I started Spring Cleaning last weekend. I decided that instead of stressing it during the weeks, I would clean two rooms per weekend and be wrapped up at the end of April. Each weekend, I would concentrate on the rooms cleanliness, but also on organization, purging what's unneeded and unwanted and making sure that the system works for us. So far, I'm halfway through my kitchen. It is way harder than I thought.In the first place, I'm very unorganized. In the second place, I'm very easily distracted. And finally, I'm a terrible cleaner. Seriously, there are some skills that I, at 32 years old, still have not mastered. Like mopping. So, for your amusement and my continual goal of sharing things I never thought I would share:
Five Things At Which I Wish I Was Better
1. Cooking - I cook a lot, which is to say that I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and food is produced when I am done. I am loathe to call it cooking, though. I make very little totally from scratch, preferring the method of "improving upon" to actual scratch cooking. I am a pretty good cook and when I do cook, it almost always turns out, except for baking. I never really learned to bake. If your recipe includes rising, it will probably scare the crap out of me. I don't do more real cooking, because I do most of my cooking at 6:00, in a rush to get something on the table in time for the girls to make bedtime and tired out from a long day of well, sitting at my desk. I swear, it's tiring. In any case, I wish I was a better and more prolific cook. For my kids and my self-worth and my grocery bill.
2. Gardening - I would really, really love to have a yard that doesn't make my house look abandoned. Really. However, I am missing something vital. Last year, I spent about 5 hours weeding a 3x3 flower bed and the next day, THE NEXT DAY, the weeds were already so tall you couldn't see the flowers anymore. I want to plant more flowers, but I'm afraid to because of my wonderweeds. I have two beds in the front of the house and I haven't even looked sideways at the bigger one. It has grass in it and it's hard to mow because it's surrounded by sidewalk, so I totally let it get about waist high and pretend it's decorative grass and this is an artistic choice. The only thing I can successfully grow, it seems are bushes. I have a beautiful Rose of Sharon and a delightful Forsythia and a Lilac that is totally being choked out, so I'm even kinda failing at that.
3. Shopping - People are all the time telling me that they got this fabulous skirt for $3 or picked up a lovely dress at Good Will for $5 and I'm always floored, because the only marginal outfit I am wearing right now cost me $50 and that's just jeans and a shirt. The thing with getting bargains on great stuff is that you really have to shop. A lot. You have to invest lots of time into finding deals. I hate shopping, so I don't want to invest lots of time into it. To be fair, I only hate shopping because I never find anything and then buy something I don't really like in desperation and pay far, far too much for it.
4. Fixing Stuff - With all due respect to the man I married, I do most of the fixing at home. And my house bears silent witness to my incompetence. Eight holes surround the curtain rods in Brynna's room and the caulk that I applied just weeks ago is already cracked and peeling in the bathroom. I have decent tools and plenty of understanding of the basic working order of them, but for some reason, I am still unsure that those curtain rods are anchored in studs.
5. Time Management - I come home every day with a completely unreasonable to do list because I don't know what I can get accomplished. Then, I get distracted and tired and don't get hardly anything done. I think, I'm just gonna sit down and read one chapter and then I'll feel refreshed and get back to work and the next thing I know, it's bedtime and I've read seven chapters and watched three tv shows. The kitchen, on the other hand, is still piled high.
Okay, enough of my uselessness. What do you wish you could do better?
2 comments:
I am so with you on the gardening thing. I keep trying and I keep failing (though I had a decent little crop of arugula last year, but not until after there were complaints that our plot had been abandoned because of the weeds and dead tomato plants in it). I also hate shopping and am not good at finding those good deals. I think it's worth spending a little more money not spending all your free time bargain-hunting. I'm not convinced people who spend all their time shopping for bargains are actually saving any money, since they buy so many things cheap.
I laughed out loud 20 times in 5 minutes! I am not a shopper either and prefer to point and click!
Rita
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