Having The Right "Stuff"

Having the right equipment can make all the difference in approaching cleaning tasks. I discovered that I dislike using washcloths to wash dishes unless the dish had almost no food or gunk on it. I much prefer using a dish scrub brush with bristles to wash dishes. I find that washcloths get gunky and funky and never seem to get free of all the food particles you wipe up.

I also prefer to use microfiber cloths for everything. Everything! From washing tables to wiping windows and toilets to drying my face (not with the same cloths!) 

Finally, my last discovery is that I dislike using Clorox pre-moistened wipes. I much prefer to spray the liquid myself and wipe it up with my microfiber cloth. If I need to toss anything, I would rather use a paper towel. If the wipes were larger or thicker, maybe I would feel differently.

On another note, my schedule has been out of whack-- my fault! I kept the kids awake all day yesterday and didn't do my evening routine or my workout. I did go on a walk and did some nominal lunges.

Aside from yesterday (Monday) and Saturday, though, I have maintained my workout habits each day during afternoon naps. Today I took a step too far, though, and attempted a (very good) pilates workout that was just beyond my reach. I feel faint and miserable at the moment. I shall rehydrate and lay down and take a step back tomorrow for my routine. 

Here's a snippet of my favorite reading of the day from Psalm 145. I am loving these Psalms! Somehow they are my least favorite reading in the Mass, but when I am alone with the Psalms they pack a punch and reach my heart most often of all. I think it is the beauty of the verse as opposed to the prose of most Scripture. 

The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.

House Blessing Monday

Since following a home cleaning routine for the past three months or so, I have learned tricks and truths I would not have believed before. One is that I can go an entire week on one vacuum and mop session.

FlyLady recommends spending one hour "Blessing" your home by vacuuming (10 minutes), mopping (10 minutes), dusting (10 minutes), wiping mirrors and windows (10 minutes), emptying all trash cans (10 minutes) and changing your bedding (10 minutes).

I spend most of my time vacuuming and mopping, and these definitely take more than 10 minutes, but they don't take a whole hour! It's amazing how little time it takes to complete tasks that you put off for dread of pulling out the vacuum and setting up the mop bucket. Try it out for yourself and set the timer to find out that you can indeed vacuum most of your house in under 15 minutes, upstairs and downstairs, too. 

This house blessing hour is meant to be a superficial clean of only the trafficked areas (don't move the couch, although I always DO pull out the dining room chairs). I have found that it "tides me over" while I spend the majority of my cleaning time (only 20 minutes a day, or so) on the deeper cleaning in one of the prescribed "zones" that are trademark FlyLady system.

I will write more about FlyLady as I blog daily, but for today, my message to myself is that I can actually, shockingly to myself, go for the entire week until I vacuum and mop again on the following Monday's home blessing.

I used to rush to take out the vacuum daily, or at least bi-weekly. Now, I let it go as I move on to the deeper cleaning I would naturally neglect. 

Most surprisingly, after completing my Home Blessing on Mondays, I often get a wild idea to host a party during the week, and end up spoiling the nice effect of my cleaning. Rather than waking up the next morning to do a deep clean, I don't waver from my prior weekly plan, and I put off the vacuum and mopping until my next scheduled House Blessing the next Monday. I will sweep and do a cursory job of picking up noticable particles, but I am amazed to see that the once weekly cleaning actually has tide me over in each instance until the next week. 

There's no need to be a perfectionist or be tyrannized by the drive to vacuum every spec every day. Just let it go and be amazed that your floors can last the whole week. 

For the Scripture for today, may I dazzle you with this blessing of blessings! Fr. John Michael Talbot singing his glorious interpretation of Psalm 62:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAiGAyp22JI

Planning for the busy week

This week has been busier than normal in some ways with the start of the regular Fall schedule in full force. MOPS started this week, and my women's ministry program WWP starts next Friday. For a woman without a job or kids in school, my calendar is filling up!

 Much of last week's/this weekend's activity may just be mental business because I know that this coming week will be a marathon.

Tuesday I am hosting the leadership meeting for WWP (our new Parish Women's Bible Study). I am organizing it and am trying to prepare the content of the leaders meeting as well as set the table for the event.

There is a lot of information to cover but I think I am going to go with just the more needful at this time. The two hour meeting will be full with lunch, up to five kids. and all the information I have not even been able to sift through adequately. The biggest question remains whether or not all of the security clearances will have checked out by Friday. I pray to God that they will! It will not be the best scenario for me to have to fill in with babysitting for the first week. Please, God, don't let that be the case!

For the meeting, I will simply run through specifically what will happen for the first two sessions.  The first session is unique, and the second session is like most of the other sessions. Therefore, both should be covered.

I will also ask the leaders to bring one sweet or savory food dish of whatever they choose variety for the first two weeks, and after that, we will ask others to sign up.  I also would like them to bring coffee makers so we can have quick, hot cups of both decaf and regular coffee.

Anything more than that will be too much, in my opinion. I can slowly ask for help with the other areas as the weeks go on and I am able to see what needs to be done.

I will leave this post alone now, after discussing my planning for WWP leadership team meeting on Tuesday. I plan on devising my shopping list now, and need to wait until Monday to purchase so my croissants are fresh!

On to the Mass Readings for today!

One of my favorite phrases from Scripture is the Psalm for this week, Psalm 95

Come, let us bow down in worship;
let us kneel before the LORD who made us.
For he is our God,
and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides.

I can truly hear the song playing in my heart from my youth. How lovely. It is self explanatory.

Before Bed Routine problems and solutions

I have been listening to a book on tape about Habits. I don't want to post the name of the book here or people may stumble upon my blog while looking up the popular title. It's not a great book, I don't even find it entertaining, but I cannot not finish it because I hate leaving a book unfinished. What a waste of time and energy, I know.

The outcome of this is that I have learned a few ideas from the author and his "case studies." One is that I am in the habit of going to bed when a certain cue occurs. My "cue" is getting really tired. This serves me well in a sense-- when you go to bed when you feel the urge to go to bed, you can often fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly. 

The problem is that this cue and response habit interferes with my new habit formation goals. I want to stay UP after the girls go to bed to pick up and clean the last dregs of the messy day. This usually involves dinner dishes and clean up, picking up the food left under the table and on the kitchen floor, and retidying the living room toys and books. The last part is simple, I could do it in 5 minutes, and I might, if I didn't also have the dining room and kitchen hanging over me. 

My evening routine is supposed to look like this, according to my new routine goals: 

Before Bed Routine:

• Dishes after dinner
• Girls' Bath/Brush teeth/Books/Bedtime
• Shower for me
• Set out clothes for tomorrow
• Pampering- bath/moisturize/etc.

What happens, though, is usually:

• Eat Dinner
• Maybe bath
• E. bed
• Books w/ A
• A bed
• Juliet Bed after brushing my teeth but usually not even getting around to washing my face (Gasp! Beauty Rule #1!)

According to some principles I've considered from the new book, maybe I should make life a little easier for myself by doing the dishes right away after dinner, rather than lingering and putting E to bed first. She may be crying and tired and not wanting to be set down, but I just need to load everything in the dish washer and pick up bits of food from floors and counters before moving on to baths or anything else. A. is quite a good helper if I can convince her to use her small hand broom or put silverware in the dishwasher. 

I think I will put my new routine in action today. Here's the chain of events. If I don't have greasy dishes to deal with after both girls are in bed, it is easier for me to tidy the living room. After that short period of tidying I may be inspired enough to keep going through the rest of the routine. 

The routine is important to me because your habits are what you default to when things are out of whack. It's your auto-pilot. Don't you want to have a gold-standard auto-pilot? That means you don't have to work or push yourself once you are in the habit, it comes naturally!

I like to go to bed with a nice clean, moisturized face and minty teeth and clean feet and soft, clean pajamas. But it doesn't happen unless I stay up for more than 30 minutes after my kid activities are done. 

I will let you know in a week or so how things are going with the quick after dinner clean up before moving into another room.

Flying through my house

One the most important habits I established lately is my house cleaning routine, in the format promoted by FlyLady. She suggests a light, extremely regular cleaning routine, with a general superficial cleaning once a week for an hour or so, and spend another hour throughout the course of the week on a more ambitious, thorough cleaning of one "zone" of the house.

This week was the kitchen. Last week was the living room and dining room. Next week is the main bathroom. It seems the bathroom zone keeps coming around week after week as time flies by! Last month when I was cleaning that zone, I spent an hour or more over the course of a few days scrubbing mildew from the grout on the bathroom floor with a toothbrush. YES! I did that. I cannot believe the new me.

It feels grand to tackle a problem area that I have noticed for years without ever addressing. The floor in the bathroom really bothered me. This time around, I may work on recaulking the tub. It's one of the tasks I really should request of the landlord. There is mold growing on the caulking and it is stripping away from the wall. Apparently this allows water under the tub which can damage the floor.

I actually have not completed my thorough cleaning of the kitchen for the week, mainly because it is always pretty clean. As I have been cycling through FlyLady about three times now, the daily tasks she assigns are not as applicable to me. Last month, for example, I soaked and scrubbed the stove top and knobs and have rarely used them since, due the extreme heat in August when I loathe turning on any appliance in the kitchen. Therefore, when that task rolled around, I promptly ignore it. I am due, though, for another declutter in that zone. I am considering waiting for my parents to visit later this month, as it will give my mom and I something fun to do.

Oh, yes! I did fix one item that I had been struggling with for the decade I have lived at this house, and countless women have suffered while living here. I sprayed our cabinet lazy susan with WD-40 so that it actually turns and opens with less tension. Not perfect, but much better.

Our handyman/friend also fixed our Kitchen light that I had compromised by letting the plug tubing get too close to the burner. Between that and my brother's hot water kettle that had the same problem, I had been stressed about the more real threat of kitchen fire. Both issues are now resolved and our smoke detector is quite sensitive in the kitchen. These are of great relief to me as a mother of two in a three story house with questionable egress in the case of fire. I do plan on investing in fire safety supplies once I determine exactly what we should have. I am thinking of escape ladders, masks of some sort, and fire-repellant blankets if they exist.

As for my afternoon routine and habit,  I continued the course of working out by utilizing a youtube Pilates video. I really enjoyed the workout. It was varied and I could feel it working and I feel it even this morning, though the soreness is not debilitating. I may even walk over to the gym and cancel my never-used membership. I have put that off far too long.

Yesterday was also my brother's birthday so I made two desserts- a turtle brownie, and a yellow cake with cool whip frosting and pink sugar sprinkles with ten candles on top! We had barbecue chicken with the delicious (seriously delicious) sriracha and garlic barbecue sauce from Trader Joe's and hamburgers on potato roll buns. The girls and I walked to Safeway to buy a balloon bouquet-- most of the balloons made it home. It's a bad idea to go on a long walk with balloons when windy outside.

I will leave you with a reflection on today's Mass readings from Roman's 8:

Brothers and sisters:
We know that all things work for good for those who love God,
who are called according to his purpose. 
For those he foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to the image of his Son,
so that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers.
And those he predestined he also called;
and those he called he also justified;
and those he justified he also glorified.



This shows me that when God wants and calls a person, he provides all of the necessary work and effort and graces for that person to be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus, and therefore to be glorified. It starts in our Baptism and ends in our glorification in Heaven with Christ. But it is a process and God both initiates and acts with us and within us to reach the end desired by both God and self-- seeing Christ in our glorified body-- the Beatific Vision.

Habits- you are what you do

My life has changed radically from the time I initially blogged at this address. I was not consistent and you will notice large swaths of time missing from my posts.

Now I am married, have two daughter, and stay at home with them full time. My life has changed, and I have had the opportunity to "remake" myself in certain ways. Key to change is altering my habits. 

I have much to say on this topic in many areas of my life and I intend to blog daily to provide updates on attempts at better habit-formation. While I don't have the time this morning to draft, edit, and publish a blog post, I decided to provide one update on a habit I hope to build upon this month: getting back in shape.

I used to work out by lifting light weights prior to having my first daughter. I have seldom been back to the gym since. I don't intend to return to the gym, and most workouts take too much time for me at the moment. Therefore, I am going to be using youtube videos to usher me back into shape.

I intend to use 10-12 minute high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts a few days a week, and pilates youtube videos on other days of the week. My aim is to do five days a week. I cannot suffer more than 20 minutes of workout a day, so I will find short videos and try to build up a good repertoire to choose from. I think it will be fun for the girls to participate and watch as well.

So my goals for the month of September and the habits I hope to form are: 1) workout daily or almost daily and 2) blog daily or almost daily even with the most mundane updates on my progress and life work.

This warrants many posts, but I will also be continuing to follow the FlyLady routine modified to my needs. I have already begun this habit almost two months ago and it is well underway although I am not as thorough as I would like to be. I shall provide more insight into how this has changed my life as the months progress and as my home continues to improve. 

Take care, and I will leave you with a portion of today's Mass readings in Luke Chapter 5:

After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
"Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch."
Simon said in reply,
"Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets."
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing."

To me, this shows that it is always God who gives all bounty and gifts. That's probably not the true message of the passage and I don't claim that it is, but that is my takeaway. We can go about fruitlessly but when we hasten to obey God, everything can change instantaneously.