I’m skipping Reclaiming Simple Sunday today because mine just wasn’t simple, so I hold out hope for next week! 
Instead I’ve been thinking about a phrase I used to live to, being 5 minutes from ready. This meant that if I was going to have unexpected visitors who called to say they were popping in, the house was only really 5 minutes away from being acceptable, it also meant if people popped in without any warning, it wasn’t in too bad of a condition. Old readers know I had several children who lived with me during a time they could not be with their immediate family. When I had the kids, I was almost always 5 minutes from ready! Now? Well I’m almost never 5 minutes from ready. I’ve noticed lately that this causes me stress and makes me be more untidy – I guess seeing dishes across the counter instead of neatly stacked means you are less likely to neatly stack those new dishes, same goes for magazines, books etc. I find I’m then often having to spend a lot longer cleaning and usually at inconvenient times, it also means I cringe when I hear the door bell ring 
So what would it take to be 5 minutes from ready for me?
- Dishes done
- Kitchen clean – floor swept, counters clean, garbage & recycling out, food in fridge, something to serve guests
- Downstairs loo – toilet and sink cleaned, cat litter fresh
- Downstairs lounge – vacuumed, tidy, furniture dusted
- Hall – vacuumed, shoes & coats away
Then there are the extra bits that mean the house is clean but don’t necessarily have to be done in order to be 5 minutes from ready:
- Bedroom – bed made, floor clean (i.e. not a pile of things to do in one corner and a pile of clothes to sort through in the other – yes at 22:20 on a Sunday evening that is what I’m dealing with), furniture dusted
- Bathroom – toilet, sink & bath clean, garbage empty, floor vacuumed
- Laundry – at least 3 days worth of clean clothes – important since you just never know when the flu will hit
In the grand scheme of things it isn’t really that much to do, the problem is I love love love cleaning but hate organizing and am very poor at putting everything back into its place. I grew up always hearing the statement/question, what would happen if you broke your leg and someone had to come into your home? I thought that was ridiculous, but now I kind of see some wisdom in that line of thinking! This is my challenge for this week, as of tonight, to have my little place 5 minutes from ready for a whole week! As I am naturally a very lazy person, I’m sure this will be a big challenge!
i can completely comisserate with you here, having not yet tidied (at 6 p.m.) my place from the week — where clothes and dishes and dirt and other misc. junk just accumulate in piles — despite being up since 9 a.m. (and without the flu, oy…) i try to live that way, too, without ever having thought about it in your terms, i guess. it’s hard, though, when you work full-time and babysit a lot … but definitely not impossible. i strive to get things done, even when i just don’t feel like it, reasoning with myself it’s just not a good excuse … though for sure (and sometimes too often) that excuse does win out pretty well.
hope you’re feeling better.
I think that is a great idea to be never more than five minutes away from ready. I am striving for that, though with four kids and too much stuff, it’s a little tough. At the moment, I am in the process of decluttering and trying to live a more simple life. Hopefully it won’t be too long until we are five minutes from ready.
This is really such a great idea, and yet one that I’m pretty terrible at. Usually I wind up having a big clean up at the end of the week to deal with the messes that have accumulated over that time, but it’s not such a great way to do things, and means that I’m very rarely five minutes from ready, if at all. It’s actually especially bad this week since I’ve been sick and haven’t tidied at all. Perhaps I’ll give it a go this week, though, and see if I can find a way to keep myself on track.
I hear you… it’s past 12 a.m. and I’ve been working, doing errands, taking care of the house and a few other Sunday things since about 10 a.m…. I need to get better at taking care of cleaning things as they arrive and not waiting until it would take me all day to clean every week!
It is a wonderful idea but I am never five minutes from ready despite efforts. I am jsut not gifted in that way.
Enjoy your challenge.
god, my life all over! am so trying to be more of that sort of person that has a house where everything has a home!
I also find that being a little more accepting of not having to have everything spic & span is a huge relief. I’ve been making sure my floors are fairly clean and the guest bathroom, but other than that I don’t mind much anymore if guests pop in and I’ve got a messy kitchen (although that never equals dirty dishes, I can’t stand that so they’re always in the dish washer).
I also find that not having a super clean & neat & tidy house makes my visitors more relaxed. I want to make sure my house looks like a home and not just a house, and that means people live there and it occationally gets messy and that’s OK for people to see.
I used to have a really hard time with this, wanting everything to be perfect all the time, not just for guests but for us as well. But then my life got really really busy and hectic and if I spent as much time cleaning/organizing everything I was taking time away from my family and spending time with people I wanted to be with. So I relaxed my standards and I must say, It’s very liberating!
I think this is a great plan. I am a naturally messy person but my husband is not – we nickname him ‘the Queen of Clean’. After 15 years I have finally come round to his way of thinking.
Life does run more smoothly if things are where you expect to find them.
May join you on trying to have things visitor ready this week.
Anna
ha! I hate cleaning and am great at organizing. Too bad we can’t join forces. I like the idea of being 5 minutes from ready. I’m always 20-30 minutes away, but I’ve really let dishes and the bathroom & recycling slip. I’ll start dealing with that tonight.
What a great term- I’m totally going to aim for that; I actually used to be much better at this when I was at uni as I was one of the closest to campus so people would drop by almost every day- usually just buzzing when they were at the door so I had to be one flight of stairs ready!
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This seems like it will help , but what of someone with a diverse days . I have the problem of adjusting to the diff priorities . SOme days its kids some days its work . I guess this is a good start
You are constantly challenging yourself! I’d love to be “5 minutes from ready” all the time, in every aspect of my life, but everything seems so unpredicatable for me these days…
Can’t wait to see what the result will be at the end of the week!
Very interesting concept! I wish I was 5 minutes from ready. I think i will try to get there though, thanks for the inspiration!
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