Home Routines blog

“Half-tidying” is when you only sorta-kinda put things away.  You know, you open the bathroom cupboard, scrunch up your eyes and just shove that new shower-puff into the nearest space. I’m prone to this because if I look properly I get stressed about where the “correct” place is to put that thing, and in order to locate that “correct” place I think I need to empty everything out of the cupboard and have an extended Tetris-type arranging party and it will take hours I tell…

Here are some things I have “just” put in the wrong place “for now” in the past day or so. You know. Then Dan Howell (Danisnotonfire) from the You Tubes talked about it better than me. (note: video includes cussing) One week ago I did a hard-core complete tidy of this room and yet here I am standing in a post-apocalyptic laundry pile. … So, how did this happen? I’ve thought about it and I think it’s because people tend to only ever do half-tidies….

Here’s the thing.  There’s a lot of productivity advice that says, well, if you don’t know what to do, do the thing that’s in front of you.  If a job is going to take less than two minutes, do it NOW. Put on your big girl undies, lace up your Doc Martens and get the heck on with it. This advice is just jolly splendid when  I’m well rested and having a good mental health day and I’m right up for the kicking of butts…

I’m kind of fond of frogs. My maiden name was a little bit froggish (well it had a “croak” in it!) and I used to love the Mercer Mayer books about that mischievous wee froggy and his shenanigans with his boy. Anyway, there is a lot of advice shared about eating frogs in the productivity-sphere of the internet. It all comes back to a quote from Mark Twain, who said: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to…