Works for me Wednesday: Papers

I am not a very organized person in general. When it comes to papers, as both a teacher and a homemaker, I suck. They would get everywhere and completely overwhelm me if I didn't have a system.

My years in a classroom actually taught me (through trial by fire) the necessity of two things when it came to papers: having a place for everything and handling every piece of paper only once.

So at home for all my papers, I have a three shelf tray (actually this one from Ikea). I place it on top of my filing cabinet and next to my shredder and recycle bin.

Every day, when the mail comes, or really any time papers come into the house, I open them immediately. I recycle or shred everything I don't need to keep, and everything else goes in one of my three trays. The top is for things I need to be able to see and grab immediately: checks that need to be deposited, reminder cards for upcoming appointments. The second tray is for "action items": bills that need to be paid, rebates that need to be filled out. The bottom drawer is for things that need to be filed.

Then, every few days or at least once a week, I go through my trays in order. Anything that needs my immediate attention gets dealt with first (appointments getting added to calendars, RSVPs), then if I still have time I pay whatever bills I have, then if I still have time I do my filing. In all honesty, I haven't filed very many times since I had the baby, but at least I know that everything that needs to be filed is in one safe place, and even if I don't get to my filing all my bills get paid on time.

(I also keep my stamps, checkbook, and address stickers right in the tray where I keep my bills. That way I always know where everything is and can get through the task faster).

It isn't a perfect system, but it works for me.

To do lists and other nonsense

I’ve never been much of a list maker. My husband (who very much is) always tells me to add things to my list when I think of them. I’ve always told him I’m more likely to lose the list than to forget to do it.

These days that doesn’t seem to be the case. Since I had the baby (and really a few months before), I have been operating in a sort of fog and constantly forget what it is that I need to do. I have decided to resort to the lists as a necessity. The daily chores get done and the weekly chores usually get done, but all the picky things like making appointments and writing thank you cards were falling through the cracks.

The problem is, to do lists still make me cranky. I forget to write things on them, then I forget to look at them, then when I do look at them I only see things I can’t do at that particular moment, and by the end of the day I just look back at the list and see a bunch of things that I still haven’t done and feel defeated.
So I think the solution (and this makes me even crazier) is to maintain two separate lists: a master to do list, and a basic daily plan. The purpose of the master list is to “catch” all the stuff that’s floating in my head, so that I don’t think later “what was it I said I needed to do?” The purpose of the daily plan is to actually have a reasonable and actionable set of things to do.
So, here’s how my strategy looks these days – this is a work in progress:

• I keep a master list on a pretty notepad of all the things I need to do. As soon as I think about it, I get my rear end to the notepad and write it down. My notepad is on my refrigerator so I don’t lose it, but I should probably put it on my nightstand when I go to bed and in my purse when I go out because things are still getting away from me.
  
  
• I take 5 minutes at night before I go to bed (but after the baby goes to bed) to read my list and choose a few things from it that I really need or want to get done the next day. If I choose too many, I won’t get through them or I’ll be overwhelmed and not do any. I also try to cluster tasks – I pay bills in a block a few times a month, I do errands once or twice a week when things are near each other – but not schedule huge things like “file 3 months worth of papers,” a task which would stay on the master list forever.
  
• I take 5 minutes in the morning to think about how those tasks will fit into my day. Are they desk tasks that I can do while holding the baby? Are they errands I should schedule around naptime?
  
• I cross things off the master list as they get done, and I throw away my daily schedule every day, whether I got to everything on it or not.

It’s not a perfect system, and I can’t believe that I actually gave in to using lists. Right now, it works for me, but I’m very open to suggestions. As you can see, I’m orgazationally challenged!

Keeping the house clean in 2011: On the baby's schedule

So, I said earlier that it was one of my resolutions this year to keep my house cleaner. If you’ve been a reader for a little while, you know that this is an area I have struggled with for a while. You also know that I have a 4 month old at home.
In the past month or so, my precious angel has decided that she doesn’t need naps that are longer than 30 minutes, and sometimes that she doesn’t need to nap at all. Needless to say I disagree. I Unfortunately, trying to get her back on track and rested means that I’m spending more time sitting in her room trying to get her to go to and stay asleep, giving me even less than 30 minutes at a shot to get my household work done. This has made it a bit challenging to try to keep up with the cleaning. So I’ve come up with this threefold plan, and hopefully it will work for me.

• I do everything I can with the baby. For example, I clip my coupons and pay my bills sitting on the floor while she has tummy time, and I made a game out of folding my laundry. I bundle her up to go outside and get the mail, and I try to carry her around as I do light decluttering. This makes these tasks take a little longer, but it’s fun for her and it means I can spend those few nap minutes on things I can only do when she’s sleeping.
  
• I do as much as I can in the evening when my husband is home to play with the baby. I do all the dishes, some housework, make lunch for my husband and sometimes for myself for the next day, and defrost something for the next day’s dinner.
  
• I need to prioritize the work in the household and accept that not everything will get done all the time, but that some things must get done and I must do them first.
  

So, when I do have a few minutes, like at the beginning of a nap, or when the baby is entertaining herself on her play gym (and ignoring me), I choose a quick 5 minute task to do. I do them in the order listed below. This way I know that the things that must be done are getting done, and when possible I also do what should be done. Since the length of a nap is never guaranteed, breaking things up into 5 minute chunks means I never have a job half finished when I have to run and get the baby. First, I do my daily chores:

1. I make my bed.
   
2. I start a load of laundry, or switch it to the next position.
   
3. I put away any dishes on my draining rack, empty my dishwasher, and reload it. (Or any one or two of these tasks, if I get interrupted.)
   
4. I grab the bags out of any full trashcans, and gather up all my rinsed recyclables to take out to the bins.
   
5. I do a quick throw-away/put-away drill in my living room and kitchen.
   
6. I do any make-ahead meal prep that I can do for dinner (i.e., chopping onions, washing vegetables).
   

Then, once all my daily household chores are done, I pick a weekly chore from the list below. At one point, I had chores assigned to specific days of the week, but then if I had a bad day two Mondays in a row, my floors didn’t get washed for three weeks. Now I just do the chores in order. If I get to two in a day, I get ahead, if I don’t get to any, it’s okay.

1. I sweep and damp mop all my hard floors. (Or just sweep, or just mop)
   
2. I vacuum my carpets. (Usually I divide this, upstairs and downstairs)
   
3. I dust with a damp rag or microfiber cloth.
   
4. I clean my mirrors and sinks, toilets, and shower (Again, or I break this up if need be)
   
5. I clean any old food out of my refrigerator.
   
6. I change my sheets and towels (Okay, this one I still do on the same day every week)
   

And if I get through all that I’m done. Actually, if I get through a little of that, I’m usually done. If I get through one or two weekly housekeeping chores, I give myself some downtime for the rest of the day. The thing is, knowing exactly what to do and getting to it right away actually means that I have more time to rest or to sit and watch the baby sleep. So far at least, it works for me.

Reclaim your time with a written cleaning plan

This is my first entry to Works for me Wednesday.

I got this idea from a single mom who was a year ahead of me in teaching college. She said that the only way she ever managed to get her grading and planning done on top of everything else was to reclaim small bits of time throughout her day. Instead of waiting until she had a free hour, she would find five minutes while waiting outside her daughter’s school and pull a 5 minute task out of her work bag to accomplish.

I try to use this tactic with my grading, but I’ve definitely found it to work with my cleaning. I save lots of time cleaning by figuring out how long things will take and getting them done whenever I have a moment.

Over the past year, I have noted how long various household chores take, both of my active time and of passive machine time. For example – Sweeping kitchen floor (5 minutes) vs. Run Dishwasher (5 minutes active, 45 minutes passive). Some of these are in my head, but some tasks that I do less often I still write down in a notebook which I keep in the kitchen. If I’m microwaving something for two minutes, I grab a two minute task from my notebook (shine my sink), and it’s amazing how much I get done.

If I have a whole hour, I will devise a more complicated plan of attack. For example:

Switch clothes to dryer (1 minute active, 50 minutes passive)
Start dishwasher (5 minutes active, 45 minutes passive)
Sweep floor (5 minutes)
Swiffer/damp rag mop floor (5 minutes)
Update blog (10 minutes – see how I snuck that in there?)
Wipe down counters (2 minutes)
Shine sink (2 minute)
Dust (10 minutes)
Vacuum living room and hallway (10 minutes)
Fold clothes (because of course, they’re done now) (5 minutes)
Empty dishwasher (5 minutes)

It looks like a lot, but I can get all this done in an hour specifically because I made the plan. If I didn’t have a plan, I would waste a lot of time, dawdling, procrastinating, and trying to figure out what to do next. Things always seem to me like they will take longer than they do, so actually timing myself and putting it in writing keeps me honest about how much I can accomplish. It’s funny how once I’ve written down that I can do something, I really can.

Well, anyway, it works for me.