Do What Needs to be Done

My house is clean now.

My daughter has had playdates and fun outings and summer camp all week. (Above are some cute photos of her playdate today, during which we made a birthday cake and sang happy birthday (with candles and all!) to some twin baby dolls.)

My tons of start-up paperwork for all my new summer clients is done.

And I'm exhausted.

But happy!

It feels good to get things done.

I promise I'll be back to posting regularly now!



Why does a clean house make me so much happier than it should? Have you noticed your own mood being affected by the level of chaos in your home?

Tackle a Project

I'm always surprised to find that tackling a project that I've been meaning to do can make me really happy. Maybe it's the workaholic in me, but it's fun to get projects done.

I think that my daughter has followed in my footsteps in the whole "tackle a project" thing. She is constantly "working on" projects like creating a fashion show, making a train in the living room, or creating a puppet show. These little projects seem to make her really happy! Guess it's genetic.




That's her presenting her "Going to the Zoo" puppet show this week. Complete with songs! It was so cute!

What projects are you hoping to tackle this summer?

Do What Needs to be Done

I'm a procrastinator by nature. So, I should've known how useful this little happiness commandment-- "Do what needs to be done."--would be for my happiness project. Somehow, when I just make myself buckle down and do the things I should do (at home, work, whatever), I'm actually much happier!

So, today I'm cleaning up, doing laundry, writing reports, replying to e-mails, and tackling a gazillion other little tasks that were ignored when I was sick last week. As much as I hate spending all evening doing housework and work-work, rather than relaxing with my hubby, the good part is the satisfaction of seeing the folded towels in nice rows, the clear surface of a bookshelf once it's been dusted, an e-mail inbox that isn't filled with starred items that need my attention.

And the best part?

The little nagging projects won't be waiting for me when I get back from camping.

Nice.



What are you working on that just needs to be done?

Do What Needs to be Done

I'm working like crazy this week to try to prepare for a week off just after Easter. I'm seeing clients for extra visits, trying to get most of my meetings squared away ahead of time, and basically trying to catch up on everything before I leave for a bit, so that I'm not totally overwhelmed with work when I get back from our break.

It's funny, I thought that this week of crazy overscheduling and meetings and paperwork was going to make me stressed out. I mean, I've been staying up late into the night (or is it really the wee hours of the morning?...who knows!) to get paperwork done, and I've been filling my days with back to back therapy sessions as much as I can.

But it's actually a relief in a way, to get things checked off of my list ahead of time and not have as much waiting for me when I get back. Don't get me wrong...I still have a pretty hefty to-do list. But each little productive task I'm accomplishing this week has made me happy so far.

Tired. But happy.

Now, I'm off to another IEP meeting.



What will give you a wave of relief (and maybe a little happiness boost) if you can get it checked off of your list? (For me, it's getting my taxes sent off...but maybe I'll get to that this weekend!)

Notice Opportunities

The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.
--Thomas A. Edison

For some reason, I made the naive decision to put together family tree information for Flannaberry for her baby book. I was thinking I would go back maybe 6 generations and draw it on a little chart like the cute tree you see in the photo. And then tuck the cute family tree into her baby book for posterity.

What I didn't expect was that I would be given tons of information on my family (and my husband's) dating back to the 1700s.

Yup, the 1700's.

So my little family tree chart might be expanding just a weeee bit.

Because I just can't take all this information that my mom and dad and my husband's grandmother have given me and just tuck it away in a file somewhere. All the lists of names and dates look like a bunch of hard work right now, but I'm trying to see them as an opportunity. (Thanks, Edison, for being so spot on in your advice.)

So, I've started entering all of our data into Ancestry.com's cool website. It's so easy that I'm really getting sucked in. I promise I won't become a genealogy freak, but seriously, I love all of the cool family names I'm discovering like Sultanah, Stony, Zella, & Silas. And I also love reading the little notes my dad took in the margins of the papers my parents sent me, and learning things like the fact that Robi's grandmother is 2 years 2 months 2 days older than her brother, who is 2 years 2 months 2 days older than their other sister. See, cool, right?

But goodness gracious, it's a lot of work to organize 4 branches of a family tree!

I'm throwing my overalls on and digging in, though. This really is an opportunity to bring my dad's hard work to fruition, and to be a storehouse of family memories for my daughter. So wish me luck as I roll up my sleeves!


Do you have any interesting branches in your family tree?

Clean up, Clean up, Everybody, Everywhere

Does this ever happen to you?

Since I went out of town for a few days, things have gotten a little out of hand. I fell behind on the laundry. I still haven’t unpacked my bag (from about a week ago!). I have stacks of pictures that I printed through snapfish but haven’t mailed to people like I’ve been meaning to. Junk mail stacks were piling up. I haven’t gotten my tax stuff together. And now it’s almost March already!

So, today, I told myself, “Do what needs to be done.” That’s one of my happiness commandments, which I stole from Gretchen Rubin (the brilliant author of the book The Happiness Project). I conquered two areas in my kitchen that had been bugging me for weeks, and made them beautiful.

First, the hooks where we hang Flanna’s lunchbox and backpack. Somehow all of the coolers and lunchboxes and backpacks we own had gotten hung in that spot, which I was trying to designate for stuff we use on a daily basis. And also (I’m a little embarrassed to admit) there were 2 cans of bug spray and sunscreen from SUMMER that were still sitting atop the shelf. Yup. From summer. Anyway, I goodwilled 5 bags that we never use, and stored the rest where our spare bags are supposed to go. And, voila! A space that doesn’t stress me out as I walk past it!

Then I focused on my mail bin. The bottom bin is for bills, which my husband takes care of, so they obviously stay neat. The top bin is for stuff I need to either file or respond to. Guess I hadn’t filed or responded in, oh, about 5 months. I’d been thinking I needed to look through this stuff but kept waiting until I had “time” to do it. Turns out, it only took me about 10 minutes to sort through everything and then file it in the 3 files it all needed to go into. I had really overestimated the amount of time that project was going to take, which I guess is why I had waited so long to do it. Now, I have room to grow again. Hopefully I won’t wait 5 months to sort through it again!

I’m still behind on laundry. But, those two tiny spaces now bring me a little bit of happiness when I walk into my kitchen. It’s a nice start.



What little nagging projects have you been waiting to tackle?