Clawing Back Time.

Sorry for not blogging on Friday last. It was a bit hectic getting both kids to the dentist, meeting Hubster after for some junk food and then shopping for a kindle with boy child. Needles to say it was very late when we got home and we were barely in the door when the Late Late Toy show started.
I know girl child and boy child are a little old for it all but they still get all excited about the prospect of watching it with us and maybe spotting the one good item which will really make Christmas this year (and give me a head ache cause its only sold in Dublin in a shop that is only open from noon til three and won’t accept any cards just cold hard cash but that’s another story).
So apologies but blogging was not on the list of things to do.

While I was at the dentist I was leafing through a magazine and an article caught my eye. Really the gist of it was how to get everything done that needs to be done in the day. Simple enough theory but how to go about putting it into practice is the thorny question. Basically what this author was saying is there are ways to shave time off and stack it up for when you want to do something (in my case write a best seller and retire on the profits).

No 1) you want a tidy house? Pick up after yourself. Sounds easy enough but it means you don’t have to make special trips around the kitchen putting things away after yourself. If you do this then you can (bully) cajole the kids (and Hubster?) into doing the same. Simple isn’t it?

No 2) be organised. Have clothes laid out the night before. Heard that a million times already, do I do it? No. Will I do it from now on? Well I’m willing to give it a go. Always have enough fuel in the car to get to work and back. No last minute trips to fill up (often very busy in the morning with long queues here)

No 3) Cook the same dinners. Yuk. Not every day, have a rotation of meals you can do in your sleep. There are 2 spin off advantages of this 1 shopping is very easy and 2 your budget doesn’t sky rocket because you decided to do lobster this Wednesday. Your rotation can be for 2 or 3 weeks and only counts for work days – non work days you can knock your self out.

No 4) When you are doing some mundane task like cleaning the grout give it a time limit. Bathroom clean 25 minutes, can’t be done? Well do as much as you can and then Gasp! Horror! leave it. The world won’t end and it still looks better than when you started. Can’t resist just finishing off this corner? You’ll end up spending another 25 minutes at that and that’s your Saturday morning gone down the drain. Literally. To cure you of not sticking to your time table you must arrange to meet your friend for coffee. This has a twofold advantage, it gets you out of the house and away from the bathroom and it gets in the way of her finishing her housework and having a gleaming house for your mother to berate you over once again!

Now that you have clawed back all that time from housework and the kids and the telly and anything else that steals your time you will have loads of time to spend on plot, dialogue, character development. . .
Won’t you?