20 Minute Challenge

I'm speaking to a new moms of middleschoolers group tomorrow (very excited!) so I spent some time finishing up my remarks today. When advising my organizing clients, I love to introduce them to the 20 minute challenge. Often times we put off doing things because we dread spending an entire day of drudgery battling through whatever it is we've put off for so long. More times than not, whatever task we're dreading really won't take as long as you might think to complete (or at least to get started and make some great progress!).

In the spirit of the presentation, I've decided to log my 20 minutes each day to see what I can accomplish in little over 2 hours this week. I have little daily routines that I've built into my day which keeps me mostly on track with housework, mail & the like. Things like unloading the dishwasher each morning so I can fill it up over the course of the day, going through the mail in the mornings to keep it from piling too high on the kitchen counter, etc. I'd like to say I maintain each routine daily, but, hey, I'm human too. I can say I do them most days, how's that?

So today, after I put Charlie down for his nap, I set the timer on the microwave & got started. I managed a full hand & knee scrub of the kitchen floor (long overdue...) and wipe down the lower cabinets before time ran out. I opted to spend another 5 minutes wiping down the upper cabinets too. I didn't want them to feel left out. I spent another 10 minutes sorting the laundry so that I have some piles I can toss in when I have a free minute here or there this week too. Not bad for 35 minutes!

That's another fun trick of the 20 minute challenge. You can stop after 20 minutes and feel great about reaching your goal, but often you feel so energized about what you've done, it's easy to keep on going!

Til tomorrow...