Tuesday Tackle

I am a day late in recording it, but I played Tuesday Tackle yesterday. Here is how it works, according to the Five Minutes for Mom site where it originated:

What if my blog could provide the incentive to tackle those trouble spots and those household projects I keep putting off?

So enter a new idea: Tackle It Tuesday

.....Each week on Tuesday, I am going to post before and after pictures of a project or trouble area that I tacked this week.

....The project can be little or big – whatever you want. It could be a drawer you cleaned out, the inside of your fridge, closet or cupboard. It could be your scrapbook area or your garden. And if you are so organized that your house doesn’t need any work, you could even post a before/after picture of a new recipe you are trying out.

Basically, Tackle It Tuesday, will be about giving ourselves incentive, deadlines and satisfaction in getting our household tasks done.

The way I'm going to play it is to keep a running procrastination list plus a Big Project List. I've noticed before that I usually can manage the little things in my life. Where I have trouble is in the "important but not very urgent" things, the things that can get put off for another day. And I've noticed I have an especially hard time when it's something where I either can't figure out the first step, or have some emotional distaste for the first step, or both.

So yesterday I:

• Tackled the upstairs bathroom (it got quite bad while I was in Alaska in late May, and I've been dreading the tackle -- my kids do weekly maintenance but I'm talking about the deeper cleaning it needs occasionally).
• Called around for a private speech therapist for Aidan -- the local school doesn't provide speech therapy for homeschoolers anymore (and I hate call-shopping, and it was no fun, but I got it done).
• Caught up on laundry (usually laundry isn't a problem for me, but somehow I managed to get about six loads behind).
• Spent several hours in the kitchen. I made a soup from slightly past-their-prime carrots and celery, some pork cubes I had stored in the freezer, and a can of tomatoes and one of corn. Oh, and I added a cubed potato. Aidan loves this homemade soup and has been polishing it off. I also made 2 kinds of pizza, and pasta for Sean-who-won't-eat-pizza.
• I helped Clare fill out her college registration papers.

What's left for next week or hopefully, sooner, if momentum takes over?

• The downstairs bathroom....enough said.
• Going through school papers from last year and the year before -- this is usually quite soothing BUT I haven't really decided how to organize the results so that's what's keeping me from getting going.
• Clearing a fire break outside -- I need to get the kids mobilized and break it up into steps.
• Cleaning the garage. Yuck.

Here's some former Tackles I did on my household blog.