Too many little tasks, not enough real accomplishment

I enjoyed Emily's post: How to Keep a Clean Home: It's All About Prevention at Keeper of the Home today.  Not because the general message was new to me -- I've been a dropout  member of Flylady's squadron to know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure as far as housekeeping goes.  In fact, I took it to heart so well that I began to think that allllll my housekeeping should be in bite-size chunks or I was doing it wrong.  I mean, if I'm always wiping up the little things as they happen, won't my house always be clean?  (not that I always do this, mind you....my dh is reading this rolling on the floor laughing I bet)

What hit my like a ton of bricks in Emily's post today was this:

As we already mentioned, not all small tasks are created equal. It's easy to say, "Oh, I'll just get this one thing done really quickly." And end up doing lots of those little "one things" that don't really add up to much.

While this may be somewhat unavoidable when you have small children in the house (don't our days seem like an endless rotation of changing diapers, feeding children, cleaning up spills and picking up toys?) Don't spend your whole day stringing together lots of different 5 minute tasks, or you will get to the end of the day and feel like you got nothing accomplished.

Wow!!  and YES!!  My life - and somewhat by necessity due to my circumstances - is one long string of tiny interrupted "little things."  And at the end of the day, I feel farther behind than when I woke up in the morning. Very disheartening. Then I get to get up and do it again! ;-)

I think I'm going to try to add one bigger task to each day, something that will give me more of a sense of accomplishment.  The quandry, though, is

-WHAT to do (i.e. even washing our kitchen floor, which is quite a chore, doesn't make me feel good when it's done because it never really LOOKS clean - it's old - and 10 seconds later it really IS dirty again), and

- carving out that time every day.  Where can I get an uninterrupted block of time?  And then doing it!  Not just once, but most days.  Feeling accomplished. What a concept!!


BTW, she has a broken link in her post...I think it's supposed to go to this: How to Keep a Clean Home - Daily Chores .