Whenever I walk into my house, I hang my keys on a hook near the front door and hang my purse in my home office. Sometimes I have lots of groceries in my hands, I drop them on the floor, hang my keys up and then hang my purse up. Other times I have to pee upon entering my home, I will still hang up my keys, then my purse...and then pee. There are even the rare occasions when I return from errand running, I have to pee AND my arms are full of groceries....You guessed it, I drop the groceries, hang the keys, purse and finally pee.
How riveting, right? So this blog post is about mundane tasks? No, it's about making sure the mundane tasks are consistently done. Everyday. Every time. No Exceptions.
If you are reading this and you are a person with your shit properly together this may not seem like a big deal. But if you're like me, at least the earlier version of me, it was the first step to a better life. (Such a dramatic statement.)
To give a little background, I have lost HOURS of my life looking for: my purse, my keys, my billfold, insurance cards, petty cash, any important paperwork that I have ever needed-for myself and/or my family members, plane tickets (back when they were paper), any receipt for something I was returning (fun fact-my purse would be a mess of receipts, but never the one I needed.)
This lack of organization and sheer chaos wasn't just limited to my purse. Here are the following things that I have been known for being messy for as a child- My elementary school desk, my lockers in both junior high and high school, any Trapper Keeper that I owned (the irony), my book bag, my room, under my bed, my closet.
Here is a list of things that, as a full-on grown-ass adult, I couldn't keep clean- my car(s), my work desk (multiple jobs) my apartment (multiple apartments), my house, all the rooms in my house, any hotel room that I have ever stayed in.
Although, sloppy was my identity, I didn't revel in it. The older I became, the more I hated it, but couldn't shake it. It was like the chaos had taken over and I had just surrendered to it as if it were my fate. Then last fall, I decided to fancy up our house. The walls needed painted and the awful carpets needed to be replaced. Picking out the new paint color and vinyl flooring was fun, dreaming of a modern look on the old house was a hoot...then reality set in. We had to clear the house (at least the parts of it that needed new flooring.) That was a mess, but not the familiar mess, this mess was too overwhelming. If my day-to-day life was a rip current warning, my "getting ready for the worker guys" life was a tsunami.
Having your house renovated is like moving, but you're not taking your stuff out of the house, there is no U-Haul or a new place you are moving into. You are just packing up all your belongings and squashing them into another messy room in your already crowded and messy house. I remember last October as I was frantically getting ready for the flooring guys, I thought, ' I just can't. I can't fucking live like this anymore." It was akin to a drunk waking up in a dumpster thinking, 'so this is what rock bottom feels like'. (More dramatic statements.)
I realized that I couldn't just stop being who I was. If I had the ability to turn my life around, I would have done it already. I had to realize that being chronically disorganized was bigger than I had ever been willing to admit. I decided to reach out for help, so I did what any good human living in the 21st century does, I Googled. I also You-Tubed and Tik Tok'd. There are so many resources out there. Not only is the advice practical, you realize that other people have dealt with the same issues, have weathered the storm and came back for the better...WAY better.
The best source I found was a book called "Atomic Habits" by James Clear. I got the Audible version and listened as I took my morning walks. (Which ironically had been a habit that I have stuck to for years, even before learning how important habits were.) The gist of the book is that if you want to change the big things in life, it has to start with the little things, like hanging your purse up everyday.
Once I hung my purse up every time I came home, I stacked another habit with it (thus the term habit-stacking.) I will grab anything in my office that needs to go in the kitchen. None of this stuff is a big deal or terribly time-consuming, but now when I go to leave my house, I always know where my purse is. The cleaner my office is, the less likely I am to lose important stuff. Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, becoming organized isn't a snap. Although I feel that I am making strides, I still have clutter and piles, but they aren't as big and I have learned to recognize them and build habits to conquer them before they get too big.
The following are daily habits that I have incorporated- make my bed daily, run the dishwasher at night, empty it out in the morning, drink a glass of water when I wake up, and do some kind of You-Tube exercise video before my morning walk .
The following are my weekly habits- shred junk mail on Saturday mornings, clean up my desk after I shred the mail, take out the trash in my office trash can after I clean off my desk.
Again, the full-fledged grown-ups that have their shit together (and probably have for years) are reading this and wondering why I am listing just the utmost basic actions people can take in their daily lives...the thing is that not everyone has a grasp on daily life. If it can be broken into bite-sized pieces, it is so less scary.
I am not a success story, not yet, I am working on it though. There are so many habits I need to establish or get better at. One is writing. I write comedy and sketches, but usually I don't make a lot of progress on either until I have a stand-up show that is coming up or I am meeting with my friends to pitch sketch ideas ...so why not do that with my blog? You guys are going to be my reason for making a weekly blog my weekly habit. I solemnly pledge to write a new post every Tuesday. I can't promise that they all will be as insightful and personal as this one. (I have a lot of cat related material that I really want to deep dive into.) I can promise that I will provide some sort of written content to you, my reader.
If any of you want to join me in making a new habit, let me know...we can stack our habits together. Every Tuesday when my blog comes out, it can remind you to mow the lawn or clean out the refrigerator or to stop reading cat blogs.
In the meantime, stay safe, look for the happy and be sure to tip your wait staff!
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