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?

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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.

Milo's room

So here you have it, the 10 Minute Tidy Up:

1. Very quickly pick up everything that isn’t where it should be and put it on the bed.
2. Divide what is on the bed into logical categories. One category should always be “Doesn’t belong in this room.” (If I’m tidying Milo’s room, the categories would be: “Dirty laundry,” “Clean clothes,” “Costumes,” “Toys,” “Trash,” “Doesn’t belong in this room.”)
3. Put away the easy stuff first. (Dirty laundry goes in hamper, clean clothes go in closet or drawers, toys go in toy chest, trash goes in trashcan.)
4. For the pile of things that doesn’t belong in the room, ask yourself if it often ends up here, and so would it thus make sense to have it live there permanently. Think about making a home for it there so that it can still be put away rather than just sitting on the floor. Likewise, if the dirty laundry ends up in the same spot, consider moving a hamper closer to that spot. In the meantime, take that stuff out of the room you’re tidying.
5. Vacuum or sweep. It’s a simple step that makes any room look a thousand times cleaner.

The end!

I know a mom who has five kids and every night right before she goes to bed, she walks around the house and puts all the clutter into a big box and then puts the box in a closet in the guest room. That way, if her kids want to know where their stuff ended up, they don’t need to ask her, they just check the box. If they don’t want their stuff ending up in the box, they can clean up after themselves better. I think that is a genius solution and might use it myself when Milo is older. Right now, he thinks that cleaning and tidying is a novelty, and really loves to help. He evens pick up after me and his dad: if my water bottle isn’t where it usually is, he’ll bring it to me saying: “Back, back,” meaning, “Put it back, mom.” I love this phase, but I know it won’t last forever.