What I Learned When I Kept a Time Log

This Monday I finished up a week of tracking my time. For seven days I wrote down what I did throughout the day in half hour increments. Yes, it was tedious. But I knew it would be, and my curiousity about where my times goes outweighed the tedium.

Part of what motivated me is that we may homeschool Chicken for kindergarten next year. I know that will be add something significant to our schedule and I want to know where our time goes now before I just lump something else in there. I like having juuuust the right amount of activities to keep us out of the house, but not too many where I am CONSTANTLY YELLING AT THE KIDS TO HURRY UP SO WE’RE NOT LATE FOR YET ANOTHER ENRICHING SOMETHING OR OTHER. Being too busy brings out the yeller in me.

So, like I said, I tracked my time for a week and discovered a few really valuable things. I think they’ll be helpful to know, whether we homeschool or I send everyone away to boarding school.

I spend a pretty minimal amount of time cleaning. I recorded five hours of cleaning over the course of the week.

My house will never pass a white glove inspection, but you won’t get skeeved out by the filth, either. I like to keep it clean enough that I’m not embarrassed when people stop by. And apparently I attained that level of cleanliness with five hours of effort last week.

Because I know I would be curious if someone else wrote this, here is what those five hours includes: picking up toys with the kids, laundry, sweeping, cleaning bathrooms, sorting and organizing the kids’ toy closet, vacuuming the upstairs, and a big clean of our bedroom that I do on the first Monday of the month. (That means I pick the stuff up off the floor, vacuum, clear the clutter off our bedside tables, and dust).

The majority of the cleaning happens when my kids are awake, and playing nearby or helping me. This is a shift from a couple of years ago, and I didn’t notice it until I was doing the time log. I used to save up the cleaning until the kids were asleep- either napping or down for the night. At some point I wised up and realized I don’t want to spend my quiet hours of the day cleaning. And it feels weird that my kids would just wake up and see that the magic cleaning fairy has struck again. I’d rather they participate with me and not just think the house cleans itself.

I’m pretty happy with five hours of cleaning a week, give or take. That works for me. Having a few well-loved toys means clean-up goes faster at the end of the day. Having fewer clothes means less laundry to stay on top of.

I have more thoughts and reflections from my week keeping a time log, but I know I just lost at least four out of my five subscribers because I talked about cleaning for so long.

Sorry suckers! There’s more where that came from!!

A Few Things

1.  My daughter called me “Mrs. Hannigan” tonight.  This is, clearly, her first original insult.  Not bad!

I remember her first joke:  We were cleaning the kitchen together and she was maybe 2 years old.  I had given her a sponge and a spray bottle of water to wipe the cabinets.  She looked at the sponge for a while, then looked at me.  I could see the wheels turning.

“This is my sponge…[little, satisfied smile]…Bob.”

(If you’ve not seen or heard of this show, you don’t think her joke was very funny at all.  But it made me laugh a lot.)

2.  My goal for May is to keep a time log for a week.  I told my brother and sister-in-law this when we were with them a few weeks ago and I can picture my brothers’ horrified look.

not my brother

And his (valid) question: “Why would you want to do that?”.

Well, nothing in my life is an original idea.  I read about it here and was curious as to what I would find out if I tracked everything for a week.  I plan to start on Monday.

3.  The 5 things remix of last month was a great success.  I moved tons of stuff out of my house.  I also designated a spot for all of the stuff that I need to return to stores, the library, and other people.  Usually I keep that stuff in the corner of my bedroom or scattered around the house.  Meanwhile, I have a dresser in my dining room (because of this idea to use baskets for the kids’ clothes- smashing success, by the way), and that dresser had two big, empty drawers.

One of those drawers holds my daughters’ artwork, to be sorted through at the end of the school year.  The other is now my “returns” drawer.

I love having solutions for things like this.

4.  If I have been looking at my living room rug for a few weeks and thinking I’d like to get rid of it, and then my son pukes on it big time, do you think that’s a sign that I should pull the trigger and get rid of it?

But what about the fact that I do not like sweeping bare floors?  And big (8×10) rugs are pricey and I probably won’t find a replacement I like for a long time?

Input welcome and desired.

In the meantime, there’s no way you should feel grossed out about coming over and sitting on my rug, or letting your child crawl around on it.  Uh-uh.  Don’t even think twice about that.  It’s fiiiiine.

5.  I am reading this book right now.  And I really enjoy it.

I am quick to always say that I am not a foodie.  I can’t discern good coffee from bad coffee.  I can’t try a sauce and taste the cardamom in it (that’s a thing, right?).  So I thought I might feel sort of “meh” about reading a chef’s memoir.  But I’m almost finished with this book and wishing it could go on a little longer.  Two thumbs up.

5 More Things!

More things that have left my house:

1.  A Boon bath spout cover.  It is cute and has probably protected the kids’ head from a knock or two, but it also gets nasty quickly and sometimes the nast doesn’t come off, even when I run it through the dishwasher.

Somewhat like Keely’s philosophy, (“If you use it everyday, it gets to stay”), I’ve decided that mine is

Keep things for the rule, not the exception.

Yes, I could keep the spout cover for the occasional time my daughter bumps her head into the spout during bathtime, but that’s the exception.  The vast majority of the time, no one bumps into the spout.  So the prone-to-nastiness spout cover gets pitched.  I’ll deal with the occasional bump as I need to.

2.  Food items from my pantry.  I have a bag of jarred baby food and rice cereal that will go to the food bank.  The baby has decided he’d prefer to feed himself, thanksverymuch, and I’m done trying to entice him to eat pureed peas.  That baby food will get donated!  Now, if anyone wants the little cubes of baby food still in my freezer, just let me know.

3.  Toys!  Always more toys!

Chicken and I went through her dress-up clothes the other day and she pulled out a few things that she doesn’t like.  Mostly they’re “too itchy”.  To the Goodwill!  Monkey added a few trucks to the pile.  I tried to donate another Candyland set that we have but Chicken put her foot down.

(I hate that game.  You think you’re about to win and then you draw licorice land or whatever, and you’re back to the beginning again.  It’s like the “War” of board games.  Never ends.)

4.  Some of my winter clothes.  I am trading out my winter clothes for summer, and in the process ditched a couple of things that I haven’t worn all winter.  If a season has passed and I didn’t like something enough to wear it, I can live without it.

5.  Lanyards that hold our city pool passes.  We got those two years ago.  Didn’t join the city pool last summer.

(Why am I justifying throwing away old city pool passes?  Who needs an explanation for that one?)

Moving on…

6.    A couple of boxes and bags of stuff that I can’t even remember anymore.  

I’ve dropped off several boxes at the Salvation Army and now I can’t even remember what else was in there.  No joke.

Lastly, this is how the Monkey took his nap last week.  With the top of the box closed, until he sweated himself awake:

not kidding.