Work Wednesday: Erring on the Side of Filth

It's been over a week since my last post. Why the lack of dedication?  Well, I've had to switch focus.  I have a bunch of consulting jobs coming up and I had been struggling with making progress at a pace I could be happy about.

I finally discovered that the real problem was one of perception.  A couple of weeks ago while chatting with a self-employed friend over a cup of joe, it suddenly occurred to me that I need to approach my consulting work totally differently from how I always approached my job in New York.  Back in New York, I had an office, loads of people to support my endeavors and perhaps most importantly, as much child care as I could stand.  Admittedly, I couldn't stand much, usually no more than 40 hours, but our current 18 hours of nursery school is a far cry from the arrangement I'm used to, especially when I have taken on full responsibility for the household.

So, lesson learned,  if I'm going to produce four classes in various formats, something's got to give.  And the thing that can give is housework.  Last week, there was no work wheel.  I decided that in the interest of getting the content produced for the one class that was new, I would not do any housework.  P was back in New York for work (which was good because he probably would have done all the housework and the guilt would have interfered with my productivity) and M and I at very simple meals.  I mentioned the plan to my friend Jenny, West Coast L's mom, and she immediately volunteered to pick M up at school one day to give me an extra hour.

So on Thursday I buckled down and finished a very respectable first draft of the course by 2:00!  I ran out to Albert Heijn to pick up some fish sticks and ran into Jenny. We went to pick up the kids together and M was so disappointed that I had intruded on his play date plans that Jenny took him to the playground anyway and I got to go home and tidy up a little.

I feel like I have broken through my block and can now get my three other courses sorted out.  But, if the blog ever goes dark for a week again, you know what I'm doing.

Work Wednesday: Cleaning Update

After my "work wheel" post last month, a couple of readers have expressed their surprise at the frequency with which I clean the floors.  Actually, it is pretty surprising.  Every week the floors get vacuumed and swiffered and every other week they get washed for real, with a bucket and a cleaning product that's similar to Fabuloso or Spic n Span.  What's really amazing is that despite being a basically shoeless household, and despite not allowing our kid to eat anywhere but the table, the floors are actually dirty when it comes time to clean them every few days.

Really, when I swiffered on Friday, only 3 days after I had vacuumed all the floors, the swiffer cloth was so filthy I thought about changing it midway through (I didn't).  I don't know why this is, but I suspect it has to do with living in an old building (don't they just spontaneously release dust?), our lifestyle (M and I are home much more often than we were in New York and therefore we are making dust at home as opposed to work or school) and our windows (don't close properly to the point of an inside door blowing closed one particularly windy night).

So, despite needing some slight tweaking to address tasks that aren't regularly completed, sadly, cleaning the floor isn't really something I can cut back on.