Made my 10% of free time goal both days, kitchen is ~1/3 to 1/2 done, the powder room is sparkling, and a load of towels is now very clean, folded, and put away.

Things that helped:

– Breaking things into small tasks. Not “clean kitchen”, but work on counter between fridge & sink – and start with just getting trash off, then move stuff, then scrub counter, etc. Not “clean powder room”, but clean the sink. One small task at a time works better for me.

– Timer & stopwatch. 15 minutes between tasks. (Which is just the right amount of time to let the cleaning spray sit.) Time how long the task, or portion of a task takes and write it down. It didn’t *feel* like I worked for just shy of 4 hours this weekend. But I did! And if I **maintain** and do the things I did yesterday and today on the schedule I set out in Tody – it will go so much faster every time.

– Having something utterly mindless on TV that I am not invested in, but is good background noise. This weekend has been the 80s hit, “Reilly, Ace of Spies” – my goodness, Sam Neill is a baby in this, and plays such a cad! (I suspect my mother taped this on our VCR back in the day.)

– 10% of free time goal. It doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up – it’s 1-2 hours/day on a weekend, 30-60 minutes during the week. Doable when I do it a bit at a time, and I am seeing results, which is so critical for me to believe I’m actually getting anything done. It was also very good today when I started running a bit out of steam to see I was super close to the goal.

– Stopping. When I hit my goal of 10% of my free time doing housework, I’ve pretty much stopped, unless I was smack in the middle of something, or felt a genuine burst of energy.

Things that have not helped:

– Using a distressing amount of paper towels and cleaning spray, neither of which is the easiest thing to find these days. Myers lemon tub & tile is very good, though. (It was bought in desperation a while back when there was nothing else available.)

This is a nice sight on my phone: