by Regina Leeds. Before you ask, no it's not a hint from him, it's a book I've had on my wish list for quite some time now. I'm just weird like that. It's set up so that each month has a dedicated focus:- January - Understanding Time Management / Kitchen
- February - Bedroom
- March - Office / Finances
- April - Bathrooms
- May - Attic / Basement / Garage / Laundry Room / Guest Room
- June - Traveling
- July - Scrapbooks / Memorabilia / Greeting Card Collections / Address Books
- August - Moving
- September - Back-to-School
- October - Common Rooms
- November - Entertaining
- December - Holidays
Although it's May, I've decided to work through the book from the beginning and start with January's concepts. I think it will be easier on me this way, especially since it's not even the first week of May.
The first week of every month is dedicated to journaling tasks. The first set of questions are supposed to help you "examine your past for clues to the present reality". What exactly does that mean? I'm not going to list the questions here, so you'll have to borrow (or buy) the book for yourself. :-p
I used to believe that if you arrive on time for an event, then you are late. I think this comes from my adolescence; when I was growing up, I don't remember my family ever being late for anything. In fact, we were always at least 10-15 minutes early for things. Of course, this requires some extra planning and adding a buffer to your estimated travel time. What if there is an accident? What if you get lost? Growing up in Northern Virginia, this meant that even if you could get somewhere in 10 minutes, you left at least 30 minutes early. I distinctly remember leaving for school by 8am when school didn't even start until almost 9am! Granted, this meant I got a close parking spot and I had time to hang out with friends before classes started.
After I moved south for graduate school, I realized my (excessive) buffer time is unneccessary, and I started to arrive at places (only) 5-10 minutes early. Two years later, I married my husband and we started to arrive to places on time. Gasp! How could this be?! I'm not kidding when I say I nearly had a panic attack during every car trip. It was something I was working on...until we had Adelaide. Now things have completely changed. It doesn't matter how much buffer time we build into a trip we're still lucky to arrive on time. Something always takes longer than I had planned despite my best preparations. Surprisingly, I'm pretty OK with this. Probably because most people, in general, are more forgiving when you have a newborn, so I don't feel as judged when I'm tardy. Hopefully by the time Adelaide isn't a newborn anymore, we'll have our act together.
What are your time paradigms?
That book sounds good! I have gotten to be an organization nerd. My nesting urge got stronger with each child and after Robert, it never really went away. My house is still messy but I love sorting through things and especially decluttering and taking stuff to Goodwill.
ReplyDeleteWe are late almost everywhere we go and I hate it. I'd love to say it's the kids, but we were always like this. It's just worse now. Sometimes we're lucky to arrive at an event at all!