I am a fan of lists.
I found a very good (and free - bonus!) website for people like myself who like lists. Lists to keep those of us with lofty goals and a slight disability to view small term goals realistically on task.
So I stumbled one day, after struggling to compose my own "to-do" list on yet another sheet of lined paper (preceded by a volume of other, unfinished "to-do" lists from days past), upon the website tadalist.com. I admit - much like the cover of a book, the cute name struck me. And I had happy visions of announcing proudly "Ta-da, honey! I primed and painted this old chest - all in one day!!" As usual, I felt that this new list website would profoundly change my life.
Several Ta-Da lists later, I have found improvement in my overall project completion ability. If a project is not completely finished, it's at least made it past the halfway mark before I become distracted and move on to the next shiny object.
Yesterday, we (read: I) had this great vision of raking the entire yard, removing all debris, finding lawn treasures galore, restoring several planters, painting the porch rails, hanging birdfeeders, putting down grass seed and, at long last, sitting on our front porch sipping a glass of wine while soaking it all in. No list for this project - just the mental picture I had painted in my head of what we could accomplish (this being a very lofty goal to be started with two pre-schoolers in tow and it already being 2pm in the afternoon when we started).
In reality, as I posted last night, we filled 23 lawn bags with leaves, sticks and seed pods. From the front yard. Not the back yard. Not the side yards. Not the driveway. But, aesthetically speaking, we are much prouder to pull in to our driveway, minus all of the other things on my mental "to-do" list. (Additionally, we saw our somewhat snobbish new neighbors out in their yard today surveying their lawn, and now they have six tagged bags of leaves in front of their house...ha!)
Today, because it was supposed to rain, after Chris, Grammy and the kids came home from swimming at the YMCA, I surprised them all with a short, frank discussion on how our kids' parade of toys trickling down the stairs and landing in a huge disorganized puddle in our family room had finally pushed me over the edge. It was time to clean out the toy room (also known as "The Mississippi Room" due to the large wallpaper mural that nearly covers one wall with a snapshot of some unknown river in what appears to be the pre-autumn period).
And guess what? I did have a Ta-Da list for that...
So, after printing out the list, Chris and I went upstairs armed with garbage bags, a permanent marker and ambition bursting at the seams (on my end...I think Chris was envisioning a somewhat more laid-back afternoon chilling with the fam...I've been called a "slave driver" periodically throughout our marriage).
And, again, we started mid-afternoon.
Grammy committed to watching the kids, who promptly fell asleep after a snack of crackers and cheese, while we wrestled with five years of toys - puzzles, coloring books, playsets with a gazillion or possibly more parts each, dolls and accessories, enough Matchbox cars to fill 25 toy car sales lots, trains and train tracks, a kitchen and all the necessary accessories (how many fake fried eggs does a child really need?), and enough blocks to build our own Empire State Building - to scale.
I knew it was going to take some doing - if I had just stuck on my headset and played my iTunes while I worked, I would have followed the list and gotten some of it done. But, with Chris' help, we really worked our tails off. I think I was motivated to work even harder than normal when Chris opened the door and stated, "Well, we can still get to the bed. I made sure there was a trail." right before we started. Alarming visions of those shows on compulsive hoarding were flashing threw my head, and I think that made me toss with much more fervor than I normally would. See, Chris has been sleeping on a twin bed in this room recently due to Grammy being down. She's in our bedroom, and I have chosen the couch. I declared out loud that I had no idea how he could sleep in a room in such terrible disorder - my mind would be screaming at me. That was when he added that, at night, it was also dark in the room, so the chaos was practically invisible. (I think I may have fainted a little when he said that...)
We filled at least five garbage bags with toys to donate to Goodwill and another three with toy trash (broken bits, chewed up board books, games with pieces missing, items that we couldn't even identify...)
And the end result....an almost finished room. Sincerely...I think we hit the 90% mark! Double high-fives and shouts of joy....OK, actually we quietly slunk downstairs somewhat defeated and definitely sore. We brought Grammy and the kids upstairs to see the final results (duh...it's bedtime and they wanted to play in there....maybe not one of my better parenting decisions).
So now Chris doesn't need to navigate the path. He can walk straight into the room (well, past the rocking horse, around the train table and watch out for the firetruck against the wall) to get into his clean, fresh bed (for a few more nights until Grammy heads back to the Northwoods).
My takeaways from this weekend - Ta-Da Lists is the bomb-diggity, hubby and I work reallyr. well together because we fill in each other's gaps, I need to keep it in perspective and....I need to find a good chiropractor...
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