Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Make Like the Waves

I’ve been taking my own advice and spending 10 minutes a day on my hardest thing. Not organizing—I enjoy doing that. Believe it or not, the hardest thing for me is cleaning. Honestly, I resent it because I feel like my kids make my house dirty, but never contribute to cleaning (okay, parenting—maybe parenting is my hardest thing, but I don’t think I can solve that in 10 minutes a day).

I used to have a rhythm to my cleaning, but somehow that has disappeared. It dawned on me that maybe if I lowered the bar, I would do something. It also occurred to me that, during the pandemic, I’ve been doing a great job of exercising on a daily basis, and even though I haven’t been exercising as intensely as I did before, I feel good, and I think overall I’m exercising more with short bursts of activity.

So instead of trying to do the entire apartment in a few hours when the kids are away, I’ve been trying to spend 10 minutes a day on some area that is bugging me. Two days ago, I scrubbed the tub; last night, I dusted and vacuumed my bedroom (and kept going with the duster in the living room, cause why not?), and this morning I emptied and cleaned three kitchen drawers while listening to the radio.

Another thing that came out of that executive function conference last week was that people often struggle with starting, so by telling ourselves that we only have to work at whatever dreaded task we need to do for a few minutes makes it easier to get over that barrier of beginning. And, as with my dusting, we frequently find that once we’ve started it isn’t so heinous.

In my book, I start the chapter on consistency with a Bruce Lee quote: “Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.” When I talk to clients about the way they keep their files or fold their jeans, I explain how consistency is doing something the same way each time. But there is another way to view consistency, which is to just keep coming back to it. If I don’t just ignore my house, but consistently attack little areas, it will be clean enough. If you don’t avoid your paperwork, but regularly sit down and try to do a little bit, you won’t pay bills late or forget the kids’ school forms. It will be good enough, if not perfect.

When I was younger, I was all about intensity: expending massive energy in the most dramatic way, like a shooting star. But now that I’m older and wiser, I just want to be like the waves, constantly washing up on the shore, slowly smoothing every stone.  So, make like a wave, not a tsunami: Just constantly, consistently come back to the area that is most challenging for you, and eventually, you will wear it down, erode it, smooth it, until one day, you’ll realize that your problem area isn’t a problem anymore.