Passionate Homemaking

Today is day 2 of the chal­lenge of making our home a haven! (Read more about the chal­lenge here) Today we focus on ful­fill­ing our 5 steps to begin the day (which I wrote out yes­ter­day and posted on my frig!) fol­lowed by refresh­ing up the living room of your home. My 5 steps were com­pleted, but only between chang­ing a diaper, putting in a load of laun­dry, chang­ing activ­i­ties for a crying baby, etc. I was want­ing to open my com­puter before com­plet­ing these tasks, but then I was reminded…no, no, Lind­say. Get your 5 steps done! Com­put­ers can be very dis­tract­ing to me, unfor­tu­nately. But it is amaz­ing what you can get done when you put your mind to it and you have others out there keep­ing you account­able and inspired! I finally got to clean­ing that crock pot that has been sit­ting on my counter the last 2 days call­ing my name (Don’t you hate that!).

My 5 steps grew a little today as I thought of a few others things that I need to just get done at the begin­ning of each day before other things dis­tract me. So here is my refreshed and updated list:

1. Devo­tions
2. Pre­pare myself for the day (do my hair, put a little make-​up on, hope­fully!)
3. Pre­pare break­fast
4. Quick house pick-​up (this included clean­ing up the entry like I was talk­ing about yes­ter­day. For even last night after return­ing home from a meet­ing, we piled up some more coats, shoes, books, etc. Time to get the entry way look­ing clean! Main­te­nance is the key!)
5. Make dinner prepa­ra­tions (making ham­burg­ers for dinner, so I pulled out some ham­burger meat from the freezer)
6. Put in a load of laun­dry (if needed) - (I try to do all my laun­dry on one day, but some­times it doesn’t always work that well)
7. Fill up my water bottle! (I need to be drink­ing more water, but if I don’t have it near, I don’t drink it. So I am trying to be more pur­pose­ful in fill­ing it up in the morn­ing and having it with me)
8. Take 5 min and plan (I keep sev­eral small notepads around the house for this pur­pose. I just write down a few things I need to get done for the day. I keep it to no more than 3-4 things. I have a master list for the week that I aim to write out on Sunday night and then each day I try to check 3-4 items off that list. Not to0 con­sis­tent with this yet, but I am work­ing on it  )

MY LIST TODAY

Sweep & mop entry­way - DONE!
Vacuum stairs (after set­ting up our tree and decor on Sat­ur­day, there are pine nee­dles every­where! These are things I did not get to yes­ter­day when we were focus­ing on the entry­way.) - DONE!
Clean living room win­dows (since today was to focus on the living room, I looked around to see what needed to be done. The sun was shin­ing through the win­dows and I could see a lot of dirt and smudges every­where! SO that is what I am doing today! One little thing!) -DONE!
Bake bread - DONE!
Empty trash­cans - DONE!

I better get to it before Karis destroys my list by eating it as she is now!