Eat Your Frog!

Why does my kitchen look like this?

It's been so long since I've been posting regularly, so there are  a lot of things that I want to write about. I decided today to stick with one of the big things that I'm doing in my life right now. The cute kid pictures and knitting adventures will have to wait for another post.

(OK, just one...)

I haven't had very much free time at all over the last two to three weeks. Family emergencies, busyness with work (including some big projects coming due), a toddler who is reaching new milestones daily (like figuring out how to open doors...I'm not a huge fan), financial stress, general exhaustion...the list continues. Generally I can manage to balance everything, but with my daily goal of having a cup of tea and knitting (even for two minutes), I can tell that time and energy is in short supply when I haven't knit in more than a week.

Anyway, I was reading a funny blog a couple weeks ago and followed a couple links that were on the page. I eventually got to this website: http://52bites.com/. I'm in love! Tsh Oxenreider has essentially taken all the things that I want to focus on and created an e-book about tackling each thing in a manageable way. Her blog is www.simplemom.net and she describes the goal of her blog is to help her readers live more simply. How lovely is that? The idea is very attractive.

So. Back to the e-book. Tsh sells an e-book on her website called One Bite at a Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler. The cost is even simple...$5.00 US for an instant download of the book.

The book is written in 52 sections, one for each of the 'bites' that you can tackle. The sections are short and sweet. Some are more intuitive than others, some are more complicated. The book is divided into different themes: living green, living well, money management, organizing your mind, organizing your space, relationships, taking care of yourself, and time stewardship. Many of the 52 sections fit into multiple categories. There isn't one single theme or section in the book that I don't want to tackle. I actually have had the book open in a minimized window since I bought it, so that I can open it up and read it when I have a chance. I've been so busy lately, but can easily find three minutes to read a new section and think about how to incorporate it into my life.

To start, I tackled a few sections that were similar to things I already did (drink more water, carve out intentional downtime). Some of the sections I'm currently tackling are things that have been on my to-do list for a while (declutter your wardrobe, streamline your email). My clean kitchen is the result of #39, which is 'make a daily to-do list'...again something that I've always done, but with some great ideas of how to make it more workable (and guilt-free). Also, I use #1 every day, which is 'eat your frog'...one of my favourites, based on the quote from Mark Twain, "Eat a live frog every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day." I'm looking forward to the sections on making a debt-free plan, creating an essential papers file and dumping your brain.

Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I'll end the post with a picture of what my living room currently looks like...always a work in progress:

Static!