I've Got a New Good Habit

And I didn't even realize I had this new habit until I broke it.

I've mentioned several times that one thing I want to improve on in my life is how I take care of my house. I'm not striving for perfection in my house. I know that, at least for me, with my schedule, my personality, and my life with a toddler, newborn, and two dogs (not to mention me and my husband) a perfectly clean house just isn't going to happen. But, I do want a cleaner, more organized house than I currently have.

To help me in this journey, I've employed a lot of techniques I've found through the Flylady's website. The first step in her method is to shine your sink. I shined my sink, and it was a great step in the right direction for me. Since that time, I've been constantly encouraged by her daily emails to keep at it, and this weekend I finally realized something.

I consistently keep my dishes washed and my sink clear and clean now.

This is such a huge thing for me. I'm the queen of procrastinating as well as the queen of waiting till everything piles up so I can clean everything at once. And, at least in one area of my life, I broke my bad habit in both areas. I don't procrastinate on getting my dishes done anymore. I don't wait until I don't have any clean dishes in the house to wash my dishes. I do them when they need to be done. I now have countertops clear of dirty dishes (I'm still working on getting rid of other piles of junk on the countertops, but at least there aren't dirty dishes piled up on them!). My sink is clear and clean, and if, for instance, we have to give Troy an emergency bath because his diaper overflowed, I don't have to worry about washing the dishes before I can give him a bath, and that is a great feeling!

This weekend was the first time I realized how much of a habit keeping the dishes washed and the sink clean had become for  me . . . because my dishes weren't washed and the sink wasn't clean. In fact, when I caught up on my dishes this weekend, it took my three loads to get everything washed. That used to be a regular occurrence in our house, but until this weekend, I couldn't tell you the last time I had to wash more than one load of dishes at once. It feels so good to realize my good habit!

Now onto my next good habit . . . laundry. As the Flylady says, "A load a day keeps the CHOAS (can't have anyone over syndrome) away!"