Day 60

This lesson was learned on Monday.

Since Monday was the first day of the new month, it is important to realize that we are granted a new start. With the month of March, comes spring cleaning, and getting more organized with your house, and your life. It’s time to plant your seeds, and blossom into the beautiful flower you hope to be.

I have been working and thinking of ways I can organize my room. To me, the best way to organize anything is by getting a lot of things. It’s easier because then you have less things to worry about, and organize. Even though spring isn’t going to arrive for another few weeks, it is never too early to start spring cleaning. I am currently working on going through my clothes that I haven’t worn in awhile. Especially since I will be making the transition from my winter clothes to my spring and summer clothes within the upcoming weeks. I love the feeling of things being clean and organized. I love this time of year. Although I do a lot of cleaning and organizing throughout the year, too.

Today, I will try my best to get a jump start on organizing for Spring Cleaning. It is never too early to start, and you don’t have to wait for the arrival of spring to want to organize your things, and household. All I need is some good music, and delicious snacks to get me through the organization process.

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Day 52

I have been working on my Happiness Project, and I am still enforcing my January resolutions in February. For those that don’t know, a Happiness Project was inspired by Gretchen Rubin, about how she makes monthly resolutions in various aspects of her life. Each resolution is to help add happiness in her life. I was inspired to start my own Happiness Project. Feel free to get caught up if you haven’t already…

/http://threeyellowdaisies.ca/category/my-happiness-project/

Gretchen has written a book documenting her journey, tilted The Happiness Project. It was an inspirational book.

One of her rules that I have been working on, too, is if it takes 60 seconds or less, don’t procrastinate and don’t get that task done. Get it done now. The amount of energy and stress we have of constantly thinking about this task, and ways to avoid it, is actually more exhausting than doing the actual task at hand. I am slowly reminding my boyfriend about this rule, too. I think that it is a good rule to have and enforce in your house.

Today, I spent about 5 minutes doing various one minute chores, like cleaning a dirty mirror.

One minute tasks include hanging up your coat when you walk in the door, adding more toilet paper to the bathroom, putting your clothes in your hamper, instead of on the floor, and I know they are so many other tasks like this, that for some reason we keep pushing off.

Today, I will focus on getting tasks that no time at all now, instead of wasting time and energy waiting to schedule those tasks in my day, or do it another day. It is best to do things as they happen, instead of waiting to do them later. We can actually save energy, and be less stressed, as well.

Day 47

So my original plan was to babysit my niece since my sister works today. But my sister’s boyfriend checked on the road conditions, and realized that they were bad. He made the executive decision to stay home from work, since it snowed a lot overnight! I wasn’t needed to babysit my niece since she was going to spend the day with her dad today. My boyfriend also had the day off, too.

So we got to spend an extra day together, since he was off yesterday, as well. I was so excited! We got to relax today, we watched Tarzan, I haven’t seen that movie in so long. And I swept, and washed the floor, since I don’t normally get to do it today. So that was a good feeling to get that done. It was a great day to relax, and make time for getting small errands done around the house, too. I also got to make some time to read some books. I love snow days.

Today, I will use days off, or snow days, depending on where you live, as a day for fun, but also for a day that I can accomplish my chores, and errands around the house. It is important to dedicate some time for chores, but it’s also important to spend time having fun as a reward.

Day 41

I got to watch my niece twice this week, which was really exciting! I like to follow the superstitions for the Lunar New Year, which is to not clean, especially not to sweep, as they believe you are “sweeping” away your luck. I knew that I was going to be watching her on the Thursday, and I knew I was going to stay at my sister’s late. So I made sure on the Wednesday that my house was relatively clean. I cleaned my bathroom, and kitchen, and then tidied my room. I was all ready for the Lunar New Year!

I spent the whole day on Wednesday freshening up my place. What helped was that I have a chore/cleaning schedule already in placed. Having a cleaning schedule is really useful, and helpful. I find it so much easier to set aside 15-20 minutes a day, then it is setting aside four hours in one day. I feel like it’s less stressful, as well.

Today, I will try to eliminate stress by organizing and planning my chores every day, instead of finding one day throughout the week to do all of my chores. I can now use the day that I would spend my time cleaning, as a day of rest instead.

Make Your Bed

In this edition of Feel Good Fridays, let’s try to work on improving ourselves for the better. We don’t have to spend a lot of time making ourselves feel good, even if it’s just 15 minutes, or even five minutes a day. The idea of Feel Good Fridays is help us become happier without much effort.

Today’s suggestion is make your bed. I feel that if you start the day with making your bed, you will accomplished something, and by completing that task, you would want to complete another task, and then before you know it, you would have completed your entire to-do list, or just feel accomplished about what you have accomplished. When you accomplish more things on your to-do list, you begin to feel less stressed about it. Which also helps you to feel better.

What I normally like to do, is when I get out of bed, I fold the sheets over to the foot of the bed, so my fitted sheet has time to breathe. During that time, I make and eat breakfast, and then I get dressed. Once I finish those things, I then make my bed.

Day Ten

I will understand the importance of making a to-do list for the day, or for tomorrow. I will make sure that I keep it to a list of a maximum of four things. That way it is an easier to accomplish your list. And when you schedule yourself to do too much, you often feel overwhelmed, and thus, setting yourself up for failure, or for procrastination. Normally, whenever you see a long, daunting list of errands, and chores, you don’t really feel motivated to get things done, but when you see only three items, you feel more motivated to actually want to accomplish those chores.

For instance, on my to-do list for tomorrow, I have this planned for my day…

1. Go grocery shopping
2. Clean the bathroom
3. Cook dinner

These tasks shouldn’t take up too much of my time, probably no more than two hours. And the bonus part is that I’ll be able to get my walk in to the store. Getting my exercise in is important. I’m starting to exercise more which has been fun.

Today, I will learn to make to-do lists with no more than three items. This will ensure that I prioritize my most important tasks. By only having three things each day, I am able to focus on things that actually matter, and that they will get done.

Day Five

Hey everyone! I hope you are doing well. Last night my sister was asked to work a shift for tomorrow. So she had messaged me if I can watch my niece, and I didn’t mind. I was able to spend the day with her, which I love! She is 21.5 months, so it is such a fun age since she is learning a lot, and loves to laugh.

It was a bit last minute, which is okay, although I wished I had a bit more time to do the things that I was planning on doing tomorrow. Although I should have used my time a bit more wisely on Monday. As part of my resolutions, one of them was to do what ought to be done. If it takes one minute to complete, you must complete that task without putting it off.

I was happy that I was able to spend some time with my niece, but I just wished I was able to get the things done. I knew I would be at her house for a little while, so I wouldn’t have a lot of time to myself in the evening.

Today, I will spend my time wisely to ensure that I am able to get my get things done. I will learn to not procrastinate my errands. If you do it now, you won’t need to stress out about the deadline. And who knows what tomorrow may bring.

Busy Weekend

I had a busy, but fun weekend. Over the weekend, my boyfriend and I got caught up with out chores, and our meal plan. We also cleaned up a little bit.

Then on Sunday we spent the day relaxing by watching football, which is always fun.

On Monday, I had the pleasure of babysitting my niece. That was a lot of fun. That was the first time her and I got to spend a lot of time together.

Then today, I cleaned up some more, and made a delicious soup in the crock pot. I’ll be posting the recipe soon.

The weekend that I spent cleaning and catching up on chores was definitely needed and beneficial to me.

Why We Should Make Resolutions in October

I’m not sure how many of you make New Year’s Resolutions, but if you do, here’s an interesting approach.

I think the perfect time to make New Year’s Resolutions is October, think about, you are starting a second month of changes. Perhaps you are a parent and you have children that attend school. You might not have had a perfect month of smooth sailing, because perhaps the children weren’t ready to go back to school from their summer vacation. But now that they have a month of getting into the swing of things, they are able to make improvements.

Another reason why October is the perfect month to start resolutions, is that sometimes January is too daunting, or too much pressure to start anything new. Most people believe that starting to make changes in January, becomes too pressurized. It’s almost like the time where you buy yourself this cool journal, and you are too nervous to use it because you are scared to make a mistake in it.

Another reason why October is the perfect time to make resolutions is that more likely, whichever country you are in, you are in the transition of welcoming another season. I’m not sure, but a lot of people do seasonally chores, so your house is already freshened up, so will you. The end of the previous season is the beginning of a new season.

These are my reasons as to why I think October is the ideal time to make resolutions instead of waiting until January.

I would love to hear from you! If you make any resolutions, what do you normally like to change? And did I convince you to make New Year’s Resolutions in October?

Taking Control

I feel quite proud of myself of all the things I was able to accomplish!

This morning, I got a good night sleep, I made my boyfriend and I breakfast -toast with peanut butter and bananas with berry multi-grain oatmeal, followed with a cup of hot chocolate (mind you that wasn’t as healthy) so we made up by having a glass of orange juice.

Then I washed all the dishes at my boyfriend’s, I then tidied up our room. Then I wrote a note to my boyfriend like I always do when I leave after he goes to work.

My mama came and picked me up we made dinner together and I cleaned up and washed the dishes. Afterwards I went for a shower and then did a load of laundry and put it away.

I ended the day with some writing and reading. I also wrote a few (realistic) tasks that I wish to achieve tomorrow.

Today, I will believe in myself and tell myself that anything is possible. All I need to do is to take control of what I wish to do.