5 Minutes Here and There

Lately I’ve been on an organizing mission. I don’t know what motivated me to do it, other than maybe the frustration of dealing with messy places.

What I’ve discovered is that organizing doesn’t have to be a big project and that you don’t have to do it all at once.

Last week, for instance, I organized one shelf in my pantry. The others need it too, but one is done and I’m OK with that.

Today I tackled the produce drawer of our refrigerator and our junk drawer.

Believe it or not, the produce drawer took about 10 minutes.

I pulled it out, separated the good fruit and veggies from the slimy ones (just keeping it real here), washed out the drawer, dried it and lined it with clean paper towel. Then I just put the good stuff back in and put the drawer back in the fridge.

Done.

Getting that one drawer done motivated me to clear out the old food in the fridge. Maybe 10 or 15 minutes here.

Pull out the old stuff, toss what can be tossed - like old pizza in a zip lock bag - and then clear the others out. Some containers got recycled and some went into the dishwasher. Now I have room in my fridge and we can find what we want.

Notice that I didn’t do any clearing of shelves or washing.

That’s kind of a thing with us ADD Moms. We’re perfectionists. Yes, I know. Our houses don’t look like a perfectionist lives there, but it’s true just the same.

A perfectionist wants the time blocked out to do the whole thing the right way. Empty the entire refrigerator into waiting coolers, wash everything, get rid of the old and outdated and then put things back into the sparkly clean fridge.

That’s a big job and not one I’m likely to spend an afternoon on.

But less than half an hour to get one drawer cleaned and the old food out? I can do that.

This afternoon I decided to tackle the junk drawer.

I have no idea how long it took cause I did it in bits and pieces.

I started by emptying it a little at a time, sorting as I went. I had a garbage bag ready for stuff to be thrown away.

I took a few breaks here and there. One for lunch, one to call a good friend, and one on the computer.

Sure my countertop was messy for a few hours. Worst case scenario? I couldn’t finish, in which case I could simply sweep it all back into the drawer. It was a mess before; it would still be a mess.

My point here is that there are lots of fairly easy and painless ways to get things done if you take it a little bit at a time, get rid of perfectionism, and give yourself permission to do just as much as you want.

Try it. You might be pleased with the results.