The Fifteen-Minute Solution

As is the normal cycle of Lang-Life Kara and I have hit bottom again. Don’t worry it is nothing drastic; we’ve hit the bottom of the rut.

Every so often life tackles us about the knees when we weren’t looking, and we realize we have stopped controlling what’s going on and things build up and breakdown.

In particular, I am speaking to the state of clutter and chaos consuming the house, floor-by-floor, room-by-room. This domestic chaos (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome) is inevitably tied to the financial lethargy our life has had since we met that at times rears it’s ugly head and becomes an all-pervasive feeling of dread and impending doom.

So with the posting message in hand and now an address for where we will live in Moncton Kara and I had a full out emotion session, with raised voices, tears etc. But the cool thing is we were not at each other’s throats as may have happened earlier in our relationship. We were, in essence, completely on the same page. Though we do have fundamentally different ways of looking at both the problem and the solution.

The solution that worked for us before in terms of decluttering and organizing was something Kara found at FlyLady.com. To summarize right now we are adopting what I call “the 15 minute solution”. A strategy of Crisis Cleaning that has you begin in the kitchen and clean, and clear surfaces for fifteen minutes (use a timer), then when the timer goes of you move to the living room and do the same, then to the kitchen again. At the end of the third segment you take a fifteen-minute break, where you relax and enjoy the accomplishment of the previous 45 minutes.

So we began last night and took a tremendous step towards the top of the rut. And gosh darnit it feels good.

As for the financial lethargy, ha, not such an easy fix. There is just never enough coming in for us to get ahead. At our best we are breaking even. We will be taking drastic measures to catch up this time. And that means no Fredericton Half marathon. A) we can’t buy Kara the sneakers she needs, and b) we can’t pay to enter. So after six months of training it is a really cocksucker of a kick in the balls.

Sacrifices we make eh?

But to end on a positive note the fifteen minute solution adds such a piece of mind to the upcoming move. And if we can start on the right foot in Moncton then that will be ¾ of the battle.

Til next time.