serene | Baby steps, day six

(The baby steps are at this FlyLady link.) I'm adding "(and do 15 minutes of decluttering)" to every day's tasks, because until I get rid of the clutter, I'll never get on top of the cleaning.

Day One: Shine the sink
Day Two: Get dressed to lace-up shoes
Day Three: Added reading the FlyLady BigTent emails
Day Four: Write these things down on a sticky note and post them on your bathroom mirror and above your kitchen sink
Day Five: Write down negative things you're saying to yourself, then write down positive stuff to counter that

Day Six:

Today we are going to learn about Hot Spots. We all have them. Not sure what a Hot Spot is? Read the definition in our FLY FAQs!

Now, set your timer for two minutes and practice putting out your Hot Spot. You don’t have to work until you have finished; just do what you can in two minutes. Put your bills in one place. This will keep you from having to search for them.

My hotspots are the island, the kitchen table, the end tables, my desk, the tops of the bookcases -- okay, any flat surface. But the kitchen looks basically clean when the island is cleaned off, even if there are dishes in the sink, and the whole place looks really bad when the island is smeggy, so I'm going for the island.

Okay, here it is, in all its disgusting glory. Really not sure how much headway I can make in two minutes, but it'll be interesting to see.

Okay, maybe two minutes made an appreciable difference.

Today's decluttering is a little scary. I will set a timer for fifteen minutes and stop if I want when the fifteen minutes are up. It helps to know there's a stopping point. Before picture:

Okay, I'm gonna fortify myself with breakfast potatoes, then I'm going in. Fifteen minutes. I can do it for fifteen minutes.

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I need to get it out of my head that fifteen minutes of work isn't much. Other than setting up the printer, which I'll do in my next decluttering spurt, that bookcase is done!