Tag: one thing

Just one thing: Weeks of February 2012

Week of Jan 29-Feb 4

Clean out three ring binder of recipes.
Did it. There were two binders and now there are one. Also when I was cleaning I found a lot of recipes I had forgotten about. So I will be visiting this binder now and then for direction/inspiration.
Week of Feb 5-Feb 11
Shift around bookshelves so I can clear off the top of the filing cabinet.
Didn’t do it.
Week of Feb 12 to Feb 18
Move cat litter boxes to their new place in the closet.
Did it.
Week of Feb 19 to Feb 25
Tape up cord that provides me Internet
Did it! Though to be truthful, I did it, then assigned myself the task just so I could say it got done.
Week of Feb 26 to March 3
Clean off the edges around the doors. Condensation due to previous, ineffective clothes dryer, built up on the windows, settled there and got a bit moldy. We need to put a stop to that!
Did it! We are mold free!

Just one thing weeks of January

Just one thing is the one thing I do (or attempt to do) each week to keep the house from overwhelming me.

January 1-7
Top shelf of laundry area

Did! Yay!

January 8-14
Next two shelves of Laundry area

Didn’t do! Boo!

January 15-21
Next two shelves of Laundry area

Didn’t do! But because we are contemplating a change which might end up with the removal of shelves. Stay tuned.

January 22-28

Go through cookbooks and make sure they are all really the ones you want.
Did it! Yay!

Wrangling of the top shelf. Before:
After:

Just one thing: Shelves in Order

Hey, no doubt you’ve read the fascinating post detailing the bathroom shelves becoming organized due to diligence, Ikea magazine boxes and a box cutter. No? Click here.

Mission for the week of December 4-10: Clean out uppermost shelf in pantry.
Future Patricia here! I’ve journeyed all the way from January 1, 2012 to tell you that I did not accomplish this mission and then never set a mission for the rest of the weeks in December. I was really busy actively avoiding preparing for Christmas which looked like a lot of reading and watching movies and not much doing anything else. “Just one thing” will return in 2012.

Just one thing: Curtains Up!

As you will no doubtably have read over in this post, I have completed my mission of getting the curtains up. Yay me! I was (again) a day over as I apparently needed the entire week off of work before I could bother to sit down and actually get the curtains prettied up and put on the wall. Yep, I did an hour’s worth of work on Tuesday, then nothing until a few hours on Saturday and more hours on Sunday.

Mission for the week of 11/27 to 12/3: get the bathroom shelves in order. What’s up with them, anyway? On the plus side, last week I cleaned out under the bathroom sink without it even being a “just one thing.” Well done!

Just one thing: Supply Shop done

Now that we are not a car-free household, the supply shop is much easier to carry off. Back in the day it would take two or three trips because while saran wrap isn’t particularly heavy and kitchen sponges are not awkward to carry, laundry detergent IS quite heavy and toilet paper is quite awkward.
Now I just fill out my pre-printed list and let the car do the heavy lifting.
Mission for the week of 11/20 to 11/26: Curtains finished.
I finished the Roman Shades in September and bought curtains for the remaining two windows. I could just hang the curtains, but that would be too easy. I want to sew a border onto the curtains with the material for the shades. That will tie everything together, nicely. I don’t have school all this week and so this project is perfect.

Just one thing: Corn stored.

Oh, alas. As I say in my post about the winnowing of the corn, it’s very difficult to get started on something I’ve never done before. Plus, I had a party to prepare for, and that was taking a lot of my energy. So I didn’t do this by Saturday, which was my goal, but I did finish it on Sunday which was only one day late. (This may become a theme for “Just one thing”)
Mission for the week of 11/13 to 11/19: Supply Shop. Theoretically, every three months, I buy all the basic items for the house: toilet paper, waxed paper, cling wrap, etc. In actuality, I mostly put off doing the supply shop until we are down to one roll of toilet paper. The toilet paper is getting low, so it must be time for a shop.

“Just one thing” mission accomplished again.

We (meaning Matt drove) took everything to Goodwill! It was such a relief. A lot of that stuff has been sitting on the shelf by the front door for more than a year, waiting to go to Goodwill. The shelf has been completely cleared off and I put it out on the parking strip as “free stuff.” It was gone before we came home from the gym. So now I have a clear area by my door. The plan now is that we will keep anything that needs to go to Goodwill in a bag in our room, and the door will stay clear of debris. This feels much better. As a lot of the Goodwill stuff was stacked in the storage shed, it also allowed me to clear that space and move the potatoes out to the storage shed instead of having them stacked along the wall in my room. So two areas in the house are clear.

Also! I asked, and Goodwill took the broken printer and broken toaster. I thought we would have to make a separate trip to the recycling center, but they took everything! Hurrah!

Just one thing mission one completed

I envisioned “just one thing” as running Sunday through Saturday, but Saturday came and went and I still hadn’t gotten the dryer vent tube. But I figure that I posted the original post on a Monday, so a task completed on Sunday still falls within the “week” qualifications. And on Sunday I completed my task. Dryer vent hose was bought, installed and the old one made its way to the trash can.

My “just one thing” task for this week: Goodwill run. I’ve got a ton of stuff to go.

The debut of “Just one thing”

The house has been overwhelming me lately. I’m finding it hard to keep a basic level of “clean” much less all the little niggly things: the fan in the bathroom needs a scrubbing, there’s that cobweb still hanging in the middle of the living room, the vacuum cleaner needs to get serviced, etc. etc.

So each week, I’m going to do just one thing per week. Ideally it will be on top of the weekly cleaning of the house, but if I don’t get to cleaning the house, I don’t. Matt tends to chip away at the cleaning each weekend anyway, even if he doesn’t get all the way through the official list. I’ll post my “one thing” on Sunday and update when I have done it. I will not make a list of five “one things,” I will just do one thing. Because right now nothing is getting done. And if I can do four things in a month, that will be a great improvement.
My “one thing” this week? Buy a new dryer exhaust tube. Ours broke (well actually, I was cleaning the lint out of it and accidentally stuck my finger through it making a lovely hole which I temporarily fixed with packing tape topped with duct tape*) and there is a lot of dryer use in the house. I can see how the temporary fix could go on for months. But it won’t. Because this is my one thing.
*and yes, I know that you shouldn’t use duct tape for ducts anymore. It was just what we had on hand.