Thursday, June 19, 2014

Habits

I'm working on creating new habits as a way to improve my life and health. I'm not perfect and find myself going back to old habits more often than I'd like to admit. Right now, I'm working on keeping the dirty dishes from piling up. Especially now that it is summer and my daughter's are home more.

The new habit specifically is to start the dishwasher before bed and unload first thing in the morning. This leaves the dishwasher available all day to put dirty dishes in. It is nearly a miracle!! And I'm usually on top of these things, but not quite to this degree. I do have to give credit to the blog A Slob Comes Clean since this is where I happened upon this idea. Again, I love this new habit. And it seems to have taken no time at all for my husband to notice that we are running it every night. He hasn't said anything, but he has been the one to start it a few times.

I do think creating habits is part of what keeps my house organized and under control. Here are some things we do around our house daily or weekly that are simply habits for us:

  • Make the bed each morning
  • Run the dishwasher and hand wash any others that need it
  • Take our shoes to our room (or the girls put theirs in a bin by the door)
  • Check email daily and delete as many as I can
  • Take our recyclables and trash to the garage right away
  • Laundry is folded and put away right after it comes out of the dryer
  • Sheets are washed and put right back on the bed on the same day
  • Donateable items have a bin they are placed in when we come upon them
I suppose there are plenty of other tasks that we do out of habit that keep our house from getting too cluttered and out of control. Even though I've tried to make a habit of various things in the past, they don't always stick. And that is okay, I keep trying and looking for something that works for me. 

Do you try to change your habits to improve your home or life? What habit do you have that helps you be more organized?

2 comments:

  1. I wish I could remember where I read this ... instead of trying to institute an isolated habit try to hook it into another habit THAT ALREADY EXISTS (you can search for articles about it).

    These are the ones I’m working on:

    After dinner [[for other people it might be after the news / the kids bath / etc. etc.]] I will do the dishes AND plan/prepare my committed food plan for the next day (I’m in a 12 step program for food addicts in recovery).

    In the morning, AFTER I pea (TMI? ))), say the Serenity Prayer and the a prayer for self-discipline and pray to the inner light we all have, and drink a glass of water, I call my “quiet time” accountability buddy – we keep each other on track.

    But I found that wasn’t enough so today I started this… (thanks to a therapist’s suggestion):

    AFTER I talk to my accountability buddy, I will NOT HANG UP UNTIL I walk to the chair I sit in for my “quiet time” (I’m an atheist; it might be “prayer time” for religious folks). I already have my phone in hand to set the timer.

    I just started the walking-to-the-chair routine in order to not get seduced by the illusion that I should multi-task (start something cooking or go on the internet BEFORE I do my quiet time) b/c FOR ME it means I don’t end up DOING my quiet time!!!!!!!!!

    p.s. Are you really up and sending your blogs out at 2 or 3 in the AM? That's when I get them. Thanks for your blogs - I'm way away from that level of organizing but I do get the message that slow and steady wins the race.

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  2. Very good job working those habits! No I'm not up that early. Many of the posts are set for publishing at 4am PT.

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