Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Maintaining Routines

So, I've been having some major motivation issues lately. I'm not really sure what my problem is. I have just felt kind of blah every day for the past two weeks. It might be the Metformin or it might be the oppressive heat and humidity that has set in around here or it might be the aftermath of a waaaay too over scheduled June. I don't know what it is, but I know that I don't like it and I know that I am having trouble snapping out of it.

My grandparents were here the past two days and I didn't even have the motivation to clean my house. They were staying at my brother's house this visit, but still, I normally would have cleaned at least the downstairs... knowing they would be over here a good chunk of the time. I picked up (kind of) and vacuumed the dog hair off the floor downstairs and things looked mostly presentable... but my Grandfather still asked me You did know we were coming, right? when I half heartedly said Sorry it's a little messy in here. He said it jokingly, but I'm sure he wasn't really thinking it jokingly. It's just that normally when they come to visit, I've spent the previous day cleaning and staying up until midnight getting everything done... you know, trying to pretend that our house is this clean ALL the time... this time... my house just looked like it normally does when I'm not trying to impress anyone else! (well, except that the floors were vacuumed)

So, here is my issue... I have a problem sticking to things for more than a few weeks. I can make cleaning routines, or plan meals and grocery shop according to my meal plan for the week, etc. but I only seem to stick to it for a week or two and then something will come up that will throw me off course... or sometimes nothing will come up and I'll be generally lazy. The problem with this is that for one, when I don't plan meals and grocery shop, we end up spending waaaay too much money on food and two, when I don't do ANYTHING around the house for a few days, it requires a major cleaning effort to get things under control. The backlash of NOT doing things in a methodical way is a little depressing. Sigh.

In an effort to find my way out of this slump I did spend a few hours today clipping my coupons (from the past two weeks) and cleaning out my coupon book and getting rid of expired coupons. I hadn't done anything with my coupons in over a month. I felt like I was throwing money away when I was tossing expired coupons for things I KNOW I purchased in the past month... and paid full price for. Uggggh! But I'm back on track now. I actually have had a weekly planning session the past two Sundays (well, actually Mondays) so I think I need to add clipping my coupons and finding my deals for the week to that time.

I also washed the car seat covers. This was somewhat of a chore. They weren't the easiest things to get off and on, and it's always a pain taking those things out of the cars and putting them back in. But... it had to be done. Since we had so many car trips last month, there were more than a few times that Andy had leaked through his diaper before I realized it and changed him, and the car seat covers were starting to have a distinct odor. Plus, we've had them for about a year now and have never washed the covers. Vacuumed? Yes. Washed? No.

And last but not least, I finally broke down and bought a canister for our compostable food scraps. In April, we started a compost bin. For the past three months we have been putting our food scraps in bowls on the counter. Sometimes if I didn't want to dirty a bowl, they would just go down the garbage disposal. For three months I have put off spending the $7 at Walmart for one of these canisters because I KNOW I can find one much much cheaper at Goodwill. Well, every time I go, they either only have the small ones, or have a whole set that they won't break up (for more than $7). It was getting a little comical. So, today, I broke down and got a canister. I'm sure if I go to Goodwill tomorrow, they will have exactly what I was looking for... for $1.



Tomorrow I really am going to put effort into following my cleaning schedule and getting back on track. I might not really feel like doing anything productive, but I'm hoping that small successes will breed larger successes and if I can just force myself to do a few productive things tomorrow, I'll find that I'll just keep going and get a few more things done!

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