I know, that title looks a little bit dramatic. These are things you probably already do and if that is so more power to you, you're way smarter than me! These are things that I have watched other people do for years and thought "Oh gosh, how can you be bothered??" But now that I do them, I totally see the point.
1. Clean up the kitchen at the end of each day
I wish I could change this to "after every meal"! Yes I work on getting the kitchen back to some kind of workable state after each meal so there's room to prep the next one, but I'm talking about the BIG clean up. At the very least this means leftovers put away, dishwasher packed and started, handwashing washed, all benches wiped, table and highchairs wiped. If you're feeling extra adventurous it might also mean dishwasher emptied, clean dishes all put away, stovetop/splashback/sink wiped down, quick wipe up under dinner table...
I used to get so frustrated with my own mum, we've just enjoyed a delicious meal, can't we all just relax now? There's no REASON why the dishes HAVE to be done NOW, let's just RELAX for ONCE!!! But now I get it. And if someone else is around, it's actually really nice to just stand around and have a chat with them, it's done in half the time, and then we CAN relax! There's just no REAL relaxation while there's still the spectre of a hideous mess looming over us from the next room. Deal with it now.
I think it really hit me once I became a mum and I realised how depressing it was, both looking around at night at a big mess and feeling like my whole day was just a process of making one big mess, and waking up to the mess that the me-of-the-past had very ungenerously left for the me-of-the-future, in an obnoxious "someone else can clean this up" sort of way. Now I walk into a clean kitchen (most mornings) and feel, in more ways than one, that I am starting with a clean slate.
2. If it takes less than a minute, do it NOW
And the previous point leads neatly into this one:
Think of the amount of times you walk in the door, take your shoes off and think "I'll put them away after I sit down and have a cup of coffee..." You open a piece of mail and instead of dealing with it immediately, you leave it on the bench top, where it will later move to the fridge, then to a filing box. You flag an email cos you don't have time to reply now, then you forget about it, then three weeks later you wonder why that company hasn't contacted you about your enquiry about that lost parcel... You leave something on the bench top, to remind you to put it in the car, so you can give it back to that friend when you see them tomorrow (and then over the course of the day you become so used to seeing it there, that you totally forget about it, and never put it in the car, so a special errand has to be arranged to return said item to said friend, GAH!)
The great thing is, once you make it a practice to do little jobs straightway, you no longer think of them as jobs, and your threshold increases. Now you're in the habit of putting things away straight away, you rarely have to waste time "tidying up", cos that's your baseline best-practice. It leaves you able to consider how much time the things you ACTUALLY WANT to do will take.
I've been trying to "plant a little herb garden" since we moved into this house over two years ago. Every time I have to shell out for herbs at the supermarket I curse my own lack of initiative. Two weeks ago I bought some potted mint and when I used the bit I needed for a recipe I planted it in the garden. Over the course of the two weeks I got into the habit of checking on it every day/couple of days, and it took off. And then just yesterday I realised that it would only take me about five minutes to sprinkle a few more seeds out and then I would just water them whenever I had to come out and check on the mint anyway.
It actually probably took me seven minutes, and we're not going to have "House and Garden" battering down our doors to get a picture of it any time soon, but it's done. After two years of procrastinating, IT'S DONE!
3. If you're in the kitchen anyway...
Every time you cook you're using up time, energy and resources, and most of that time you're only making ONE meal. You make breakfast and then you have to start all over again to make lunch. You make lunch and you have to start all over again to make dinner.
Most of us end up with leftovers at some point, but how many of us PLAN those leftovers? I'm not even talking about doubling a recipe so you can freeze a dinner for another night (though of course, that is an excellent idea) I'm thinking waaay smaller than that. Say you're slicing up a cucumber and you look at it and think "Well actually we only need half a cucumber for this recipe," What's going to happen to the other half? Seriously, have you thought about it? Do you KNOW you're making salad again tomorrow night? Or do you have NO PLANS WHATSOEVER for it? If you know you're making salad again tomorrow night, why not slice the whole thing up and pop it in a container? Tomorrow night you can just tip it in. If you have no plans whatsoever for it, the act of slicing it will probably help you at least remember that it's there.
It sounds like such a tiny tiny thing, but honestly you've got the knife and the board out now and it's not going to take you that much longer to dice the whole thing up. Tomorrow night, you may not even need to get the chopping board out! Tomorrow night when everyone is melting down, you'll be glad of having both hands free to deal with it instead of trying to cuddle a toddler with your knees while furiously chopping vegetables, leaving room for all sorts of injuries! And hopefully this way you won't find it growing mysterious new life forms at the bottom of your crisper when you try to pack in next week's groceries.
You're in the kitchen anyway supervising something cooking, why not boil a couple of eggs while you're there? Then tomorrow's lunch is sorted. You're really going to cut up and par boil five potatoes and leave the sixth one languishing in the back of the pantry? Chuck it in and leave it to cool after dinner. You can dice it up for tomorrow night's salad, you can mash it up and make salmon patties for tomorrow's lunch, you can toss it in the freezer for next week and it's one ingredient that's prepped and ready to go.
4. Make your bed
I probably spent most of my childhood thinking "What's the point? I can't wait till I leave home and then I won't have to do any of these pointless jobs!!" And now that I'm all grown up, and I'm home all day, it's so nice to walk past a nice tidy magazine-home bed! And it's sooooo nice not to fall in a crumpled heap, into a crumpled bed, and get smacked in the eye by the fitted sheet which has been working it's way off over the course of the last three nights... (note to self: buying sheets is not the time to get frugal) Getting into a crisp, neatly made bed at the end of the day? Sigh. Simple pleasures. Once again, it's a nice gesture from me-of-the-morning, to me-at-night!
Are you starting to notice a theme here? Stop leaving things undone so that future-you has all this extra work to do!! Spend a little time each day doing things to make future-you's life easier and more pleasant. She will look on you far more favourably if you make the effort!
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