Happy Equinox! The high is 82 here in Portland today. You know what I don’t associate with fall? Back sweat.
Portland always has a late summer, but mid-60s temperatures into July and mid-80s temperatures into late September have me all thrown off. The weather forecast says that our last warm day this year will be this Saturday, but Portland weather forecasts are about as reliable as your college boyfriend, so I won’t put away my strappy dresses yet, just in case.
I’ll tell you what, though: the warmer-than-usual weather hasn’t stopped me from making soup nearly every night. I will just be right here, sipping on a pumpkin spice latte and pretending that it’s fall until the weather gets on board. Fake it ’til you make it.
Starbucks knows what I'm talking about
This month, instead of doing the kind of deep cleaning that I do in spring where I scrub every surface and clean behind and under every piece of furniture,1 I’m attempting to clean out my habits. I’m giving serious thought to my daily behaviors and rituals, asking myself: Is this worth my time? Is it necessary? Is there a better or more efficient way I could be doing this?
If you just read that and thought: “Oh holy hell, I need to do that so badly,” here are some activities which have been helpful for me:
- Thinking about my morning ritual. Is there a task which I dread every day? Could I do it before going to bed the night before instead? Since Milo’s and my morning rituals are intertwined, I have been thinking about this for him, too.
- Inbox zero: This is my goal for this weekend. I want to: reply to all the emails in my inbox which need a reply (some are more than a month old, yeeeeesh); put emails in folders if I’m worried about “losing” them; archive the rest.
- Is that the best place for this? This week, as I go through my day, I have been asking myself this question about every item in my life which I interact with on a daily basis: my shoes; the mail; my kitchen tools; the laptop; the recycling bins; the shopping list; my cell phone; my keys.
- Clean out the feed reader: Personally, I try to keep the number of blogs I’m reading to under 100. I find that if I’m reading any more than that, a lot of them begin to blend together. When I do a purge, I give the blogs which I’ve added recently a pass, but if I’ve been reading a blog for more than a year and there isn’t even one single stand-out entry which pops to mind when I think of that blog, I lose it. I’m not doing that person any favors by skimming or skipping what he writes.
Where I really need help is budgeting and bill organization. Almost all of our bills can be paid online, and I do a lot of paperless billing because I’m a hippie, but that makes is harder for me to remember to pay them! What I would love is freeware or a website where I could easily budget and which would send me email reminders about which bills are due when. I’m sure that this already exists and I just don’t know where to find it. Do you have something like that?
What change have you made recently to make your life easier?
Don’t forget to take a minute to answer the survey and automatically be entered into the Yellow Rose Recipes Vegan Parmesan Giveaway! Currently there are only 3 entries, which means that if you enter, you’d have a 25% chance of winning! You have to like those odds.
1 Haha, just kidding. Does anyone actually do this? I spring clean Joanna-style, but using a mop and moving the refrigerator are not involved.
