{"id":2791,"date":"2019-08-22T09:38:49","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T13:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/?p=2791"},"modified":"2019-08-22T09:38:59","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T13:38:59","slug":"i-put-things-away-because-i-am-lazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/2019\/08\/22\/i-put-things-away-because-i-am-lazy\/","title":{"rendered":"I Put Things Away Because I am Lazy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In my Endless Quest for Tidiness, which is mostly analysis\nand musing these days, as my home is absolutely tidy enough<\/em>, I noticed a\nhabit of my mother\u2019s in much sharper relief than usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She puts things away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know, duh!<\/em>  Putting\nthings away makes things tidy, right? \nHowever, it\u2019s more subtle than I thought.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I noticed it on vacation, of all places.  Mom and Dad like to take a morning walk, and\nI\u2019d volunteered to get breakfast for the family while they were doing so that\nweek.  My husband loves to get out in the\nevenings when we\u2019re at the beach, so I figured our Daily Walk (yes, we care\nabout that, too) would be a good thing to do in the evenings after dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before Mom goes to bed, she likes everything to be put away.  For instance, in the kitchen dishwasher emptied\nof clean dishes, dish drainer empty of dishes that have dried after dinner.  She did this while my husband and I were on\nour walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I wake at first light most days, call it twenty minutes\nor so before sunrise.  In real life, I might\nroll over to sleep some more, but I don\u2019t at the beach.  I like to watch the sun rising over the\nocean.  It\u2019s one of my favorite sights in\nthe whole world! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walking into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee in preparation\nfor my Morning Ritual was really nice.  Everything\nwas neat and clear and calm, and it just made me feel good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After coming home from our vacation, I decided I wanted to\ntry that out in my own life.  I told\nmyself if it was a burden or I couldn\u2019t make it stick, I\u2019d go back to my \u201cnever\nmore than fifteen minutes of messy\u201d style. \nIt\u2019s certainly tidy enough and no big deal, so it wasn\u2019t like I\u2019d have\nthis pressure and feel like I failed if I decided I didn\u2019t want to keep it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found out something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I most emphatically do<\/strong> want to keep it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putting things away every night reduces chances for accidents and property\ndamage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I have a young cat. \nMr. Tumnus gets into things all the time, as he\u2019s still a very curious\nand active little fellow.  When I put\nthings away, the cat doesn\u2019t get into my knitting and scatter my yarn and\nproject all over the living room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making sure I put away my evening cup of tea ensures that when\nI get my morning coffee, I\u2019m not risking a spill by my writin\u2019 chair removing the\nempty cup from the coaster and replacing it with the mug of hot coffee.  I\u2019ve spilled coffee on more than one knitting\nproject from this little dance of switcheroo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I put things away every night, my kitchen stays<\/em> tidy.  <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Washing a pot or pan after a meal and always having a\ndishwasher ready for the things that can be machine washed is easy.  Unless you\u2019re stressed to the point of needing\nmedical care (and no shame about that, it happens to all of us) rinsing out a\ncereal bowl just isn\u2019t overwhelming.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since we tend to pile mail on the kitchen counter, I also\nnote that in tidying the kitchen every night, I\u2019m loathe to leave mail piled on\nthe counter.  It goes in the recycling,\nshredder, or is dealt with immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waking up to tidy spaces helps with mental clarity and creativity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now, I\u2019ve been keeping my room relatively neat for a long\ntime. But, there would be times when it would get very cluttered.  Maybe I\u2019d been slow to put laundry away.  Maybe I had a bunch of books I\u2019d been reading\nall over the place (less common now that I read electronically).  Maybe I\u2019d dropped yesterday\u2019s clothing on the\nfloor rather than putting it in the dirty clothes hamper properly.  Maybe I was in the middle of a sewing project\nand was leaving everything out until I had completed the garment.  It was never a big deal. Again, never more\nthan fifteen minutes of messy, so if I took fifteen minutes on my housework day\nto tidy the room, it was easily brought back to rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m in the middle of sewing a dress right now.  Just for giggles, and to continue the experiment\nthat I thought I might drop, I put all my equipment away after completing what\nI\u2019d intended to do on it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, I realized that it is easier for me to think calmly\nabout the project, to take it appropriately slowly when I am not eager to be\ndone so my daggone room isn\u2019t really cluttered from all the paraphernalia from\nthe project.  Being less likely to rush\nmeans a better quality project that I\u2019m happier with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tidying every night reduces work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Back when I lived in a really cluttered home, that sounded crazy<\/strong>.  Yes, yes, yes, I grew up in a tidy home, but\ntidying my room was always this big daggone production.  Surely the tidy spend all their time cleaning\nand tidying, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not even close.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent four and a half hours sewing on my new dress\nyesterday.  Putting away all my sewing\nstuff took 00:02.38.  Yes, less than three\nminutes!  Yes, I timed it.  Yes, I have space to put my stuff away easily\nbecause I\u2019d Konmaried my home about four years ago.  So, I guess Ms. Kondo was right about the\nwhole tidy forever thing.  *wrygrin* It\u2019s\njust that \u201ctidy\u201d is still a dynamic process. \nWhich makes sense.  One\u2019s home is\na dynamic process, or it should be.  You do work, you get things messy, you put\nthings away.  We all do it.  It\u2019s just that making the cycle more rapid makes\nthings easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friends, if you take a look at home much time I spend\nwriting, knitting, working, playing video games, working out, or sewing, any\none of those items will take more time in a week than I spend on cleaning by at\na minimum of a factor of two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, yes, I am going to keep the practice (which I hope to\ndevelop into a habit) of putting everything away and \u201crebooting\u201d my house every\nnight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have better things to do than tidy all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my Endless Quest for Tidiness, which is mostly analysis and musing these days, as my home is absolutely tidy enough, I noticed a habit of my mother\u2019s in much sharper relief than usual. She puts things away. I know, duh!  Putting things away makes things tidy, right?  However, it\u2019s more subtle than I thought.  … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “I Put Things Away Because I am Lazy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,33,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goals","category-household","category-konmari"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2791"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2793,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2791\/revisions\/2793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noelfigart.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}