Workflow

I spend a good portion of my day cleaning up the floor after feeding Stuey. It is important to keep the floor clean, so that the Cheerios and other goodies don't get tracked all over the house. I hate vacuuming, so I would rather sweep it up before it spreads. Instead of having to go get the broom from the garage, I decided to use a hook that is a command strip to put a mini broom on the back of the highchair. It may not seem like a big deal, but it definitely helps the workflow!
Now I just need a little shelf nearby so I can keep the container of wipes right underneath the highchair instead of on the counter. If I were a designer, I totally know how I would want my highchair built.

'Tis a gift to be simple – relief society renewal

Last weekend, we had a relief society renewal that was about making life simple. Cynthia Nielsen gave a lesson about simplicity, and had some great points. Here are some of the points that she shared.
– Keep things simple to have time for goals.
– Simplicity is relative. But may be simple for somebody else, may be stressful or complicated for me, and vice versa.
– Ask for help before you need it. It's like staying on top of the pain when you in the hospital.
– Cynthia gave her husband credit for this one: the one and a half rule. Estimate the time and resources that it's going to take you to do something, and then times that by 1 1/2 to get the true time it will probably take.
– Busyness does not equal righteousness (Pres. Uchtdorf October 2012 Gen. Conference session)
– Sometimes we have to simplify our traditions when they get too complicated as the family grows.
– It's okay to have frozen pizza for Sunday dinner.
– We need to have the Spirit to be our curator to help us choose the most valuable things to focus on and to do.
– To evaluate the importance of an activity we need to first ask ourselves what is the priesthood and family reason for the activity?
– Don't worry about what other people are thinking. That is what often gets us into trouble.
– She recommends a book, but I cannot remember the exact name. Part of it is called "the quest for contentment".
– I thought this was funny – Cynthia pointed out that we women, with our corpus callosum, tend to be very good at multitasking but also very distractible. We have to reign in the distractions to actually get things done sometimes.

I am glad that I could go to the relief society renewal. It was a great time!

Keeping things simple

Things that matter most. Here is a great talk about it:

http://www.lds.org/ensign/2010/11/of-things-that-matter-most?lang=eng

Painless er... stainless steel

Four words: stainless steel shower caddy

I am normally a cheapskate, but my stainless steel shower caddy was worth the $25. It means I don't have to waste time or energy (especially hand intensive scrubbing) on trying to get the rust off of my shower caddy. Love it!

Touch it once

When it comes to cleaning -- touch it once!

This idea is from Don's brother, Rick Dowdle. I am not sure if he made it up, if he got it from his mom, or what. Cleaning is made a lot easier if you clean up along the way. For example, say I want to clean up the living room. I am tempted to take some of Stuey’s items and just toss them into his room to take care of them later, but honestly that makes another job for me to do. It is far easier to just walk a little faster and put the items where they belong. If I'm cooking eggs, instead of during the egg shells into the sink to rest until I do the dishes, I can put them directly into the compost container, which is under the sink. It seems like it would just be obvious, but it helps me when I consciously think of eliminating steps.


This book that I once read, The Art of Homemaking, suggested something similar. The author reminds us that it is easier to immediately clean up a jam jar that has stickiness on the outside, than it is to later clean all the services that it touched, and have to scrub the stickiness off. Good point.

Welcome to my new blog

When it comes down to it, I live to have unstructured playtime with my family and sometimes friends. Sitting and chatting with loved ones in my very clean house (having even been recently dusted), the table is set, and a tantalizing dinner is in the crockpot, etc. A scenario like this is a dream come true! It's not that this scenario never happens, but just like everybody else I am busy, along with other limitations (for me, hand power - tendonitis)! To better enjoy the best things in life, I have decided to make it my study to explore innovation in the art of homemaking. I want to keep things simple, and this blog is my place to store time-saving tips, money-saving tips, soul-saving tips, mind-saving tips, and anything else I decide to put on here. I will update whenever I feel like it, because the silliest thing in the world would be to have a blog on simplicity and homemaking complicate my life and detract from my homemaking. We'll see how it goes!

Do something that stays done

Mind Saver:

"Do one thing every day that stays done” -Emily Prusso

Emily Prusso is in our stake relief society presidency, and she came to speak to us during branch conference a few months ago. She says that laundry does not count as something that stays done -- in needs to be something like a journal entry or a project you are working on. It will bring a little bit of sanity to the daily routine that sometimes may seem repetitive. Genius!