you updated how I'm doing.

Here's to making our Timer our Friend in 2010!

How NOT to do your laundry frugally

I've been trying to find ways to cut as many unnecessary purchases from our budget. Normally, this means skipping the prepared foods and making stuff from home. Sometimes this means making something you wouldn't think of making, at home. Laundry soap is one of those things.

Yes, you read right- LAUNDRY SOAP. You can make it at home, in either liquid or powdered varieties, and there are even ways to make homemade stain removers too! I was very excited! So off to Harris Teeter I went and bought the necessary ingredients, Ivory soap, 20 Mule Team Borax and Arm and Hammer Washing Soda. The total cost was $12.00 and I estimated it should make enough to last us all year. What a savings!

I shredded the bar of soap, using my food processor (made for easy cleanup at the end ;)) and mixed the Borax and washing soda together with it. The next load, I threw in my scoop worth and voila! The clothes were not only clean but my hubby commented that they looked even cleaner!

Encouraged, I moved on to stain removers. Here I have to stop and profess my love for OxiClean. What amazing stuff it is! Since most of my stains are of the organic variety, it works wonders on them and gets the whole load cleans because of its very presence in the water. Am I nuts? No I just love the stuff. So when I found a recipe to make OxiClean at home, I was on top of the world!

I had all the needed ingredients on hand (water, baking soda, Borax and peroxide)so made it up in one of my old OxiClean bottles. It came together just the way the recipe said it would. A few days later my son put it to the test.

Dismal failure. The stuff was rock hard and wouldn't even come out of the bottle.

My sweetie pie husband gave me some explanation involving scientific reasons it had turned rock hard but I was in no mood to listen. I just wanted OxiClean. And to add insult to injury, after days of soaking the spraybottle, I had to throw it away.

So in conclusion, you CAN NOT make OxiClean. :(

P.S. I still make my laundry soap and it work beautifully. I encourage you to try it.

Perfectionism- the enemy of productivity

I try to keep my house pretty clean most of the time but sometimes perfectionism gets in the way. How could perfectionism possibly keep you from having a clean house? Shouldn't your house be cleaner if you're a perfectionist? Not at all.

Case in point- When we moved, we planned the boxes to go directly into the room they belonged to make our unpacking simple. But we had a few stragglers that didn't belong in specific rooms since they had come from storage. Thankfully we have a second bedroom to put them in, while going through them. This room filled up with the random stuff much quicker than I anticipated. In fact, it was so full we weren't able to close the door! So every morning I'd walk by this room and say "I can't live with all this junk! I HAVE to go through it and get rid of it all!" A good intention, right? Enter real life. I have a baby who very adorable-y asks for my attention, most minutes of the day. There are meals that have to be made. My charming husband has papers he needs me to read and cases to discuss. Needless to say, not a lot of work has gotten done on the room.

A few days ago I was thinking about my everyday household cleaning and realized I hadn't vacuumed in more than three weeks. And as I was thinking about the vacuuming, I found myself saying "I can't do that yet, I need to clean the guest room clean first". What?! I can't do basic maintenance until an out of the way upstairs room is clean and organized? Why?

Because perfectionism got in the way. I needed the perfect house that was in my head before I could maintain it. And I wanted it with the wave of a magic wand, not breaking it into bite size pieces that could be accomplished while my son is in bed.

I find myself often struggling with this problem. Whether it be losing the last few post pregnancy pounds, growing in the Lord, or maintaining a budget, perfectionism frequently gets in the way. I don't want to do the little things that maintain or move me slowly in the right direction. I don't want the kind of results that you can only see from hindsight. I want them NOW! I want them BIG! But life rarely works that way.

So after I vacuumed that day, I realized what a difference that one little thing made and like anything worth doing, we do it in hope.