What I've been up to while Sam is at school

Last night I made chili, which I've written about before, so I'm finally not writing a food post!

So, a few posts ago, I mentioned that I was considering taking a break from social media. The impetus for this was something that happened last weekend where I commented on a post before I was really awake and pissed someone off who I truly respect. I basically misquoted her and she laid the smack down promptly. I apologized immediately, but it bothered me all weekend, to the point that I couldn't calm myself down and relax at night. Rather than, you know, talking to another human being about it, I just spent even more time on the internet, looking at stupid slideshows and buzzfeed lists to try to distract myself until I got over my embarrassment/shame. Not a particularly healthy way to deal.

Which is why I'm considering taking a little time off from the internet, to consider my consumption of and interaction with online culture. I might do it on a weekend when I have the best chance of actually doing something constructive with the freed-up time. The silver lining is that while browsing said buzzfeed lists, I found this, which lead me to this. Clean your house in 20 minutes a day for 30 days? Sign me up.

I set up reminders in my calendar and started with the very next morning, which happened to be the 15th. (Rather than start at the beginning of the list, I decided to match days of the month to numbers on the list, so I can just keep doing it as time goes on.) So far, in 20 minute chunks, I've swept and tidied my living room and dining room; steam cleaned my bathroom floor, emptied all the bathroom trash and thrown out all of Sam's bath toys that had gotten mildewy; sanitized all door knobs, switch plates, phones, remote controls, keyboards and mice, and most of the video game handhelds; and yesterday I de-cluttered and swept the landing of our split-entry, cleaned out the van, and swept the front steps. Over the next four days I expect virtually my whole house to become clean enough for company to drop in out of the blue. (Day 20. Surface clean living room and kitchen, 21. Surface clean bathrooms, 22. Surface clean bedrooms, 23. Sweep and vacuum all floors in the house.) The 20 minute time limit ensures that I don't burn myself out cleaning half my day, and I still have time while Sam's away to do some reading and writing, take a shower if I need to, and get some dinner prep going.

In the past, I'd tried to do FlyLady, but it just didn't work for me. It's heavily e-mail based, and I just don't use e-mail during my day-to-day to keep track of tasks. The one big thing FlyLady did for me was point me toward Cozi--my Cozi homepage is actually FlyLady themed since that's how I found it. All of my menu planning, shopping/to-do listing, and chore scheduling, well, really all of my scheduling is done in the Cozi app or the website now. Last fall and winter I kept up with some of the main themes of what the FlyLady group was up to, especially the monthly habits. This month's habit is a before bed routine, which has been easy for me to forget or just not do because I'm tired.

Tonight I'm making zucchini pasta, but this weekend I'll be making roasted vegetables with sausage and hopefully chicken with mushrooms, if I get to it. I'm going to try to limit my online time to writing drafts here, and keeping track of things in Cozi, from the moment I wake up Saturday until the moment I wake up Monday. Wish me luck.