Not My Mother

I am feeling thinky tonight.

I’m learning (again) that it helps to write every day. Writing more begets more writing, see, and it’s easier to find things to say if you write every day. Whereas if I go a few days between entries then I feel like I have to write something important, and that’s hard, you know? I don’t know why I’m surprised; I’ve been blogging for 8 years, I should know this by now.

I’ve been thinking, and I really am a mess over here. Not in any major ways, but if I sit here dwelling on my todo list Im ignoring my fitness, stress-handling, finances, personal development, career… there’s a lot to think about here, and probably a lot you could help with. And yet I don’t want to be scattered all over the place. I mean, I started with a post about my weight and fitness and now I’m doing organisation stuff, what happened there? (Answer: nothing. Nothing has happened there.) I have all the focus of a butterfly in a stiff breeze and don’t want to feel like I’m obsessing on one little area while everything else falls apart., but I also don’t want you to be wondering what’s going on. So I’m thinking of having theme days, like Finance Tuesday or whatever, where I pick up on a topic. It won’t be every day because I need to do stuff as well as talk about it. But every second day or so would be the aim.

(I’m going to file this under navel gazing even though I’d need a mirror to do that properly.)

We had a compulsory department meeting this afternoon and it was so interesting I added two full pages of things to my to-do list. One is full of finance-related things I need to sort out (from closing old UK bank accounts to working out what the hell my superannuation is worth now, if anything, to archiving MS-Money), and the other is organisation stuff for the house.

I’m pleased both because I don’t think there’s any duplication between this and my ‘official’ to-do list, and because I wrote stuff down without worrying about the ‘perfect’ order to do things in. And I wrote it so neatly! I’ll just add these pages to the notebook. Without rewriting. I tell you, this day is so full of wins. Oh! And at lunchtime I whizzed round and did four different errands, instead of getting all the way to one and deciding I can’t be bothered today.

I’ve come out of the meeting feeling all excited and it’s only partly due to the ra-ra pep talk we just had. Yay me!

Have you heard of FLYlady? It’s a website dedicated to helping you organise and declutter your home through little daily habits and short 15 minute tasks. Their motto is ‘you can do anything for 15 minutes’, and that is a nice mindset to get into.

I first found it a couple of years ago and followed it religiously for a fair while, and then intermittently afterwards. I’m not sure why I lapsed. Dave was a bit alarmed at the time, but I loved it. If you can get past the saccharine cuteness of the acronyms and nicknames (eg FLY = Finally Love Yourself), it’s actually got some really good advice.

So lately I’ve been I’m thinking of doing it again. I could use some help getting the routine stuff done every day, and there’s nothing better than a little 15-minute task to make you feel like you’re in control. I mean, if you can take 15 minutes to get something that little bit more organised, life must be pretty ok, yes?

There are 3 parts to the FLYlady system:

1 The Website
I used to be terrified of the website. For someone so gung ho about decluttering it had a very messy design and I had no idea how to find anything. It seems a little better now though. There is a lot of information on there but the Getting Started section is a good place to, well, start. It has links to the other 2 parts, namely:

2. The Mailing List
The mailing list on yahoogroups is a mix of daily reminders of habits, a short task for the day, testimonials, and plugs for products. Many of the testimonials come from teary women (in Purple Puddles) who tell how they almost lost their kids to the Child Protection Agency because they couldn’t find them under the clutter. Then of course, they found FLYlady. These make me scared about the state of some people’s homes, and at the same time cheer me up because at least mine isn’t that bad.

You don’t have to buy any of the products, but that duster does sound pretty good…

3. The Beginner Babysteps
This is a 31-day program to ease you into the FLYlady mindset with a small task to do every day. I remember liking this last time as it helps you build up your routines a bit at a time, and stops you being overwhelmed. You don’t need to do these, you can just do the daily tasks from the mailing list, but I recommend it because it teaches you about FLYlady’s philosophy. So to start off I’m going to do the Babysteps program, starting this Friday because it’s going to fit perfectly into May, and I’ll report my results here as I go.

By the way, I’ve been a bit cynical but when you get past all the tweeness it’s a bloody good system and I’m looking forward to following it again. And between you and me, sometimes it’s quite nice to be surrounded by all that genuine warmth and support, you know?

So in the last entry I was talking about 43 Folders’ tips on creating an effective to-do list and the concept of a Next Action for each task, and generally getting excited because of its potential to break the big scary tasks into unscary doable chunks. Since then, I’ve been working on creating a to-do list at home.

The problem with that is there is just so much that can go on it. I start with things like put washing away and then start thinking about things like do inventory for contents insurance and end up paralysed at the scale of it. Or, I don’t want to start until I have everything written down. Well, bollocks to that. This time I’m just going to write down what I know about, deal with those things, and add to the list as I go.

So far my list has things on it like this:

1. Dave to fill in tax return form and post
2. fold laundry
3. put laundry away
4. give wedding dress hoop back
5. find out phone pricing plan and switch down a level.

The dress hoop one is an example of a Big Scary Task, the sort that hangs around for weeks because you’re not quite sure how to do it and then gets worse and worse because of the guilt. The thought process goes like this:

“I really must give Kirsty her dress hoop back but I should clean it first. She used that heirloom place — the name is on the bag, I must find that — but what if it’s really expensive? And it’s across town, when will I get time to take it in? I’d use someone else but she’ll probably want it done with them, and she’s going to start asking for it soon and when she finds out I’ve not done anything yet I’ll look like I suck…”

So adding my perfectionism to my fear of talking to people on the phone means I’m never going to tick that off. But it can be broken down into actions, like:

1. find name of place for drycleaning (on bag)
2. phone for quote JUST DO IT
3. take in? or find somewhere else

And every single one of those is doable, even if I have to yell at myself in the comments :-) It’s a silly little example, but I bet if you looked at what was on your to-do list you’d have a fair number like this too.

So this is interesting. At the very least it’s making me feel like I’m in control and therefore able to achieve some things (even if they’re not on the list). There’s still a few things to work out with this. For a start, I need to get in the habit of using the list and checking it daily to pick out a reasonable number of next actions to do. I need a method of tracking daily repeating chores that keeps them off this list, and some sort of cataloguing of tasks would be useful – eg things that can be done in 15 minutes, or things I need the laptop for. It might end up on a spreadsheet, or maybe there’s a tool out there that can do that. I should put a task on my list to check that out.

Another weekend breezed by so fast I am tempted to say, what weekend? Both days we were so busy that absolutely no chores got done at all. Look, I know it’s good to be out doing fun things with friends, but I am obsessed with getting organised right now and want to spend time on it, dammit!

I feel scattered all over the place these days. There is so much I want to focus on, I can’t do it all. At work it’s just as bad. I’ve got three streams of work going on and all are my ‘primary focus’ depending on who you ask. I don’t deal well with multitasking, sad to say; I tend to thrash from one job to the other never getting anything done. Or, they are too complicated and I sit there with spinning wheels trying to work out what to do until the next interruption comes along.

I need to find a way to manage my tasks better, and today I found myself at 43Folders.com, as I have often over the years. I must admit I want to love 43 Folders — it’s full of organisational stuff! But I often end up confused. Some of the posts are a bit philosophical and wordy for my simple brain, others about techy Apple utilities I don’t use. But in between all of that there are some good tips for productivity and organisation and it is definitely worth checking out.

Today I’ve been reading the post Building a Smarter To Do List (Part 1). Merlin Mann says a to do list should be a “smart, actionable and updated accounting” of things he can do today. This is a very good point. Uusally my to do lists are ever growing catalogues of everything that needs doing. I just keep adding to the bottom of it and occasionally crossing things off, but mostly I lose things 3 or 4 pages in. Then I do another brain dump of tasks and start over, all the time worrying about things I’ve forgotten from the old list and hating the duplication. Pretty much I’m doing everything wrong.

So–it sounds like you need to keep a masterlist and extract what you’ll do that day. But it goes further than that. Merlin says that a task on your to-do list should be a physical action which can be accomplished in one sitting. He also talks about a book called Getting Things Done by Dave Allen, and its concept of a Next Action which is the next task to be done on a project. It’s important to break all your tasks down into the Next Action to discover what actually needs doing next.

So you might have ‘Revise Business Case’ on your to-do list, like I do. But Christ, that’s daunting, isn’t it? No wonder you put it off. So you need to break it down into smaller steps, and find the Next Action. Here it is something like ‘email people for feedback’.

This is really useful as I do tend to have large scary things on my list and if I can separate them into smaller steps I might have a chance of actually doing them instead of just fretting. The only change I’d make is to write down as many of the steps as I can ahead of time, otherwise I’ll just faff around wondering what to do next after every. single. step.

I had a great time this morning breaking things down for work and I feel like I got a bit more done as a result. I can’t share anything work-related here but I will be doing the same thing with my at-home to-do list and will report back on that. Meanwhile, Part 2 of ‘Building a Smarter To Do List’ has some very useful thoughts on managing your to-do list (always a problem for me), and it sounds like that Getting Things Done book is something I am going to need.

So yesterday we went into Myer to buy a few things that were left on our wedding registry. They have a “completion program” whereby you get to buy anything left on your list at a 20% discount, or 10% for electrical. This is quite good and almost makes up for the rest of the registry system inhabiting the internet circa 14th century. At least, that was the plan; after we went in and sorted out the paperwork, we discovered that the midseason sale was going on and everything was discounted way more than we would have got anyway. You can’t use the registry discount as well as a normal one, so that was a good halfhour wasted in the line. I know I shouldn’t complain because everything was cheaper than it would have been anyway, but damn, I wanted to use that discount!

Shortly after I moved back to Australia someone said to me, “Australians never buy anything full price. They always wait for a sale.” At the time I got huffy because I had indeed just bought things without waiting for the January sales–but then I realised most of it was still discounted.

• We got our fridge, washing machine and microwave directly from the Whirlpool factory, saving several hundred dollars on even the Good Guys’ prices.
• Our car was an ex-demo model (this was by accident, not design, but I would try to go that way next time too).
• There was even a slight discount of a couple hundred dollars on our new sofas.

Of course since then I’ve bought plenty of things full price (Ikea rarely has a sale on things I want), but I was quite chuffed to realise that all the big-ticket purchases we made were indeed on sale!

I don’t think we (Australians) really have a culture of bargaining–I’ve certainly never had much success haggling for anything–but we do get good oppurtunities with sales, and they seem to happen every couple of months. Right now Myers has 30% off homewares, 15% off electrical, and up to 50% off other departments; Target has its perennial 20% off all clothing; even Harvey Norman is getting in on the act with 22 months interest free. There’s plenty more where they came from — and it’s only going to get better as we slide into recession and stores get desperate to get your cash.

With that in mind, here are a few things I’ve learned about making the most of bargains.

Note: Remember these tips only work if the item is something you actually need. Don’t fall into the trap of buying things just because they’re on sale!

do your research first
Decide on what you want before the sales. Say you want a new sofa. Shop around to work out what features you want (fabric, colour, high back or low? recliner seats? How big?) before you go in to buy. If you need a fridge, work out the size and features that you need ahead of time. This is window shopping and as long as you can keep your credit card in your wallet it’s harmless fun.

It’s worth doing this even if you are only vaguely thinking about buying something. That way if you walk into a store and find a fantastic deal you can snap it up knowing it is exactly what you want rather than something you’ll regret later.

patience, grasshopper
Once you know what you’d like, and even where you’d like to get it, then wait for the next special offer. There’s always another sale coming on. Make friends with the salesperson and maybe they’ll tell you when the next sale is. Just keep in mind that they do want to make sales so they may tell you something’s going out of stock when it isn’t.

A couple of weeks ago we were in Myers and we saw some Royal Doulton wine glasses on special for 30% off. They were much nicer than the ones we put on the registry so we thought that we’d try to subsitute those instead (at that point we didn’t realise we couldn’t use our 20% discount on top of any other savings offer). Of course by the time we went in yesterday they were no longer on sale. No problem, it’s not like we need them, so we’ll just wait for the next time. I got our details added to the customer mailing list and hopefully they’ll contact us before the next sale.

save up first
I know this is really unsexy in the instant-gratification world we live in but trust me, a bargain is not a bargain if you are paying it off a credit card at 18% for months afterwards. If you take the time to save up — especially for the big items — then you can be sure you really want the thing and it’s not just a whim.

Of course if the reason you need a new fridge is because your old one blew up then you can’t really do this. But in that case at least try for the next tip.

take advantage of interest-free periods
Interest free periods are a good option as long as you can pay it off within the interest-free time. Last April our vacuum cleaner packed up and I didn’t have the $1000 for a decent replacement, but the store offered $100 deposit and the other $900 on 12 months’ interest free. I liked it because it was much easier to find $75 in our monthly budget; they liked it because it guaranteed them a sale and a cashflow for the next few months.

Just be sure to read the small print to see if there are any monthly ‘account charges’ and beware what happens if you get to the end of the interest-free period without repaying the whole amount — some companies charge interest over 30% on the entire balance from the date you bought the item – ouch! And don’t be embarrassed to walk away if the terms aren’t right. The salesperson may try to make you feel awkward but you don’t even know them so who cares what they think? It’d be much worse to sign something you’re not happy with and literally pay the cost later.

Another option is a credit card with an 0% period, which I’ll talk more about at another time.

get a registry
If you have an event coming up like a wedding or a housewarming party, do consider registering with a company like Myer who offer completion programs, so you can buy your items at a discount. You might even tell people to give you gift cards or cash so you get more for your money afterwards. (But beware prices going up, our espresso machine increased by $100 in 5 months!) Make sure to put on the things you really want. Sure, no one is likely to buy you that new bedroom suite, but if you can get it at a discount afterwards it might be worth the wait.

And this is what we’ve done. The espresso machine is Dave’s parents’ gift to us, replacing the one that sadly exploded a few months ago. And tonight Dave gets to set up his new PS3. It was a fair shot that no one would buy him that as a wedding gift (although he did get a toy Ferrari!) but he got it in the end, and hopefully appreciates it more now that he’s waited and decided that he really wants it after all.

So did you have a good easter break? I’d been looking forward to it since we came back to work, as a chance to hide away from the world with my boy and get a few things done round the house. For a change I was trying to be less ambitious than usual and told myself the only things on my task list were:

1. mend umbrella
2. wash and iron all my winter work clothes
3. organise the butchers block and get Dave to cut a bit off both sides so it would fit where we wanted to put it
4. tidy study

but secretly I also had

1. go to the gym or walk every day
2. reorganise wardrobe
3. organise kitchen pantry and the cupboard under the sink
4. balance accounts
5. shine shoes
6. do jigsaw (I got a jigsaw for Christmas and have been saving it)
7. get out fabric and start making those pyjamas
8. decide on photos for wedding album
9. snuggle with boy
10. read book

Now, a lot of those on the second list are just fun things, but there is still far too much for one person to do in four days. Needless to say I pretty much failed on all counts, but we did have a brilliant weekend anyway.

On Friday we did sort out the butcher’s block, cutting 6cm from either side so it’s now possible to squeeze past it to the dining table, then pulled out all the junk shoved in its shelves and shoved it back in much more neatly. Then we spent the rest of the day cooking a yummy meal of roast lamb marinated in cumin and garlic, vegetable tagine and chocolate mousse. A couple of friends came round in the evening to help us eat it, and it was great.

On Saturday we went to the gym (tick!), did washing (tick!), pottered around and then went out for dinner and a movie. We also discovered it is not possible to mend my umbrella and I might have to shell out more than $5 for the next one. The rest of the time I spent wandering past the butcher’s block and admiring its new neatness.

On Sunday afternoon, a girlfriend came over for lunch (shepherd’s pie from the leftover lamb) and a chat, then in the evening I watched The Devil Wears Prada and pretended to do the accounts (tick!). And Monday was consumed by the family easter celebration. The rest of the time we snuggled (tick!), pottered, and ate chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

So not much organising got done, but sometimes there are more important things. Not that you heard that from me.

Our morning routine goes like this: I get up first, shower, blowdry my hair, put my pjs back on and then climb back into bed for a 20-minute cuddle before Dave gets up. It’s one thing I know we do right, this morning cuddle. It means that our day starts properly with just the two of us together, so no matter what happens during the rest of it, we have the reminder that this most important thing came first.

Anyway, that’s the plan, but today Dave pressed the snooze button a third time (and I could swear it was off for 15 minutes, not 10). It meant I got up 10 minutes later than usual, which meant I was in a rush and what with making the bed and getting dressed and tending to the budgie and chucking the stuff I prepared last night into the slow cooker, I didn’t have time to do any stretching. And now my shoulders and back are killing me.

Sometimes I think it is really hard to balance what you need with what your partner or family wants. You often read articles that say women are particularly bad at this, which I normally dismiss as an exercise in ego stroking: look how hard we all work, this is why we can’t get to the gym and why we’ve worn the same tshirt all week even though we spilled soup on it on Tuesday. But, it’s kind of true. When you’ve got a partner or children who also need you to be with them, how do you find the discipline to say No, I need to do this for myself without feeling selfish? And, how do you deal with it if they need far more Quality Time together than you do?

(This isn’t about ignoring your partner’s needs, by the way. Sometimes they actually do need you, which is what might have happened this morning. Dave had a shitty day yesterday, got home really late and went to bed even later, so maybe he did actually need an extra cuddle today. Which is fine. That’s what being a couple is all about.)

Look, Dave is the most wonderful, supportive guy ever. I know he wants me to look after myself and be happy, so if I say I need time to do yoga or meditate or to write rather than snuggling on the sofa watching tv, he’ll tell me to go. It’s not like I’m abandoning him to loneliness; most of the time he’ll happily go kill things on the computer instead (hardly a hardship). And he never has any problem telling me when he needs alone time (to kill things on the computer). Or sometimes he will say, “actually, I’d really like to be with you,” so I know he will say if he really doesn’t like it.

But I still kind of feel like a bitch for doing it.

So, how do we get past this? How can I balance being the doting wife with finding time for my stuff? And are getting up even earlier or buying him a Clocky my only alternatives to feeling like a stern headmistress sometimes?

Oh dear. People, I caved. It took all of 20 minutes for me to go get a turkish delight. Then another. And a muesli bar later on. I did not feel so good afterwards! Today I am tired and a bit stodgy round the middle and trying really hard to avoid it all. I Have Issues with chocolate, my blood sugar goes mad so if I have one I can almost guarantee I’ll have three. Best not to have one in the first place, right? Well geez, Einstein, wish someone had told me that sooner.

Tonight we’re driving down to Ballarat for the weekend to visit some friends and see my mum. We go maybe once a month or so, and it’s always… well, it’s interesting. Interesting to see how long it takes before we’re shouting at each other, that is. Sometimes Dave has bets. I love my mum, I truly do, but we have personality clashes and after spending six and a half years being just my own person in London it is hard for me to adjust back to fitting her view of what a Good Daughter should look like. It doesn’t help that in all my adult life I have lived at least 2 hours’ drive from my mum and she has visited me in my home exactly four times in seventeen years, so she has no idea who I am as a grownup. To her I am still a gormless teenager who can’t do laundry and has to be told how to sift flour to make pancakes. Whereas, you know, I am not.

(And also she’s deaf but refuses to admit it to herself so she’ll talk to you from another room and then fill in the answers she thinks you make and I wouldn’t mind only she never ever gets them right. So I end up storming down from the other end of the house shouting at her and shouting makes me cross and before I know it I’m cross all over.)

Sigh. It’s hard for her. I need more patience, I know I do. All our fights are my fault. Just ask my mum, she’ll tell you.

Hoo boy, I bet I’m not alone in having enough fodder from my relationship with my mother to fill an entire journal. So I shall not go there! Yet! All I will say is I love my mum, I love my mum, I love my mum (repeat for next 3 days) and see if I can have a go at being a better person this weekend.

The chocolate cupboard at work is getting restocked! Gargh! I can make good food choices if all the bad stuff is outside but not if it’s just at the other end of the office. People, there are turkish delights in there!

Being fat isn’t all that bad, is it?