Natalie: In need of a simple home (5 of 72)

Simplify home tasks. In that vein, think about all the stuff you do at home. Sometimes our home task list is just as long as our work list. And we’ll never get that done either. So focus on the most important, and try to find ways to eliminate the other tasks (automate, eliminate, delegate, or hire help).

When it comes to my home, I believe I am the anti-perfectionist. For those who have been to my home, you are probably going huh? I spend hours cleaning before company comes to visit. Sometimes I wonder if that why's I invite people over so I have a reason to clean. Other than those times I could give a crap about cleaning. I have been better about it in recent months but overall I cannot describe the layers of dust that have and are currently accumulating in my home. I mentioned the joke about the vacuum a few posts ago...my son still turns it on more than me. I do however keep on top of the laundry: washing it, drying it, folding it and putting it away. I have enough clutter I cannot deal with piles of clothes.

The one place at home where I am quite the perfectionist is meals. I love to cook nightly dinners. Don't get me wrong there are nights where I enjoy take out or dinner out but I will spend all day (in my head of course) planning dinner for that night. I truly enjoy finding ways to create gourmet meals out of what I have in my fridge or pantry. I will wonder about the spices currently in my cabinet, the vegetables in my fridge and what protein I might have around (or need to get) and look forward to slicing, dicing and roasting when I get home. I love that I can cultivate mindfulness when I make time to cook and bake.

I actually wish I had more time to cook. I would love to be able to prepare my own snacks like sweet potato or kale chips, bake my own muffins, make my own condiments like mayo instead of needing to buy them primarily because I don't have time to make these things. My husband and I are planning on starting the Paleo Living Plan next month and we are going to be making major changes to our food lifestyle that will entail more of the above.

My goal for home tasks is to de-clutter and do some organizing. We don't have a very large condo. We have multiple floors but its not huge. We have unfortunately accumulated A LOT of stuff over the years so here's what we plan to do tonight and this weekend:

1. Make some posts on freecycle. I am ready to get rid of stuff

2. Make donations - the actual drop offs might need to wait until next week however I spent today checking out where and when my local food pantries and donations centers take donations which are mostly weekdays.I guess we will make bags of donations for different places this weekend.

3. Make an appointment with a cleaning service. I hate cleaning. I suck at cleaning. I loathe cleaning. I honestly believe it is worth our investing in having our house professionally cleaned. Ultimately, the cost should have a positive effect on my grocery bill because I will have more time to cook homemade food than waste money on processed crap.

4. Home improvement project - we have an extra 500 sq ft in our roof area that could be turned into an actual storage attic. We need to invest in making this space usable. We don't have any storage except for a shed but with our little guy, we need a space to store his outdoor toys and we need extra indoor space to store our holiday decorations and other bigger items that we may want for the future but aren't necessarily using right now. Clearly this is not a project we can do ourselves as it involves some decent construction but we can start looking and pricing out someone to do the work.

5. Paperwork - not sure if we will get to this this weekend but its time to dust off the shredder, clean out the file cabinets and make better use of them. Between bills, graduate school stuff, private practice stuff, teaching stuff well all levels of paper stuff. It's time to go through it and get rid of what I don't need and properly store what we do need.

I'm quite excited to embark on this task. We'll keep you posted on how it goes.