The Procrastination Files - Hey, is that my kitchen counter?

Two weeks ago I shared some of my procrastination "fails" and called out a specific action that I planned to take regarding a persistent home management issue that I'm challenged by - my ever cluttered kitchen counter.  

My I'll-just-take-care-of-it-tomorrow attitude led to this on most days.

Having acknowledged that simply saying "Hey, this is a problem and I should do something about it" isn't effective for me, I decided to publicly declare a clear plan of action to help hold myself accountable. I decided to attempt the 21 Day Trial Program to help cultivate better housekeeping habits in my kitchen.  Specifically, I committed that every night for 21 days I would not go to bed until all clean dishes had been put away and any dirty dishes had been hand washed or loaded into the dishwasher.  I also said that I would not go to bed until any other items that don't belong sitting on my kitchen counter were put back into their proper place.  One of the things that I thought would be helpful for me with this program is that if I were to miss a day, then the countdown would start all over again and I really didn't want to have to report back here that I was back to square one (honestly, that was what prompted me to finish cleaning up once or twice).


So how's it going?  Great!  I only got about 95% of the way there on night number one (as you can see from the photo above, I had a lot of work to do), so I started over the next day and I've gone through 14 days of leaving my kitchen picked up at the end of each night.  All my dishes have been cleaned and put away and the only things sitting in my drying rack are dishes that are still wet from having been washed.  Check out a sampling from the past 14 days.

Yes, I know there is a water bottle on the counter, but it was left out deliberately because E2B took it to a basketball camp that day and needed it again the next morning.

I've noticed a couple of things in looking back over the photos taken these past two weeks that haven't been obvious to me when I'm actually standing in my kitchen.  One is that I have too much stuff out on the counter - what you see in these photos is here by design, but I'd love to see more clear space. The other is that, while I have been good about picking up papers, books, toys, etc. that collect on the counters each day before I retire for the night, I have a collection of, well...random crap, sitting next to the sink in the foreground. Why I've been okay with it being a part of the landscape is a mystery to me. Over the course of the last seven of this 21 day push I'll tackle the clutter that I seem to be overlooking and I'll be back to share the results.  In the meantime, I wish you all clear and uncluttered spaces.

Happy Wednesday, friends!


"What may be done at any time will be done at no time."  ~Scottish Proverb