52 Bites
I could just hardly wait to share this with you guys. Thanks to my sister-in-law who is a genius I have been introduced to Simple Mom’s ebook One Bite At A Time. I’ve been waiting for a tool to help me work on the areas of life simplification I have been dabbling in but, as her book says, the thought of tackling everything always overwhelmed and I ended up sort of stabbing at this or that now and then and not seeing much progress.
But I thinking using this guide is going to help change that. Almost nothing in it is new information, and most of the projects are things I have tried and some I’m probably 75% of the way to accomplishing. But the way it’s structured – in 52 “bites” that I can take one at a time and camp on until I’ve mastered – allows me to see each practice become established in my life and our home without just fading away when I get my next great idea.
And lately, with all the family visits and J’s busy work schedule and trying to tackle so much at once things are slipping here and there and I needed a plan. I needed to be more strategic with the little time I have left before I have to shift my energies to a new season of life.
The other thing I love about adopting this approach is that I can reorder the projects so that they a) simplify life not add more to it a la Martha Stewart, b) serve the purposes I already had (get home/life/family/brain organized for baby) and c) can be done over time so I can feel free to leave the ones I know I can’t work on until after the baby comes and we are out of the newborn stage (aka we can string together complete sentences again).
I encourage you guys to check out this resource, and all the supplemental info on her website for that matter; I think it is workable for any busy mom/family/home/human.
So jumping right in, what did I decide to do first? Well, it was important to me not to allow my excitement about this tool to erase the projects I was already working on but rather to actually act as a tool to help me accomplish my existing goals more efficiently. So I tried to start items that did just that, making a list of the first 5 I want to try, starting with Eating Your Frog.
I won’t go into all the ins and outs of what that is since, well, that’s what the book is for, but long story short: it’s doing your most dreaded task first. So each day I am facing up to the one thing I am putting off or that drags on and affects the rest of the day’s productivity, and I’m getting it done. Well that’s the goal anyways. So far most days it is cleaning up the kitchen COMPLETELY after breakfast (as in not leaving anything, not a dish, not a dirty highchair, not an un-wiped countertop. Letting the mess linger in this central room of our house is a major motivation killer). But this may change depending on the day or season and if something else pops up that I actually dread more.
I am going to try and make this a practice for a week before moving on to the next project, but here’s what I’ve tentatively chosen from the book as my first five projects.
- Eat Your Frog (#1)
- Create a daily to-do list (#39)
- Create a regular monthly budget (#28)
- Use the envelope system (#48)
- Plan in advance for the holidays (#20)
Number 2 and 3 work together and I actually already started them last month before I had seen the book. But I’m looking forward to getting better at it using her tips and resources. And I do really think working this way will help me get back on track with organizing our home for baby because as I make my daily to do list, pick my top items and eat my frog, I’ll be accomplishing the things I’ve wanted to in regards to my nesting plan.
Which is stalled big time right now. Oh life.
