Good Morning, it's Saturday 30th August, 2014

Oh, Shellie, sorry to hear about your mum! Collapsed vertebrae are horribly painful. I do hope her pain is soon under control.

Just coming to the end of a week off - went up to in-laws for a few days which was a nice break, then had a day at home to relax and then took the kids to some local attractions and ate out/got takeaways in the evenings to save on the cooking. Tiring in its own way, but a much-needed break from normal!

I've got quite a bit done over the holidays, but am sadly behind on the desk work and need to get that done, and have a TON of laundry to catch up on (DS has started bedwetting again, and the combination of that and being out all day on several days and unable to reboot laundry during the day has really made things pile up). Started feeling a bit overwhelmed with all I had to do, so decided I'd try the Crisis Cleaning format, but do it differently as the things Flylady focuses on in a crisis clean aren't really the things I need to focus on. So, what I'm going to do is:

• Before doing anything: get DD's hair brushed as haven't done that yet.
• Instead of working on the kitchen - work on getting accounts up to date and other stuff on my desk
  
• For living room - focus specifically on the mess of Lego on the windowsill, as that's the main problem in there at the moment.
• Instead of bathroom - clear the stairs off.
• Laundry reboots whenever due.

Off I go! I'll report back here to keep my motivation up.

OK... so the day's tasks took an unexpected sideways turn into decluttering/reorganising the shelf of tinned & packet food at the back of the kitchen. DH came back from the supermarket with a bunch of jars that needed to go on there (must have been a special offer on that sauce or something), I started shifting stuff around to try to make space, and I ended up finding a whole bunch of out-of-date stuff. Once I got started clearing that out I decided I might as well do it thoroughly, so have cleared out all the out-of-date jars/packets and reorganised what's left so that stuff will (hopefully) get used up properly and in date order, plus switched some of that stuff with the cupboard stuff so that it's better organised. Not what I was planning to do with the day, but it feels good to have it done.

Kids are currently immersed in watching YouTube and it's still a while before the current laundry load finishes, so, assuming there are no other calls on my attention (obviously rather a large assumption, but still...), I'll get started on the 15-minute plan.

Let's see: Dressed to slippers (don't wear shoes in the house) - Check
Hair brushed & face washed - Check.
Music available - Check, though I won't use it for the desk stuff as need to concentrate on accounts etc.
Scented candle - don't think I own one and certainly wouldn't burn it with the children around, so skip that part
First part of Crisis Cleaning plan - 15 mins kitchen/15 mins living room/15 mins kitchen again/15 mins break, so for me that translates into 15 mins desk/15 mins living-room windowsill/15 mins desk/break.

Ready... set... go!

OK - once more unto the breach. Batting order for the next 45 minutes is apparently stairs, desk, windowsill.

Stairs - only took 10 mins so I spent the other five in the children's room & finally finished the unpacking I should have done on Tuesday (whatever - it was my day off)

Desk - sent invoices, got together stuff for pension contribution, did few minutes unscheduled decluttering on my bag trying to find a form that then turned up on my desk. (However, the bag decluttering needed doing too. And I found a letter I hadn't yet opened saying I was getting a pay rise next month, so that was an excellent find!)

Living room - got almost to the end of putting away the Lego Friends set, so kept going for a few minutes and finished that one off.

So there you are - a successful day. I need to go do some stuff in the kitchen now, following which I'll have exercising to do & yet more laundry to reboot, so I think that's enough of the 15 minute sessions for today. They did their job very nicely.