My minimalist muscle has been lazy the past couple of days because I have started working full time again. The kitchen sink is cradling a precarious stack of dishes and silverware. The coffee pot is empty, coated with the pungent residue of this morning’s 6:20am brew, the soggy grounds cementing to the reusable filter as I write. The laundry is rumpled in and around the hamper in the hall downstairs and the trash and recycling are nearly peeking out over the edge of their collection receptacles, preparing to punish us with the perfume of our laziness.
While I don’t feel like doing any tidying work right now, I know that if I do, I will be able to relax in a state of calm vs. a state of disquiet this evening. My brain is sleepy after four days of memory marathon training, working to retain as much new information as it can to be able to perform tasks independently.
My seemingly magnetic bones are halfheartedly resisting the couch’s gravitational pull so I can work on writing this post at the kitchen table with some semblance of focus.
When my living space is untidy, messy, or dirty, it is difficult for me to relax or to concentrate and so it is time to shake out these lazy bones and set a challenge for myself to see what I can get done in thirty minutes. It’s 6:08pm eastern time right now.
Ready. Set. Go.
(36 minutes later)
Ok. It’s 6:44pm, so I went over my self-imposed time restriction, but that’s not too bad. Here is a list of the tasks I got done.
-Filled the dishwasher with some of the dishes and silverware from the tower in the sink, and started the wash cycle.
-Collected a few empty bottles from the kitchen and living room, then rinsed and placed them in the recycling.
-Emptied and washed the coffee pot and brew basket and placed them in the dish rack to dry.
-Designated an area by the entryway for stuff to bring downstairs. Collected used dish towels and dish rags from the kitchen and a pair of crumpled dirty socks and placed them on the floor near my “to go downstairs” pile.
-Put away a pair of headphones.
-Took my copies of my new hire paperwork out of my work bag and put in the “to go downstairs” pile to file away.
-Removed my ballet flats, water bottle, coffee thermos, coffee mug, and used ziploc bags from a canvas tote I brought to work today. I put the shoes on the shoe rack, the dishes near the sink to go in the next dishwashing cycle, and tossed the ziploc bags.
-Emptied my “shred bot”, a little gray and silver shredder that is part appliance, part pet in our home before feeding it a scrumptious dinner of junk mail, an old receipt, and a bank statement that can also be accessed online. I then threw the bag of shreddings in the trash (I shred receipts, which cannot be recycled due to the ink used in printing receipts).
-I put my sneakers on the shoe rack before heading downstairs with my downstairs pile. I put the laundry items in the hall laundry collection (but did not do anything else with the laundry), filed my paperwork in one of the two gray file storage bins that I use to manage paper organization and put away a lovely letter from my friend, Katherine, that I read yesterday in the other gray bin in my “Cards, letters, and paper gifts” file folder to be revisited again later.
-I then completed the unfortunate task of de-clogging the drain catch in the shower which is not fun with the length of my quarantine hair and the tiny slitted design of our powder blue, ring-shaped drain catch that hugs our pop-up drain and collects everything like hair, sand, and exfoliated rejects-lovely I know. This is my least favorite chore which is probably why I let it get bad in the first place. It took a couple of minutes to empty the hollow tube of the ring via the tiny slits, but I did it and washed it with soap and water before hanging it to dry on a hook on the shower head caddy and vigorously washing my hands.
In thirty-six minutes, I completed tasks that I did not want to do, but that are done now! And it didn’t take long to do all of that. Sure, I didn’t get everything done; I still need to take out the trash for one thing, and the condo is in need of a good scrub, but that can wait till tomorrow. For now, I feel more at peace in my home and feel calm looking around at the organized space. Now it’s time to give in to the couch’s pull, sit down with a cold beer, and enjoy the golden, evening glow of the sunset, spotlit bridge and ocean.
cozy does it 