Rolling a new idea around my mind is delightfully exhilarating. I love starting projects. Untested, untried, and full of so many possibilities, the idea of a new project lets me imagine its completion. I can picture myself feeling happy and proud to have Done the Thing. I love it so much that I spent a lot of years starting things, or thinking about starting them, but not actually accomplishing very much. It turns out that getting from the new idea to the completed project requires spending time and energy doing tasks that are difficult, repetetive, frustrating, or just unbelievably boring. It has been a constant struggle for me, but I do have some tricks that I use to get things done.

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Doing The Thing, A Guide

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I have shared the way that I set up my Trello boards to organize the tasks that I want to get done. So far I have focused on the regular cleaning tasks for you, but I have more boards where I organize garden, renovation, and craft projects. These boards let me separate my planning— all of that wonderful creative imagination work that I love so much— from the hard slog of getting things done. I have discovered that, at least for me, breaking down my projects as well as my chores into small tasks lets me make steady progress toward my goals, and I can celebrate each little accomplishment as it comes. It makes the boring slog easier to persist through, and giant mountains of work start to look climbable.

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“Perfection is lots of little things done well.” ~Fernand Point

Breaking it Down To Get It Done

No matter what I’m deciding to work on, I like to break the job down into little bites. You’ll see on my to-do lists I won’t just write “clean the bathroom,” I will make separate tasks for “wipe the counters,” “clean the sink,” “scrub the toilet,” and so forth. I do this so I can take each task separately if I want to, and still get the satisfaction (and dopamine rush) of checking that card off my list. If I just have a few minutes, I can do a little part of the work, and there’s that thing done for the week. It works for me, because instead of feeling something enormous hanging over my head, I can do a small thing and still pat myself on the back for finishing a job.

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Practically Speaking, How Does It Work?

I work 40 hours outside of the house all week, so everything I get done around the Red House happens in the evenings and on the weekends. In order to keep my brain and body nourished and stress-free during the work week, I prioritize self-care activities in the evenings. I like to walk my dog, relax with a book or a show, and I only cook if I want to. I like to save my housework tasks for the weekend, so I can refresh the house and set everything up for the next week. I’d like to walk you through a weekend day. This is my happy place. I am an introverted homebody, and I like spending time puttering around the house with my pets, making things nice and working on the garden, cooking, or sewing.

Rudy says “Outside. Now, please. Then breakfast.”

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Morning

I’m actually a night owl, and when left to my own devices I like a 10am to 2am day, but if I let myself slip into that schedule on the weekend it makes the next week more difficult, so I try to be up by 8:30 or 9. The animals help, climbing all over me until I take care of them. Rudy the dog is ready to go outside, and the cats want their canned food.

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This is often the first thing I see in the morning— Margaret the Cat wants her canned meat

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Going outside with the dog in the morning is a great time to check on the garden and pick a few things for breakfast. This time of year that is asparagus, chives, and chervil, or sprouting broccoli. I look around to see what garden jobs need doing, and then come back inside. While I’m making breakfast I take a quick look through the fridge and pantry to see what we need from the grocery store.

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Once everyone has been fed I sit down with my breakfast to take a look at the trello board. All of the tasks for the week have arranged themselves in the New Tasks list, and I go through and choose the ones I feel like doing. They move over to my list so my partner knows I’ve claimed it. I think about my day, and look at the weather.

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Most weekends I make some bread. If I do that, I know I have a couple of hours to build the levain, another hour or so to autolyze, and then for the next couple of hours I will have to stretch and fold the dough. I schedule bread while I am doing regular housework tasks because it is easy to pop back and forth when the timer goes off. It doesn’t work to be running too many errands, or getting muddy in the yard.

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This time of year I’m watching the weather closely, because I need to get out into the garden between rainstorms. Weather permitting, I like to get out into the garden on Saturday and push housework to Sunday. It’s really nice to have everything clean for Monday morning, and gardening tracks in a lot of mud no matter how I try. I have been letting the bread dough rest in the refrigerator for 2 days lately, so whether I make it on Saturday or Sunday, I’m not actually baking until Monday or Tuesday.

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After breakfast, whether or not I start the levain for bread, it’s a good time to run some errands. My town has Farmers’ Market on Saturdays, but I have a farmstand I like to visit up the road that has a handwashing sink for everyone to use before shopping, and isn’t as crowded as the big market. It’s a good place to pick up things I don’t grow. Later in the season I’ll head up that way for flats of berries for jam. I might hit the grocery store while I’m at it, and maybe the gardening supply store.I really like getting the errands out of the way at the beginning of the weekend, so I don’t have to leave again unless I want to.

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My grandmother’s china, Theo Haviland “Varenne”

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Tea Time

Once I’m back home and the shopping is put away, I like to make a pot of tea and regroup. Either it’s a bread day and I’m staying inside to do housework, or it’s a garden day and I’m about to get dirty. Either way, caffeine is good. After a cup or two I usually have my thoughts in order and am ready to tackle whatever I’ve decided to work on.

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This picture is from February, when we were planting the Tiny Orchard

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AfterNoon

One of the best things about the weekend is getting to focus for a long time on whatever I feel like doing. It might be a weeding session, taking down the lawn, working over a new garden area, potting up seedlings or planting seeds. Indoors I might be doing the bread and housework dance, and once that is finished and the bread is rising in the big bowl, I might shift gears to work on my special focus area, or a sewing project, or that new recipe I’ve been thinking through. I usually go until 3 or 4, and then I’m tired and hungry, and possibly dirty and wet. At that point I come inside, shower and change, and start to think about dinner.

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This was a good dinner— ribs, collards, cheesy cauliflower, King City Pink beans, delicata

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Evening

I do most of my cooking on the weekends. We bring our lunches to work, and scrounge leftovers from the fridge for dinner too. If I make enough variety on the weekend then we don’t get tired of eating the same things. If we do get tired of the food we have, one or the other of us is usually inspired to make something later in the week. During canning season I have big batch projects going, so during the rest of the year there are simmer sauces for quick-prep weekend meals. Most weekends I’ll make a pot of beans, some rice, maybe a pasta sauce or a soup. We eat late on the weekends, around 8 or 9.

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How does Everything Get Done?

Here’s the big secret— it doesn’t. I set up my Trello boards to quietly disappear anything overdue that doesn’t get finished. Just as quietly, it will reappear on its own schedule. I am perfectly OK with that. I accomplish what I feel like doing, and I am well aware of what looks pretty good this week, and what I missed last week and could use some attention. I pay attention to time-sensitive or high priority tasks and make sure to get them handled. Housework can stir up a lot of trauma for me, and I promised myself to approach my tasks with sweetness and compassion. Every little thing done, every card checked, each small accomplishment deserves its moment of satisfaction.

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Blixa the cat, who didn’t want to be left out. He’s here to remind you to rest and relax

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Organization is Self-Care

When we were young, most of us experienced some sort of stress pressure from parents, teachers, or other adults who wanted us to do something that was important to them, but that we didn’t really understand or feel like doing. Their scolding voices became the inner voices that we direct toward ourselves when faced with something difficult, unpleasant, or boring that needs to get done. It takes a lot of conscious work to disconnect those voices from our need to clean our rooms, or to push through the slog of whatever project we’ve decided to do to get to the satisfying accomplishment. Sometimes we want to do the thing, but we are afraid of doing it wrong or not being good at it, because we’ve got this inner voice telling us we’re not even worthy of making the mistakes it takes to learn to do something well. I’ve been struggling to heal these voices for a long time. Organizing my tasks, breaking them into small pieces, and approaching them with sweetness, compassion and freedom of choice is helping me be happier, feel more accomplished, and live in a more comfortable and beautiful home space.

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Every person is different, and we all need different strategies to get things done. I hope you can find something here that works for you. Do you experience stress or trauma around housework or creative projects? Do you feel like you can only get things done if you let your inner voices scold you into a state of anxiety? If you would like to share, we would love to hear from you.

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