Sometimes the method to my cleaning madness even amuses me!  

Take yesterday for instance.  I swept up a pile of grass clippings, dirt, food crumbs, and rubber from a broken water balloon off my kitchen floor.  Now that Natalie is a dirt devil in motion, I sweep and vacuum at least 2-3 times a day.  But instead of just finishing the job, I swept the pile into a discreet corner of the kitchen, set the broom on the wall, walked over to the closet to get the dust pan…and got side tracked somewhere between the pile and the closet.

 To make a long story long, the pile is still sitting there!  So, today when Natalie discovered it..what did I do?  I grabbed the broom…thank God it was still leaning against the wall for easy access….and swept it into a new corner and walked away from it AGAIN!!  

As I did it, I was asking myself, “Sara, why do you shuffle the mess around like a deck of cards instead of just cleaning it once in its totality and moving on with your life?”  Unfortunately, I didn’t answer back.  

I started looking around the house and realizing that I do this allot!  I am looking at the 5 loads of laundry that are sitting on my couch right now and doing a mental tally of their relocations…so far, these same 5 loads of laundry have been stacked up in the laundry room, set in my closet, put out on my bed, and finally moved to the couch.  With the effort it has taken to shuffle them around, I could have just folded it and been done with it!

And I’m not the only crazy person in my house…oh no….nobody is getting off the hook with this posting.  My children do the same shuffling act with anything I hand them to put away.  I find the same wrapper or toy lying in a new location as if to suggest they actually dealt with it by moving it to another spot in the house.  

And my husband has adapted to this method of madness as well.  When he cleans the kitchen, he shuffles stacks of papers from counter to counter instead of just putting them where they belong!  

Therefore, I think now that I have called myself out on this, I am going to try a new lean process for handling all the stuff in my home.  I am going to attempt to touch things only once.  If I get the mail, I am going to open it, file it, respond to it…do whatever I need to do with it right then and there.  It is dealt with immediately instead of shuffled around the kitchen for a week first.  I am going to take the laundry out of the dryer, fold it, and put it away instantly rather than relocate it as if it were enlisted in the navy and being deployed to new locations every other day.  And the pile of stuff I sweep up daily off my kitchen floor, well that is going to be dealt with in short order as well.  

Wahoo…glad I got that off my chest.  I feel so relieved that I came up with such a sound plan of action.  I’ll let you know how well I maintain this new lean process.  I am really holding my breath on this one!  

Now, if you will excuse me….I need to figure out where I put my keys so I can unlock my car and get the last load of dirty dishes out of the trunk!