It’s spring cleaning today in my house. And I must say that even though I’m cleaning the house on the go daily, when it’s time for spring cleaning, there are always a lot of things to do. It can be very demotivating to see so many things to do when you are already doing so much cleaning it on the go.

The amazing thing is these things to do are just small tasks that you can do immediately like putting away newspaper for recycling, or wiping up the dust on the furniture, or arranging the DVDs. Little things that somehow there’s so many of them, you just feel very very demotivated.

I don’t know about you but I find these techniques to be quite effective especially for motivating us to do all the tedious small tasks.

1) 100 Items And You’re Done
Whenever you are picking up socks or taking out the garbage. Count and shout the number of task you have done. An example –

You are picking up socks, shout “ONE!”
Then straight away do the garbage and shout “TWO!”

The rule is you must not stop unless you have done 100. I’m getting excited even writing about it 🙂

2) The Amazing Race “Insert Your House Here”
Cleaning the house is not a one time thing. You will be doing it for the rest of your life. Why not make it a race. Create a list of things to do and do all the thing on the list (duh!). But you will have to time how long it takes you to finish the list. For example you take 3 hours this week. Next week try to do the same task in 2.5 hours. If you break that record, make a big deal out of it. Go out at a fancy restaurant with your loved ones to celebrate.

I wouldn’t tell her what’s the occasion though. 🙂

3) Soundtrack Yourself
Burn a cd of songs that you really like. Play it while you’re cleaning. You can sing to it, you can even dance to it, but promise yourself that there will be no repeat for the playlist. When it’s over, it’s over. So motivate yourself by saying that if you can’t finish by the time the songs are over, you will have to do the work without any music.

Hopefully the fear of boredom will help clear the area a bit faster.

4) Attack The Giant First
Just like in war, we need constant motivation through out the war. In this war for cleanliness, it is recommended that you do the bigger thing first. For example, moving the heavy furniture. Do this first and the rest will feel like the easiest thing to do.

5) In-Law’s Visitting Scenario
This is actually my favorite. I noticed that I can clean the house faster and better when I keep convincing myself that my in-laws are coming. I notice this when they actually came to my house a few months ago. My house never looked cleaner. 🙂

6) The One-Minute Rule
This rule is actually proposed by Gretchen from The Happiness Project. According to the rule, anything that you can do in one minute time, should be done immediately. No question asked. For example, you come back after work and you see an umbrella misplaced. You can of course choose to ignore it and do other thing. But if you are applying the one minute rule, you will pick up the umbrella and put it to its rightful place. Why? Because it will only take you less than a minute to do that.

– I wonder –
Any other ideas on how to motivate ourselves doing those tedious little tasks?

———– Personal Note ———–
Now that we have a new member of the family, our daughter Zafirah. The mrs and I have come up with an agreement that one of us will have to look after Zafirah at any time. I’m telling you. A lot of my existing schedule were thrown out the window 🙂

But I’m more than happy to do that just to see her smile. Did I tell you that she is now smiling 🙂

Photo credit – Givepeasachance

Summary – Clean as you go

I have a confession. House chores are very boring. All those dishes to wash, corner of the house to clean. I don’t hate them. It’s just sometimes when the dishes piled up, it is very demotivating to just look at it. This attitude does not help either since it will keep piling up until at one point, I will have no other choice but immediately do it. By that time, I will often do it with a not-happy look in my face.

I was introduced to a new concept of cleaning, which is “Clean As You Go”. Basically it says as soon as you created a mess immediately clear it up. Let me elaborate through some examples

When you are done with dinner, immediately wash all the dishes. This will only takes 2 minutes tops since the amount of dishes is just a few. As a result, whenever you go into the kitchen, there will be no dishes piling up. Thus a smile on your face. (I know there’s one on mine)

You see some clutter on your desk, like crumpled paper, unused envelopes etc. Don’t hesitate. throw them away into the rubbish bin immediately. Take 30 seconds from your time to do exactly that. You will then have a more organized desk for your work

When you’re casually driving just after the rain and out of nowhere there’s a dirt flying and hit your windscreen. You can leave it there if you want and drive away. But it will be easier if you stop the car and wash it away immediately. If you wait, that dirt may dried up and makes it harder to clean.

The idea is simple. Whatever you do, be it working, watching television, dinner etc, allocate a few seconds for quick cleaning. Just a few seconds will do and you will see a great change in your house cleanliness.

Another important point you must remember is not to overdo the cleaning. If not you will end up doing a spring cleaning project all the way and you cannot finish your other works, or watching that television. Remember, all you need is a few seconds.

There’s a saying in Malaysia – Sedikit-sedikit lama-lama jadi bukit. Directly translated – A few dirt daily, soon it will be a mountain.

– I wonder –
Do you have cleanliness problem in your house?

——— Personal Note ———
I am actually practising this now. It all started when I have to do house cleaning project everytime I’m off from work. To tell you the truth, I’d rather be resting on my day off.

Tried the idea, and it works.. 🙂

Summary – Emergency Preparation

Yesterday, I was approached by one of my mill’s staff and he wanted to borrow some money. When I asked, he told me that he was robbed after giving a lift to one stranger. He now had to borrow money and had to go through a lot of trouble for the missing document; IC, driving license etc. So guys… be careful with strangers. It’s not safe anymore

A bit alarmed, today I come up with a set of things to do on how to prepare for such emergency. InsyaAllah I will do all the items on the list, and maybe you can help by adding some more useful ideas in.

1) In case my handphone stolen

• To always have spare coins (RM2 worth of coins) in the wallet specifically for the public phone. The last time I used a public phone was few years ago.. hehe

• To print a list of important telephone number and keep it in the wallet. How many of us actually remember phone number anymore, right?

• In the list there will phone number to Digi Call Center (I’m using Digi), so that I can call and bar outgoing call from my phone.

2) In case I fainted in public

• To prepare a RED laminated card with information such as name, contact details of family in case of emergency, medical record / allergy (if you need people to know)

• Reminder : Never give out your home address, if you fainted and bad people have your address and house key, there’s no telling what will happen

• In my handphone’s phonebook, I will set the first name to be my wife, But instead of entering the name, I will put it as “WIFE”. Then if the person (who is hopefully not a handphone thief of course) check through, he will immediately know who to call.

• I’m going to use the Friend Finder service by Digi. (Now I feel like this is an advertisement for Digi eheh). For those who is not familiar, with this service, my wife will be able to know roughly where I am, or where my handphone is. again.. ROUGHLY hehe. At least she will know I’m in 5 km radius of the transmitting station 🙂 Hey it’s better than trying to find me all over Negeri Sembilan right?

3) In case my wallet stolen / lost

• Beforehand, I will have all my cards and documents inside my wallet to be copied into 2 copies(Fotostat). One will be left at home, another inside my car.

• Keep some money, RM5- RM10 with the copy of documents in my car

• Keep track of what actually inside the wallet. What if I forget of my credit card, and forget to report the lost to the bank, things can get messy.

• Reminder : Change your pin number. People with stolen wallet will first attempt to withdraw money from ATM using your birthdate as pin number. Please don’t use your DOB as pin number.

/end list

These are all what I can come up within 30 minutes. A quick brainstorm… I’m very sure, you guys can help add some more important items to the list. Maybe for another emergency? 🙂

—————– Personal Nore —————-
I’ve always very interested in coming up with such preparation. Call it a hobby if you want. But, I like it when in case of emergency, I am well aware of what need to be done. Even though I may not be able to remember and do all, at least.. I know 1 or 2 items

Tomorrow, I’m going to publish an interesting article from Ms Azuwachan. And guess what, there is one word in today’s entry which will describe the entry. And the first person who can guess the keyword will win a link to his/her blog in the post 🙂

The rules
– Azuwachan is not entitled to participate
– She also must avoid from giving hint to fellow friends directly or indirectly of the answer 🙂
– One person can only guess one answer
– Dateline 12.01 am 29th November
– The answer and the winner will made known in the entry on Friday.

So guys.. let’s hear your guess, azuwachan – shhh

Summary – 4 Decluttering Categories

If you google the word “declutter”, I’m sure you will be surprised at how many tips there are in the world. Well there are going to be an additional one today.

Declutter is basically when you clear your table. Imagine your room.. you have a bed full of cloth on it, a computer desk with food and some magazine. a side table with everything.. you can’t even see what color is the table. Imagine now… your room has only a bed, computer desk and the side table. Wouldn’t it be more relaxing?

The tips described are based on my experience and of my personal opinion. There are only 4 categories – Being Used, Useful, Beautiful, Etc.

Now check every items in your room… even that small paperclips and categorize them

1) Being used

• These are items that you used almost everyday. Computer, books and pillow fall under this category. Bear in mind, that items that has not been used for more than 2 days is not to be put under this category.

• Items under category “Being Used” must be made available and accessible at all time. Meaning, you should be able to see them at all times. So put them back in a proper place.

2) Useful

• These are items that you seldom used but they are useful nonetheless. Typical examples are like radio, nail clipper, handphone charger etc.

• All items under this category must be hidden. They must be put in a box or a place but it must be hidden. One thing about hiding a useful item is we must always know where to find it when we really need it. So make sure all boxes are properly labelled and hidden in a known area. Remember the keywords are hidden but accessible. 🙂

3) Beautiful

• Beautiful items are meant to be seen. But too much of them will just make it ugly. For example you have 100 photo frames. If you put it out, then there will be no place for everything else. So for beautiful items… there are only two keywords to follow – Minimal and rotation! Rotate your items. For example, just put one frame on the computer desk (minimizing), and another on the side table. Hide the other 98 frames in a box. Tomorrow, take out two frames and replace the one on the computer desk and side table.. Now simplicity is beautiful don’t you think?

4) Etc

• Everything else… I mean everything else is etc. Throw them away, or if the items had some sentimental value, take digital picture of them. Then just throw them away. Old novel can be given to friends, Old clothes can be donated etc.

Do you see any problem with the categories? Something I might have missed? Do tell and let’s patch the hole together..

Now this is Decluttering Tips #1 🙂

———– Personal Note ————-
Decluttering is never about cleaning up. It is more on simplifying life. By doing so.. we will immediately know what is important in life. A quick exercise – declutter your desktop screen… 🙂

Eh I’m supposed to write personal stuff here. Well the wallpaper I’m using is of last year’s Aidilfitri. The first Raya with the mrs in the family. Next year there will be another new member in the family, eh two new member in the family 🙂