Thursday 19 April 2012

HADA 2012: Week 2 recap

I am participating in Hour-A-Day-April (HADA). For the month of April I commit to spending an hour every week day doing something that I otherwise have a hard time finding time for. The idea being that an hour a day of targeted effort can make a big difference towards accomplishing an intimidating To Do List. Here's a summary of my second week:

Day 9:  Took a long afternoon nap.  It was delightful!
Time: 2 hours

Day 10:  Got down on my hands and knees to clean the hardwood floors in the living and dining room.  I had planned to do the hallway too, but apparently I'm not as young as I used to be and my knees were done by the time I finished those rooms!  Also spent 2 hours clipping and organising coupons, and tonight I rounded out the day with a short but relaxing bath in the soaker tub. 
Time: 3 hours

Day 11:  Washed the hardwood floors in the front hall.  Started emptying and sorting the miscellaneous junk items in the office cabinet.
Time: 1 hour

Day 12: Lacking motivation, I barely scraped together maaayybe one hour doing miscellaneous tidying of stuff.
Time: 1 hour

Day 13: Emptied the hall closet and the mudroom of all shoes, coats, shoe rack, etc.  Maya helped me vacuum and wash the mudroom and closet.  Looked great by the end of the day ... except for the piles of shoes still in the front hall, waiting to be sorted.  If only they would jump back into their places on their own!
Time: 1 hour

Maya vacuums the mudroom


Day 14:  Was supposed to be one of my two days off this week, but we ended up accomplishing a lot. We took a morning trip to Home Depot with the whole family to pick up a bunch of materials for various projects around the house, including a new shelving unit for the basement. In the afternoon, Jeff stripped the deck of old stain in preparation for re-staining it in a few weeks, while Maya helped me assemble the new shelving unit in the basement.  I also swept out half the garage while the kids were playing outside.
Time: I'm counting 2 hours.

Total Hours of HADA tasks this week: 10 hours

Total so far this month:  17 hours

Wednesday 18 April 2012

Wordless Wednesday

Relaxing on the neighbour's porch
Chloe has to join her big sister

Examining a dead leaf

They were ever so gently removing dead leaves from the neighbour's bed of tulips.

Surveying the results of their work

Tuesday 17 April 2012

HADA 2012: Week 1 recap

I am participating in Hour-A-Day-April (HADA). For the month of April I commit to spending an hour every week day doing something that I otherwise have a hard time finding time for. The idea being that an hour a day of targeted effort can make a big difference towards accomplishing an intimidating To Do List. Here's a summary of my first week:



Day 1:  A day off, since it was Sunday and I've decided that Sunday is my day off every week, plus one other floating day per week.

Day 2: miscellaneous sorting, cleaning and picking up odds and ends. Most significantly, emptied the whole top drawer of my bathroom vanity, threw out a bunch of stuff, and put the useful items back in.
Time: 1 hour


Day 3:  Cleaned out my half of the bathroom vanity and de-junked two bedside table drawers. One medium-ish bag of garbage is ready to leave the house on garbage day. Then I headed to the basement to tidy my workbench (didn't even start on Jeff's!) and survey stuff in the basement to plan what else needs doing down there.
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes


Day 4: Sped through my closet pulling out clothes to get rid of, then dropped them off in the goodwill bin on our way home from shopping this morning. After lunch I headed to the basement and half-filled a box with books to take to the used book store before I got interrupted by Maya. Then I washed out the cabinet under the kitchen sink where we keep the garbage can and green bin -- also investigated the faucet leak I discovered while I was under there.
Time: 1hour 15 minutes.

Day 5:   Time out for myself at a coupon group meet-up. Met some great women, got some good coupons for myself, and a bunch to pass forward to a friend in need. We met at the new Ottawa IKEA, to which I had never been, and I got there early enough for a swift browse through (awesome!).  I also enjoyed an oh-so-yummy dessert and amazing decaf coffee (free refills!) all for the low price of just over $3. It was so nice to get out (after a SUPER gruelling day with the kids!) and then to come home to a quiet house, with children already in bed asleep.
Total: 1 hour  (I'm only counting the first hour, because once I'm out enjoying myself it's  not really HADA.  It's making the time to get out in the first place that's the issue!)

Day 6: Two and a half hours spent folding and putting away laundry, purging more items from the closet, untangling a basket of necklaces and deciding what to keep and what to get rid of, and dusting the bedroom dressers. Who knew that our bedroom furniture does not, in fact, have a grey felt cover, but is actually wood underneath all that dust?
Total: 2.5 hours
Days 7 and 8:  Days off!

Total hours of HADA tasks at the end of week 1:  7 hours!



Another teachable moment

 I left my 17 month old at the lunch table happily chewing on her slice of bread and cream cheese while I attended to various other tasks today. She got bored. It turns out partly dried out cream cheese is REALLY hard to scrub off of a wiggly toddler.  Lesson learned:  clean up cream cheese without delay!

Next task ... dealing with the globs of cream cheese on the table, chair, floor ...

Sunday 1 April 2012

Hour-A-Day-April 2012

My friend Jule Ann has re-issued her Hour a Day April challenge in order to provide herself and others with some motivation to get to those tasks around the house that we never seem to get around to. I really enjoyed the HADA challenge last year, and accomplished a lot. 

So again this year for the month of April I commit to spending an hour every day doing something that I otherwise have a hard time finding time for. The idea being that an hour a day of targeted effort can make a big difference towards accomplishing an intimidating To Do List. It doesn't have to be one consecutive hour. Set a timer when you start and if you get interrupted by kids, your husband, a neighbour dropping by or whatever then just stop the clock and resume your hour later on in the day.

Want to participate with me? Here's an abridged version of the guidelines (see the link above for Jule Ann's original)
  1. Think of something that you normally have a hard time finding time for. Sewing, cleaning, painting, organising, playing basketball, crossing things off your honey-do list, it's up to you! It can be one big project, or a bunch of little projects.
  2. Spend an hour every day working on your chosen project(s). Set a timer and stick to it. You have all day to squeeze in that hour, even five or ten minutes at a time. But by the end of the day, make sure you've clocked that hour. If the best way for you to get in your hour is to get up early, get up early. If you clean best after everyone else goes to bed, skip CSI. It's only for a month.
  3. Take one day off a week.
  4. Keep others updated on your progress. Comment on this blog. Blog about it yourself, and send me the link. Tweet about it on Twitter and use the hash tag #HADA (Hour-A-Day April). Take pictures and post them to your blog. Phone up your mom. Put a gold star on a chart.
  5. Don't give up. Missed a day? Keep going. Even if you only do half the days, that's still 15 hours more productivity than your April would have otherwise had.
  6. Celebrate when it's all over!
Adapt the rules as you see fit. I'm including on my list things that I would enjoy doing too but never get around to -- I'll be using up some old rolls of 35mm film (that I found during HADA last year and, um, never did anything with) and also working on my girls' baby books in addition to tackling mountains of unfolded laundry and organising junk in the basement.

I'm also planning to do only 5 days a week this year, instead of 6.  I plan to take Saturdays and Sundays off , but if I miss a day earlier in the week, I'll have to make it up on Saturday.

I'll be blogging my progress here, and also chatting about it on Facebook. I hope you'll join me, or follow along with my progress.