i’ve been looking for ways to motivate myself to do housework. i never used to be a messy person. in fact, i was sort of type A about my bedroom as a child. i knew when my sister came in and moved the teapot or tipped over a bear or broke the leg of my china doll.
(okay, so the breaking the china doll thing probably would have been obvious to anyone.)
and then i went to college. my housekeeping skills have been speeding toward entropy ever since then. (shall we blame my untidiness on my first ever roommate — tina — who arrived 17 and engaged and much more interested in swimming than cleanliness? you decide… )
but i think i’ve discovered the secret.
i’ve developed a set of non sequitur motivational posters. here are a few examples.
above the sink: i deserve clean dishes because i was valedictorian of my high school class.
above the stove: i deserve meals because i spent a year of my life trifolding for the anthropology department.
by the laundry: i deserve clean clothes because my husband was a national merit scholar.
by the vacuum: i deserve clean carpet because i took the ACT three times.
you get the idea.
the truth is, it’s working. is it because it forces me to chuckle? to constantly find ways to incorporate past achievements (or failures) into my daily routine? to remind myself that looking at the world inside out can be invigorating?
Maybe I’ll change when baby #2 arrives…but I like to be clean and I like a clean house and I like my dishes put away and Jacob to be nice and clean smelling and I don’t use past successes as motivators. Sorry, I guess I’m still Type A…but whatever works for you, go for it!
I’ve given up on cleanliness post #2. the force of entropy is just too depressing.
Brilliant! You should sell signs like that, as I am now typing with my forearms resting on one pile of papers and one pile of cars/phone/markers. I deserve to have a clean desk because…I got a 5 on the AP Biology test!
It’s all in the iPod and Audible.com. I download addictive books on tape to my iPod that I don’t want to stop listening to, therefore I run around trying to find other ways to keep my hands busy while the metaphorical pages turn.
Right now it’s the 20-hour-long “Agincourt,” which I will finish in about two weeks. Oof. Some nasty descriptions of war in that book.
Do you think this method will still be motivational after a day at work? All I know is every day I come home from lab and want to relax, but the house is dirty. I can either clean, or I can sit down and do nothing, but I can’t relax because my house is dirty. Unfortunately, I pick sit down and do nothing way too often…