Sticker charts are one of my ideas
It’s that time of year. Summer is over now, sort of. School is back in session. Mr. Man is in school full-time and Kindergarten Nugget is away at school for three hours every afternoon. We had fun being home together all summer. We really did have a good time. However, I would be lying thought if I said I wasn’t at least a little ready for them to be back at school for at least some of the time.
We are back on our school year schedule. Great . . .so great. I am loving it. But just one tiny thing . .
You see. . .
Now I have to put my money where my mouth is so to speak. . .
Summer being over means that I finally have to do all those things around the house that I told myself that I would do once summer is over.
Duh Duh Duh Dum
The chickens have come home to roast y’all.*
That means I have to clean and organize for real, not just in theory.
The thing is, in theory, I think I do want to clean and organize. I do dream of a more organized house where everything has a place.
I enjoy the occasional trip to the perfectly organized and curated Ikea showrooms.
Side note: Have you ever been to an Ikea store? The restaurant is pretty affordable and is so good! I also love the ambiance. They have cool decorations hanging from the ceiling. It is a unique experience.
Anyway, back to cleaning and decluttering.
I fantasize about the kind of life I could live if my house was less cluttered. I don’t know if I would have a more organized brain if my house was completely organized but I imagine it would be. In my imagination, my perfectly organized house would allow me more opportunities because I imagine that I wouldn’t have anything in a “to do” pile. In my imagination, everything would be done so the world’s possibilities would open themselves to me. Anything would be possible.
My realistic-self knows that even people with organized houses have problems, but I still dream of a more organized house. Plus, we don’t have a ton of storage in our house. We have two sheds but no garage. We have a storage area in the walls but no attic. Also our main storage area opens up into the boys room so we have put screws on the door because Mr. Man used to open up the door and play inside when he was younger. We have a basement but the area where the basement doors meet the basement sometimes let water in when we have those torrential downpours that area becoming more common.
Plus, this winter we would like to use our basement Franklin stove and it might be hard to use if our basement has a lot of stuff stored in it.
Additionally, I see this year while Preschool Nugget is in half-day kindergarten as a unique opportunity for me. I am not in the workplace fulltime right now. I can use this year to enjoy my time with Kindergarten Nugget while working on some home projects while he is at school.
I was in sort of similar situation to this last year in that Nugget was at school in the afternoons for four days a week. Last fall, I also dreamed that I would tackle some of my home projects. What I found though was that I lost steam in regards to my progress as the year wore on. I felt sort of like I squandered the time while Henry was in school last year. I hope to get a little more done around the house this year.
If I were being honest with myself, I would say that I do not have an abundance of natural ability in interior design/ space management. I have had friends come to my apartment when I was younger who arranged my furniture in a ways that I never could have imagined. Then again, maybe home design interests some people more than it interests me. I know lots of people like watching HDTV type shows but I never really got into doing that..
Sometimes when I am working on home organizing, I wrongly tell myself that this is something that I am not good at doing this sort of thing. In those circumstances I have to remind myself that I AM ENOUGH. I don’t need to be anyone else. I have lots of good qualities like: stick-to-itiveness and basic organizational skills. I am also a good decision maker and that has helped me accomplish things in my life.
But, I had a little breakthrough this week.
I was reading an article in the New York Times earlier this week about struggles women with ADHD have in their financial lives. I have never been formerly diagnosed with ADHD but I think that I have it. I am not having financial struggles but reading this article maybe helped me come up with some ideas to keep my cleaning and organizing goal on track. I learned that people with ADHD have reward deficiency syndrome where we need more of a a dopamine hit for activities that we do in our normal lives.
I had breakthroughs this week on how I plan on thinking about organizing. In order to keep my cleaning and organizing goal on track I came up with many faceted plan. For some people this might seem too complicated, for me this feels right.
First, I made a beginning list of some of the things that I want to accomplish with my cleaning and organizing this school year. This list isn’t complete but it is a jumping-off point for me. I feel like one of the biggest struggles for me and cleaning is knowing where to start. This list contains tasks that are small enough and don’t break my brain with their immenseness. I can add tasks to this list when I notice things that need to be done.
Having a list that I can add a task to but knowing that I don’t have to work on the task right now, takes away some of the emotional component for me. It allows me to not judge myself. It takes the judgement away because all I am doing is adding something that I noticed to a list.
Here is my list:
Then we get the fun part that might hopefully keep me engaged and excited about cleaning and decluttering: rewarding myself.
The next component of my plan is my sticker chart and reward system. I plan to reward myself with a metallic star of the variety that teachers put on good papers when I was a student in school. I will earn a star every day that I work on task on list for 15 minutes or more. I would like to reward myself for continuing to work on this project over weeks and months, this is why I am only requiring that I work on it for 15 minutes to earn a star. I can of course work on something for longer than 15 minutes. My hope is that once I get started on a task that takes some time, I become engaged in it and I work for more than 15 minutes. But by rewarding fifteen minutes worth of work, I hope to reward myself for working on this on days when maybe I don’t have a lot of extra time.
As for rewarding myself, I believe putting a fancy star on a sticker chart. will give me a short term dopamine hit. I think this might work because I get excited when I earn digital badges for reading on my Kindle app. I also liked recording my reading on Beanstack, the summer reading app, that my library uses.
I also invented a reward system for myself for when I have reached certain cleaning goals. I am still coming up with some of the rewards as I see things that intrigue me. But some of the rewards I plan to give myself are:
- After earning 10 stars, I am going to take myself to Starbucks while the boys are in school and choose a drink of my choice and sit outside and enjoy it with a book
- After earing 20 starts, I am going to take myself to Wegmans for lunch and allow myself to get the Asian bar if I want which I don’t usually do because it is priced per ounce
- The list continues with me earning specific rewards to me after every 10 stars. At 60 stars I decided that I earn a trip to King of Prussia to visit The Container Store and Crate and Barrel with the expressed purpose of looking around because I curious about these stores but they are not right around the corner so it feels like an indulgence. I will probably also go out to lunch or dinner in King of Prussia.
I also have another component of my plan to try to make cleaning and my long term chore list more fun. I would like to use a many-sided die, a polyhedral, to help me determine what task to work on when I don’t know where to start. Right now, I am doing to use this website as my online many sided die. However, if I need something more stimulating I am going to buy one online and physically roll the die when I need to make a decision for which chore to tackle next.
The plan for right now is that I am going to go with my gut when I choose what I would like to work on for 15 minutes. However, if nothing strikes my fancy initially, I am going to roll the die and see what task the number I rolled corallites to on my list. Then I will do that task. In times of indecision, I will let fate decide what i will work on. This will take some of the pressure of making a decision off of my shoulders and thus removing some of the emotionality of cleaning up.
Also I am going to play fun music while I clean up or listen to my audiobook. Perhaps I need to make a music playlist or have a music strategy so I don’t spend too much time overthinking this. Maybe the key is automate as much of it as I can so I can still have fun but not think too much about my music.
Also while writing and editing this plan, I decided that I am going to read a book to help me target my cleaning and decluttering plans. I found this book and the audio version is available from my library on Libby. So I plan to probably buy either a physical copy or a Kindle version and read and listen as I like to do. I do think that I need some guidance to help take the emotionality out of cleaning up.
So that’s the plan!
I also plan on taking some of the pressure off my cleaning and organizing ventures by building plenty opportunities to do other thing that I enjoy while the boys are in school. I hope to volunteer a little at their elementary school. I also would like to ride my bike and play my guitar while they are in school. I hope to write on my blog and read book for my book club while the boys are at school too. I also may need time to work on writing in-person trivia for my library and for creating online Kahoots as well.
I know that I writing this post mainly for myself to help me organize my intentions for the school year.
What about you?
Do you come up with your own intentions for yourself and your time at the beginning of the school year? What are your goals this year? Tell me in the comments below.
