Business and “Busyness” for Week 17 (Decluttering and Simplifying 2010)

I’m pleased with the progress I’m making on the house decluttering this week — even if it isn’t very much.

High winds early in the week made the outdoor work I wanted to do this week impossible, especially since our house sits on hill with nothing to break the wind in any direction. The lawnmower repair and other projects out back will have to wait until next week.

To take advantage of a time-sensitive opportunity (sounds very fancy doesn’t it?), I spent most of Thursday book shopping. And since we discovered a large, self-sealing screw in one of the tires of my car Wednesday night, we did that in David’s car. Friday morning, as you can guess, offered me a chance to visit Discount Tire for my free repair of the screwy tire. Good Friday isn’t a good time to have something like this done, but I got it done in a couple of hours. Add in a few errands and Friday morning was used up. Friday afternoon was used listing the books I bought Thursday. Then, add in a few other bits of “busy work” (an elementary school teacher’s favorite phrase — that is, things that occupy my time with no real purpose) and most of the week was used up.

With a life as cluttered as mine has been this week, when am I supposed to find time to declutter the house?

I found some time this morning, though. Although I can’t claim lots of progress, I’m making headway on my most dreaded project, decluttering my office. One bag of trash is already out, and there’s daylight left. Since my office is where everything goes that might be important, cleaning in here takes longer than in other rooms because I must locate home for the things that are important and go through the things that might be.

If I weren’t blogging about my cleaning project, I easily could have let this week speed by without any progress. But since I’m challenging myself to work on this project every week and write about it here, I’m making time on this busy day to declutter and to write about it. There’s no reason to let myself down.